Oil on water

I took a trip to El Paso this past weekend. It was different than I expected...more border townish. In fact, the border itself seemed almost superfluous--the way El Paso and Ciudad Juarez are sprawled out at night: a continuation of house and city lights from one side of the valley to the other.

Because I speak Spanish but haven't used it much for the past 4-5 years, it was like a breath of fresh air for me. I love Hispanic culture and I love being able to understand another language...so when they would blend English and Spanish so artfully with their bordertalk, I felt like I was a missionary again, speaking Spanglish with my American missionary friends. That's why I envy Europeans: speaking 3 or more languages from birth and fluently. I can imagine that if I knew all of my friends spoke the same languages I did, we would speak a pidgin combining them all.

If my path didn't lie elsewhere, I would want to be a philologist or a historical linguist. It's amazing to me the way languages mix like oil skims on the surface of water...or how language is much more than a communication system. It's the culmination of a people's technology, culture, philosophies, religion, science, history and mythology. And I could go on and on and on. So when a person learns a second language, they must learn all that that entails. To truly understand a people's language is to truly understand a people. And to adopt a second language is to adopt that people as your own.

The Romans never conquered a people unless their language prevailed. The same could be said about the Greeks. The Mongols--although conquerors--adopted the culture of those conquered.

Are we being conquered now, only we don't know it--because it's more gradual? Are we all undergoing a process of submission? I don't know. All I know is this: we're all part of something much bigger than ourselves. We are part of processes and movements which influence us and are influenced by us. We are all in flux. We are all oil on water.