Travel
makes the world smaller. It shrinks when we get to know someone from another
side of the globe, and hear what their childhood was like, things that concern
them as adults and share stories about our children. What makes this possible
most of the time is the other side of the globe learns other languages like
English, while Americans go hoping and expecting someone to speak our language. We fail our students by
not insisting on language skills.
Our time
in Iceland had many highlights, but one was listening to the expressions our
guide, Edda, used in her commentary. I grew up with a mother that used colorful
phrases, and I never really knew how much tea there was in China, or just how
tight Dick’s hatband was, or how far it was to kingdom come. Edda was just as
colorful. Here’s some examples I jotted down of Edda’s take on:
- Government- “The prime minister has a bone in her nose.” She is a strong woman who won’t be pushed around.
- Weather- “It will be window weather.” A day better suited for looking out the window rather than being out in the weather.
- Visiting Oklahoma-“I’ll have to lay my head in the water.” She would have to think about it.
- Religion-“They are baptized and see a white penguin.” We think she might have meant white dove as a symbol for the Holy Spirit. We weren’t sure because we were…
- “just down from the mountains,” the phrase Icelanders used when they didn’t have any clue about the subject.
We
giggled and tried to figure out what some of her statements meant, whether it
was an expression, or misuse of English, or mispronunciation of words. Edda was
explaining how the milk cows graze the grassy meadows but then when it’s
milking time they go to the rowboats. Are you getting the mental image we
pictured? This one took us a while to figure out, but she was trying to tell us
that they used automated milking machines, robots. The Icelandic language puts
the emphasis on the first syllable, so she stressing the second syllable of
ro-BOT and it sounded like rowboat. We all had a good laugh.
Each day
she taught us a new word and a common expression, such as “on with the butter.”
This meant get on with it, keep going, keep working. But our favorite idiom had
to be her saying for the best part or the highlight. Where we might say “it was
the cherry on top.” she said it was “the raisin at the end of the hot dog.” Oh
my.
Traveling
fills our senses. This adventure to Iceland was natural beauty in the way of
waterfalls, and rainbows, and geysers. There was smell of sulfur from geothermal pools. There were unfamiliar
tastes with new foods. And there were sounds, Edda’s lovely melodic use of
English even when it was sprinkled with
word combinations that left us scratching our heads, and lost as a goose.
English isn’t always universal, but laughter is.
