Suzette Haden Elgin - We Have Always Spoken Panglish.pdf - Suzette Haden Elgin - margozap

We Have Always Spoken Panglish

by Suzette Haden Elgin

"Oh ha, Alyssa! You look like a flower blooming; you move over the land like a white sailboat over the

sea; sweet fragrant grass springs up under your feet as you pass; you bring radiant light with you!"

"Oh ha, Bru," I said to him. "Oh ha, Fadrien," I said to his wife. And that was all I said. It was hard

enough to have to listen to the Yegerrian expats' endless compliments-of-greeting with a straight face; I

only tried to produce them myself when I was meeting a Yegerrian for the first time and in my official

capacity. I had memorized one relatively brief example for that purpose: "You bring pleasant images to

my mind; you distract me from my cares." I used it the way we've always used "It's a pleasure to meet

you" in Panglish, and with an equal lack of commitment to honesty.

To be fair, the compliments didn't sound quite so bad when they were spoken in the Yegerrians' native

language. In Beydini they had to rhyme, and that was at least pleasant for the ear. But in Panglish? What

they remind me of most strongly is the flowery compliments ancient French used for closing personal

letters, all about thousands of warm embraces and thousands of faithful vows and pretty little cabbages.

They're a nuisance and a waste of time, but no one has had any luck convincing the Yegerrians to leave

them out when they're speaking Panglish.

The Beydini language doesn't deserve U.S. Corps of Linguists fieldwork; there's no need for a detailed

study of yet one more run-of-the-mill humanoid subject/verb/object language. We can all safely assume

that USCOL's interest is linked not to linguistic theory but to the current administration's political

agenda. But I'm not complaining—not when I have a luxury posting like this one. Seagarden, on the

planet Estrada-Blair, is every linguist's dream assignment. (Well, every lazy linguist's dream

assignment!) Seagarden is an elegant modern city, right on an ocean very much like Earth's

Mediterranean Sea, but with pleasanter weather. Lovely restaurants and museums and shops and parks …

broad streets lined with beautiful homes in the full range of galactic styles from Ancient Classical to

Pseudo-Stochastic … Who could complain? If I'd been posted to the planet Yegerry, way out behind the

end of nowhere, I would have complained nonstop. But USCOL isn't about to spend the money that

would cost, not when they can so much more cheaply send me here to the expat district on Estrada-Blair.

My only problem has been how to do my fieldwork with the Yegerrians slowly enough to extend my stay

in this wonderful place, but not so slowly that I make them suspicious back in Washington. I've had a

delightful two weeks, and I intend to keep my head down and drag this assignment out for just as long as

I can.

This evening, Bru and Fadrien were taking me out to dinner. It would be my first opportunity to see the

vast slum called Benedict's Gate, behind the high wall that separates it from the rest of Seagarden. I saw

Benedict's Gate as I flew in, of course, just before landing; it seemed to go on forever, and I'm told that in

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We Have Always Spoken Panglish

fact it covers almost ten square miles. It's a rectangle, bounded on two sides by high white cliffs, on a

third by the ocean, and on the other by the boundary wall. The people who live there look, physically,

just like the people beyond the wall; the difference is that the Losheffas from the slum look (and are)

desperately poor, and the Hisheffas from beyond the wall look (and are) pleasantly wealthy. (In Sheffa

Panglish, "beyond the wall" is a phrase that means "expensive and highly valued," as in "That house is

truly beyond the wall, but I plan to buy it anyway.") Sheff is divided only by a gulf of money and

material things and privilege, and that suffices; every Sheffan city has its boundary wall in honor of that

gulf. There are no Midsheffas, just the high and the low. I doubt that the system can be justified in any

system of Terran morality; but then I don't know much about it. I'm here to work with Beydini, not with

Sheffa Panglish, and I give my full attention to the Yegerrians.

We got into Benedict's Gate by going through an actual gate built into the boundary wall. It was a

windowless white-walled tunnel with barriers at each end, staffed by two hulking robots programmed to

keep us moving briskly along.

"It takes a lot longer going the other direction," Fadrien told me. I liked Fadrien; I wouldn't have wanted

to live the way she lived, with nothing to do but shop and go out for fancy lunches with her friends and

follow Bru around on request, but I liked her all the same. She was good company, and she was always

willing to answer yet one more silly question about Beydini verbs.

"Is Benedict's Gate worth the trouble?" I asked her. More importantly, I thought, is the restaurant worth

the trouble? I was more interested in food than in slum architecture.

"Would we be taking you there if it wasn't?" she said, smiling at me. "You'll see. Any minute now, when

the barrier goes up."

