Languages in LA

I spent the weekend at the Screenwriter’s Expo at the LAX Marriot. This is a strange place to be three days before a looming writers’ strike, but no matter. Strikes end eventually, and when they do, life goes on. Anyway, I was privileged to hear a seminar by Richard Walker, guru of script and screen at UCLA.

He was a great speaker, but he caught my attention particularly when he said, “Let me share something with you… and notice, in California, we don’t say things or tell you things. We shaaaare.”

Everyone chuckled, but I was cringing. This is true. I’ve been so inundated with “sharing” that I had stopped noticing enough to complain. But I hate it. Folks here don’t seem to “tell” or “say” unless they are relating a story wherein they said something, or are making an emphatic “let me tell you” sort of statement.

Even more obnoxious is the language at the school where I work. Excuse me, I mean in my community of educators. They like to “share out.” This is teachers going society one better, and you can almost hear the superior sniff that accompanies it. In countless meetings, I’ve been informed that I am expected to discuss this issue or that with my fellow educators seated near me, and then we would turn and share out what we’ve discussed.

This phrase is generally accompanied by an open-handed (both hands) gesture reminiscent of a hostess behind a well-stocked buffet table announcing that dinner is served.

I am a contrarian at heart. Being told to share out even random thoughts makes me want to skulk in my classroom and hoard pencils. I hearby make this solemn vow to the universe: you will never hear me say that I’m going to “share something with you” unless I am being very sarcastic and the next word is going to start with an F.

Many a night I have sat at a posh restaurant at Sunset Plaza and listened to my two best friends argue about the correct phraseology of certain kinds of government assistance. One of my friends is taking care of her elderly mother, Ms. H., a very sweet lady with a list of medications that should entitle her to at least a Christmas card from Pfizer.

Because she is a senior citizen, and because her medical needs strap even a well-employed daughter, Ms. H. qualifies for Medicare and Medicaid. This is known as being medi-medi.

My other friend, who works for those who translate bills from doctor’s office into governmental assistance language, insists that this cannot be so, that Ms. H. must be getting one or the other, and our friend only thinks her mother is medi-medi.

I have no interest in the logistics of the argument. What I enjoy is listening to them bat the phrase medi-medi back and forth. It’s amazing the different ways we refer to government assistance (the more blunt term being welfare.)

My school is called a Title One school. Sounds rather prestigious, doesn’t it? It’s not. It means that the majority of our students qualify for “subsidized meals” (foodstamps, essentially.) The school gets more money for each student that qualifies, so we are under pressure to get the students to turn in applications for foodstamps. Many’s the time I’ve heard a student protest, “We don’t need this,” only to be required to tell them, “The school still needs the application on file.”

More disturbing is when children do indeed qualify, though they don’t consider themselves poor. It’s quite a shock for them, sometimes, to be handed a sheet of foodstamps during homeroom. You can see the sudden dawning of understanding in their eyes: I am considered poor even though we pay our bills.

But I’m sure their self-esteem is a small price to pay for our school’s ever-increasing budget. And it’s not charity. It’s not welfare. It’s Title One. Not as catchy as medi-medi, but still, quite nice, yes?

I am getting ready to leave my dusty old apartment over the 101 for a shiny new one in a quiet neighborhood in West Hollywood. As can be imagined, I am vibrating with impatience. I found myself, as I cleaned up the old place, singing a song I learned in high school choir class.

The song is an old Negro spiritual, although you aren’t supposed to say Negro anymore so I don’t know what they are calling such things today. Indeed, I think you aren’t even supposed to say they anymore. It’s undoubtedly next on the list of no-no’s now that we are afraid to say you people to anyone unless they’re white.

Anyway, I was remembering as I sang, how my choir teacher, Mr. Highland, instructed us to sing it as if we were black. Well, he didn’t say it that way. He said, “Don’t sing soon I will be done with the troubles of the world, that’s how you would sing it. But you have to sing it how THEY would sing it,” (already you can imagine the trouble he’d get in today.)

“Like this,” he sang, “Soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’… de troubles ob de worl… de troubles ob de worl’….”

I know he meant no harm. He was ardently liberal and was undoubtedly hoping to pay tribute to a tradition. Nowadays, he’d be accused of mocking and blackface, and would be… well, I suppose nothing would happen to him but a stern talking to and a tearful public apology. Then Bill O’Reilly would say something about the matter and a parody of the whole thing would turn up on YouTube and that would be it.

Still, it made me feel old to be singing in my echoing, empty apartment, soon Ah will be done wid de troubles ob de worl’, and to know my adolescence was another era.

Some of my students are budding thuglets with La Vida Loca faux-tattoos inked onto their hands — it’s three blue dots in a triangle at the juncture between the thumb and forefinger. One of these kids got stabbed last year in Echo Park. (That scar on his shoulder will win him female attention and sympathy for years to come. Chicks dig scars.)

So amid that bleak landscape, refreshing moments are precious. Here’s what I mean: amid my usual crop of wild, disinterested adolescents, there are the rare wonders, children who washed up on our shore God-knows-how. Two years ago it was a tall, blond Russian boy with wit and remarkable cultural knowledge. Gordy once watched three boys playing and needling each other as I struggled, exasperated, to get them to just once pay attention to the lesson. Finally he turned to me and said wryly in thickly-accented English, “The Three Stooges.” That was a refreshing moment.

