Communicating
When I left Boston I was twenty-two years old. I left against my will. But I was an only child, my parents were retiring back to Spain, and they used the guilt trip to bring me back with them. When I first arrived I missed living in a neighborhood of a busy city, where I could go easily from place to place on public transport and find almost whatever I wanted. I missed the cadence of New England English. I even missed commercials on television in English. I had to resign myself to live surrounded by Spanish and someday find a way to move back to Boston.
What a difference time makes. Come July I will have been living here twenty-five years. I have gotten used to this place. My ear has gotten accustomed to different Spanish cadences. So much so that when I first heard a movie on our new DVD in English a few years ago, I had difficulty following the cadence and understanding the actors. It didn't matter that I had always spoken English to our daughter, my ear had fallen out of sync with other English voices. But technology has come to the aid of my language homesickness. Between the Internet, through which I have ordered hundreds of books in English in the last few years, and the introduction of digital television with the option of watching a series or movie in the original version, I have reacquainted myself with the language of my childhood.
But when I first arrived here I was lucky in that I knew and understood Castilian Spanish and Galician. Gradually I also learned to read in Galician, which had only been an oral language for me till then. There was no communication problem. Which is not what all migrants can claim. When my parents emigrated to Boston, they had to depend for the first few years on my uncle, who had been living there for a while. Then my father picked up some English. But my mother never got the hang of it. I remember being nine years old and making phone calls to order heating oil. I would wander with my mother through the supermarket, and she would pick up something to put in the shopping cart. I would ask her how she knew what to buy if she couldn't read English. She replied that she looked at the pictures on the package and that I was there to read it for her if she needed help. Watching television she would ask what was happening, not being able to follow the plot. Once we got cable television in, the only channel she watched was Univision, the entirely Spanish-speaking channel. I can't imagine what it must be like to be living in a foreign land and not be able to fully communicate except with your family.
I still miss not hearing English around me randomly. Still, the language homesickness now is not as acute. But I still turn to look whenever I hear an anonymous voice in the street speaking English. A little bird from home has just trilled in my ear.
What a difference time makes. Come July I will have been living here twenty-five years. I have gotten used to this place. My ear has gotten accustomed to different Spanish cadences. So much so that when I first heard a movie on our new DVD in English a few years ago, I had difficulty following the cadence and understanding the actors. It didn't matter that I had always spoken English to our daughter, my ear had fallen out of sync with other English voices. But technology has come to the aid of my language homesickness. Between the Internet, through which I have ordered hundreds of books in English in the last few years, and the introduction of digital television with the option of watching a series or movie in the original version, I have reacquainted myself with the language of my childhood.
But when I first arrived here I was lucky in that I knew and understood Castilian Spanish and Galician. Gradually I also learned to read in Galician, which had only been an oral language for me till then. There was no communication problem. Which is not what all migrants can claim. When my parents emigrated to Boston, they had to depend for the first few years on my uncle, who had been living there for a while. Then my father picked up some English. But my mother never got the hang of it. I remember being nine years old and making phone calls to order heating oil. I would wander with my mother through the supermarket, and she would pick up something to put in the shopping cart. I would ask her how she knew what to buy if she couldn't read English. She replied that she looked at the pictures on the package and that I was there to read it for her if she needed help. Watching television she would ask what was happening, not being able to follow the plot. Once we got cable television in, the only channel she watched was Univision, the entirely Spanish-speaking channel. I can't imagine what it must be like to be living in a foreign land and not be able to fully communicate except with your family.
I still miss not hearing English around me randomly. Still, the language homesickness now is not as acute. But I still turn to look whenever I hear an anonymous voice in the street speaking English. A little bird from home has just trilled in my ear.
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