I wasn't prepared for what I saw then, in spite of having watched a long training threedy for Seagarden

back on Earth. In the threedy the slum had looked colorful and busy and exotic—and slightly tacky. Up

close and real, it was different; it took your breath away. I stood there staring at it, and then after a

minute or two I realized that the Yegerrians were watching me the way I'd watch a giraffe at the zoo,

amused by my totally unprofessional reaction, and I snapped out of it in a hurry. Linguists aren't

supposed to be subject to trances of astonishment.

"That's amazing," I said. "How is it done? I seem to remember from the pre-post briefing that they use

mud … But is that right? It doesn't seem likely, somehow."

"Well, it's a special kind of mud," Bru said. "Not Earth mud—not Yegerry mud either. The Losheffans

mix it with different liquids, depending on the color they're after, and they stabilize it somehow—sorry, I

don't remember the details—and then they spread it over the walls in all those patterns and borders. It

goes on nonstop, I guess; no matter when you come here, even late at night, you'll see Losheffans

working at it. I think their goal is for every vertical surface except the windows—they don't like to

obstruct the view through the windows—to be a work of art. Whether they succeed, I'm not qualified to

say; tastes differ. Fadrien thinks it's gorgeous, and I'm inclined to agree."

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We Have Always Spoken Panglish

In all directions, the buildings and walls stretched away from us, covered with the glowing patterns of

color. Sometimes the patterns were flowers or birds or ocean waves, sometimes they were simple

geometric shapes, sometimes they were fractals; sometimes they looked like calligraphy, but not in any

language I was familiar with. Sometimes they were truly alien and I wasn't at all sure how to classify

them. Every detail seemed to me to be carefully chosen … nothing glaring, nothing shocking, nothing

tawdry; always, the choices were subtle and harmonious.

"I've seen some of those patterns before," I said slowly, "but I don't remember where."

Fadrien laughed. "You've seen them on Hisheffan dishes and curtains and shirts and swimsuits," she said.

"The Hisheffans are very fond of them."

I nodded, remembering. "Like the shirt I bought yesterday."

"Yes."

"Do they pay the Losheffan artists when they use the patterns?"

"Oh, no," she said. " You know how they are."

"Losheffans start working on this stuff when they're just toddlers," Bru told me. "They practice with

plain mud on flat rocks until some adult says they're good enough to move on to the real thing."

"Everybody does this?"

He shrugged, and looked at Fadrien, who shook her head to tell him she didn't know either. "So far as I

recall, it's everybody," he said. "If anybody is excluded … or maybe just doesn't want to be involved, and

doesn't take part … I don't know about it. I never thought about it before, Alyssa. I'm afraid I'm not very

interested in the Losheffans."

"Oh? Why not?"

"Well … It's interesting that they want to make the slum attractive to look at, I suppose, but it's still a

slum. A ghetto, really. I'm not interested, basically, in people who don't care enough to try to get ahead in

their world."

How do you know they don't try? I thought, but I kept still. When I was with Bru and Fadrien I was on

duty, and the more shallow I kept our conversations, the better. Sightseeing. The weather. Food. And the

words and grammar of Beydini, of course; in that one area, it was safe not to be shallow, as long as I was

careful not to say anything about how ordinary and typical the language was.

"I hope you don't think Bru is a snob," Fadrien said then, sounding a little uneasy, which meant that my

body language was giving me away in spite of my best intentions. I'd been finding it a little hard to

maintain my professional persona with the Yegerrian expatriates, because I kept losing my awareness

that they weren't Terrans. It's easy to stay "on duty" when the creatures you're interacting with have two

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We Have Always Spoken Panglish

heads or look like giant caterpillars or some such thing. When they're like the Yegerrians and the

Sheffans, and they look and talk just like the people you know at home, it's not so simple. So Yegerrians

have two appendixes instead of one, and their pancreas is located in their upper chest, and their hair is

always curly … so the Sheffans are a bit taller than Terrans and have six toes instead of five … they both

could still move right into any home or office on Earth and never be spotted as ETs.

"Of course I don't think he's a snob," I said, trying to sound entirely casual, no judgment of any kind

implied. "He's a physicist—why should he be interested in the people of Benedict's Gate? Fortunately,

however, even physicists are interested in food. Which way to the restaurant?"