Another was a girl from Bolivia whom I sat down in front of a computer and directed to write a summary of the book we had just read. She was the (very) quiet type, so I sort of wandered off and forgot about her for the better part of an hour. When I came back, she silently presented me with 9 pages… nine pages… of methodical, exact details from the novel. Single spaced. I am still certain that she is from Mars.

My most recent refreshing moment was yesterday. My little bespectacled girl from India came into the room and bounded up to me with a tiny white rose bud she had picked from a bush as she passed. “Here,” she said with a gallant flourish, “a white rose for a white lady!” This is just precious; she can’t know that “white lady” is not usually a term of endearment. Particularly in Los Angeles. I think I shall have to press that rosebud in my Complete Works of Jane Austen book. It’s just too cute.

I both love and hate the latest stylistic developments for conveying tone. Let me explain. On the political website I haunt, it was common years ago to interpret all caps as screaming. If someone wrote, “THAT IS NOT WHAT I MEANT!” people would actually say, “Stop screaming, you sound hysterical.”

But we’ve come a long way, baby. Posters have now developed conventions for sotto voice, Captain Kirk imitations, and measured tones. For example, recently we were musing on the worst popular songs of all time, and of course, the song Sometimes When We Touch came up.

Sometimes when we touch

The honesty’s too much

And I have to close my eyes and hide.

Yes, the Mr. Sensitive Ponytail Theme Song. Anyway, one wag wickedly confessed that he whenever he hears that song, he mentally substitutes a certain vulgar term for the word “touch.”

I said, “But then it won’t rhyme, and the honesty’s too muck doesn’t make sense.”

He said, “It does to me. And that’s what matters.” Instant sotto voice. Cute, eh?

Captain Kirk imitations abound, meant to suggest someone struggling against a superior (though invisible) force.

“Must… not… make… joke…. must… resist…”

Then of course, there is the measured tone, reeking of deliberation.

“Do. Not. Put. Words. In. My. Mouth. I said nothing of the sort…”

But while I appreciate these developments, I regret the loss of elegance that used to attend writing. Behold, an excerpt from the diary-turned-travel guide, With Malice Toward Some by Margaret Halsey (1938). She describes a group of fellow-Americans on her cruise ship as:

A large group of beautiful, shiny-looking young people who generally travel in a flying wedge and whose voices are distressingly reminiscent of seagulls discovering a floating orange peel. We have not talked very much with these citizens, as most of the secular ones seem to be in the midst of an impromptu mating season.

Man, that’s good. That’s. So. Good.

I can tell how long students have been in this country more by how they talk to one another than by how they talk to me. Those who have been in the States for less than a year find a fellow expatriot and they stick together like glue. The girls especially, linking arms in the schoolyard and travelling together with the tight, coordinated movements of dolphins. Boys cluster in linguistically homogenous groups.

After a year or two, they start to branch out. Armenian and Mexican boys will sometimes overcome ethnocentric animosities to discover a mutual love of soccer or basketball. Thai girls become friends with Filipinas, and giggle together during class over pictures of androgynous boys on CD covers. By this time, I usually have to wield the seating chart in a punitive manner, causing much hate and discontent.

But most interesting are the conversations I overhear between students, usually Latino, who have been in the States for four years or more. They code-switch. Their conversations move naturally from English to Spanish and back. Sometimes the topic dictates the language; what happened during lunchtime’s soccer game is discussed in Spanish. But then, when complaining about all the homework in Science, it’s in English.

Often they will converse quickly in English till they need a word that they don’t know, and will switch to Spanish to confer briefly about the word they need. The word is usually supplied in Spanish, used, and then the conversation continues in Spanish for a while before switching back to English when a new topic is discussed.

Listening to the talk is fun. Intercepting the notes they pass is not as much fun. The code switching is still there, but I find myself sighing often. “Sweetie, there’s a t in bitch. And you spelled my name wrong”.

It’s Friday afternoon, and my students are milling about. The bell is about to ring, releasing them for lunch. Some of them, who have not stepped over that threshold into young adulthood, will run out screaming and jostling. The others will stroll out more slowly, surreptitiously checking their cellphones for messages.

They aren’t supposed to bring such things to school — cellphones, iPods, gameboys — but teachers discover the same thing parents discover: adolescents are such demonic pests when they are bored, you will sometimes give them anything they want just to make them shut up and go away.

So occasionally, such as when they’ve been remarkably compliant during a week’s marathon stretch of standardized tests, I give in. It’s five minutes till the bell on Friday, and iPods are discreetly appearing all over the room. Fine. I don’t care. All I want in the world right now is a moment’s peace.

I look up and see a sight that arrests my attention. Around a table are gathered a Korean girl, a boy from Sri Lanka, an Armenian girl, a tiny Pakistani girl, and a Mexican boy. They all have their heads together and are straining to hear the music emanating from the earphones of an iPod.

Coming to the table, I ask “What are you listening to?” The Armenian girl, grinning broadly at having piqued adult interest, brandishes a CD case featuring a young American man in hip-hop mode, his ball cap sideways, his clothes appropriately both designer and baggy.

I hate hip-hop. But I pause. Look at this group, their heads together, all listening… a poster-child gathering of international students enjoying the rhythmic chantings of some callow, corporate-sponsored white surburban boy posing as a dangerous inner-city thug. It’s so L.A. And it’s peaceful! ‘Til the bell rings.