It was close by, close enough that we decided to walk. The streets were narrow and twisting and

crowded; the buildings that lined them were rarely separated from the sidewalks by more than a flat

steppingstone under the front door. And calling the walkways "sidewalks" was using the term loosely,

since they were so narrow that we had to walk in single file. I wasn't surprised. In any slum where the

population keeps growing but the boundaries are fixed, so that space grows ever more precious, that

happens, and is in no way unusual. There was something unusual, however, and it wasn't just the

decoration: Benedict's Gate was the first clean slum I had ever seen. Since endangered languages

ordinarily are spoken by poor people, I've worked in dozens of slums, and I'd never seen a truly clean

one before. Benedict's Gate was grotesquely crowded, and in many ways very strange-looking, but the

word "squalid" just didn't apply. Which meant that the word "slum" didn't apply either, strictly speaking,

because "Squalid" is one of the defining semantic characteristics of "slum"…

Oops. That line of thought wouldn't do—I must not let myself get interested in Benedict's Gate or its

inhabitants. That was always a danger when you did fieldwork; USCOL sent you to find out about the

Whuffledinger verbs, but you found the Whuffledingers living among the Baffleclangers, and their verbs

turned out to be far more interesting than the ones assigned to you, so you thought you'd just look at two

or three of them, just gathering knowledge for the sake of knowledge, what could be more pure? And

first thing you knew, you were deeply into the analysis of the Baffleclangers' language and far behind

with the job you were being paid a very handsome salary to do. There was no quicker way to find

yourself assigned—permanently—to a desk in Washington, D.C.

Focus on the restaurant, Alyssa.

The Lavender Lamp Cafe was a small square building with a tiny front courtyard and a door opening

directly into the dining room. A lavender lamp hung over the door, justifying the name, and the

decorative patterns were rows of white-tipped ocean waves in various shades from the palest lavender to

deep purple. Not my favorite colors but pleasant enough.

"How do they make the mud-colors glow like that?" I asked Bru as we went inside.

He shrugged. "I have no idea," he said. "Something about the native soil, I suppose, or something they

put in the liquids they mix it with. We can ask somebody while we're here, if you like. The family that

runs this place is always willing to join a conversation."

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We Have Always Spoken Panglish

"No," I said. "Thanks, but it's not necessary. It's not important."

I forgot my questions when the food came; I tend to forget everything when the food comes, if it's at all

good. On the other side of the boundary wall we ate well, but we ate the things you eat everywhere in the

cities of the Panglish-speaking worlds. The Lavender Lamp Cafe had food that was different. We kept

calling the young waiter back to ask him what this was and what that was and how it was made. And

then, as we were talking to him about a soup that he told us was made with three different kinds of

flowers, I asked the wrong question. "I understand that in Panglish this is called Three-Flower Soup," I

said. "But what do you call it in your language?"

The boy frowned at me, looking baffled; I was sure he couldn't be more than fifteen, and it was

disgraceful that he was working. "Panglish is my language," he said.

"I'm not making myself clear," I said. "Look … Wait, what's your name?"

"I'm called Fyee," he said. One syllable. A good old Panglish name, never mind the fact that starting

words with an FY cluster was totally unPanglish. "Fyee Bahron."

"Well, Mr. Bahron—"

He raised his hands. "I'm Fyee," he said quietly. "My father is Mr. Bahron."

"I'm sorry. Fyee, then. Fyee, what I meant was this: What is Three-Flower Soup called in your native

language? The native language of the Losheffans?"

"Three-Flower Soup," he said.

I should have stopped then. I had no business whatsoever pursuing the matter, and it was obvious that I

was embarrassing the boy. But I'm a linguist, and I really did think that Fyee and I were just involved in

one of those standard "What are your people called?"/"We're called The People" loops.

"Then could you tell me," I said, trying a different path to the information I wanted, "how you would

translate 'Three-Flower Soup' into your own native language? If you were eating it at home, for example,

with your family?"

"Excuse me," he said. "I will call my father." And the man who came back with Fyee from the kitchen to

our table looked at me as if I were being the Ugly Terran—which I was; he was quite right—and said

immediately, "Miss, Panglish is our native language. And we call this soup Three-Flower Soup."

I did shut up then, hoping I could salvage the situation and restore the sort of atmosphere that's

appropriate for a pleasant evening out and a good dinner. I thanked him for his help, adding almost-

Yegerrian compliments for his restaurant and his son and his food until he seemed to me to be mollified.

But my mind was racing. Because Panglish isn't anybody's native language; Panglish is an artificial

synthesis of the many different Englishes that spread over Earth in the twentieth and twenty-first

centuries. Linguists had finally scrubbed the bugs out of it and written a thorough grammar, and it had

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Suzette Haden Elgin - We Have Always Spoken Panglish.pdf

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