The most powerful foreign-language phrase and other linguistic musings

A popular book on the business shelves a few years ago was Dave Logan and Steve Zaffron’s “The Three Laws of Performance.”

The first law is that the world “occurs” to us based on the “future story” we’re constantly telling ourselves – a restatement of the truism that the world we expect to find upon leaving home in the morning tends to be the one that’s indeed waiting.

The third rule is that we can change the future story by using future-based language. They offer the example of Benjamin Franklin coining the term “America” for what was then little more than 13 warring colonies (this may be where Sun Media’s bright-lights came up with “ethical oil” as a substitute for “environmentally catastrophic tar sand.”)

But it’s Logan and Zaffron’s second rule that fascinates me. It says that how the world occurs to us is largely based in language.

They quote a passage from the writing of Helen Keller, who, blind and deaf from the age of 18 months, spent six years of her life without language. She comments that she lived during this period from a level of survival instinct and her only memories are tactual in nature. Without language, she had no ability to otherwise store memories.

I’m finding again on this trip that the pleasure I get in travel is rooted in language.

When we arrived in Albufeira, Portugal toward the end of January, we did as we always do – as I suspect a lot of Canadians do – when initially faced with a foreign language: we resort reflexively to French, our least foreign of foreign languages. I can’t stress just how reflexive this is: I do the deer-in-the-headlights thing and French dribbles out my mouth even though I am not conscious of speaking.

Albufeira’s old town is quite picturesque, but the town offers few opportunities to practice Portuguese.

This, fortunately, has a bit of a first-date characteristic to it. I get over the jitters and re-learned to relax, listen with intensified concentration, and work that mental muscle that connects what I have to communicate with the limited vocabulary at my disposal – that same mental muscle that so quickly re-atrophies when deprived of all but its native tongue.

On paper, at least, Portuguese and Spanish are remarkably similar. In fact, clearly-enunciating natives can carry on a reasonable conversation with each other.

And while I wouldn’t suggest we have anything in the way of facility with the language, our eight months in Mexico and Central America left us somewhat functional in Spanish. When required, we were able to transfer this functionality to Portuguese with heavy reliance on obrigado (thank you), copious “ssh” sounds inserted in each phrase, and, in a real pinch, straight Spanish enunciated to the best of our abilities.

But the unfortunate truth is, around our home-base in Albufeira, we were almost never required to speak Portuguese.

Two hours by air and less than €100 from Gatwick, Albufeira is to British retirees what Florida is to Canadian snowbirds, particularly to Brits of more advanced years.

The attraction is understandable: membership in a perennial ex-pat community, a moderate climate (particularly this year), inexpensive living, “happy hours” running from 9:30 a.m. until closing, and no need – or apparent inclination – to speak anything but English.

English is so pervasive, in fact, that I had a sense local shop staff preferred we speak it, rather than trying their patience – and opportunity to practice a profitable second language – with our hackneyed Portuguese.

It truly was the antithesis of the severe culture shock I underwent in our first month in Munich. In a first outing to our local vegetable stand, I readily demonstrated that I couldn’t count, couldn’t name a single piece of produce in his store, was woefully ignorant of the protocol in vegetable buying (the shopkeeper, not the buyer, selects from the displayed veggies!), and I couldn’t denominate the currency clutched in my hand.

“I’m much smarter in English,” I assured him, as charmingly as I could muster. Of course, I could only do so in English, which had no discernible impact on his “You’re a complete moron” glare.

Fortunately, in the second week of our four-week stay in Portugal, we rented a car and travelled the Algarve coast, east to the Spanish border, west to Cabo de São Vicente – once considered the end of the world, and north into the majestic hills and ancient Roman towns that cap the region. In our third week, we visited Lisbon, an ancient and modern cosmopolitan city in which we encountered some English, but it was sparse.

Curiously, I find my sense of connection to these places is proportional to our reliance on our rudimentary Portuguese while we were there. Paradoxically, the more reliant – the more fully engaged we were in the use of language – the more I felt connected.

From Albufeira, we traded Portugal for Spain. Almost instantly, Seville joined Prague at the top of my list of favourite cities. Each exudes its own intoxicating air of old-world-meets-new vitality and richness.

Spain has had a coming-home sort of feel to it. Within hours of our arrival to the city, Seville joined Prague at the top of my favourites cities.

From Seville, we bused south to Algeciras, a not-overly-attractive port city, but within local bus service – and inescapable sight – of Gibraltar, rising across the bay as improbably as Uluru rises from the Aussie Outback.

Algeciras and its neighbouring towns also enjoy a great deal of traffic as a result of the commuter-length ferry services running from their docks to Africa – readily visible on the southern horizon.

From Algeciras, we caught a Sunday afternoon RENFE train to Granada for a three-day tour of the city, including, of course, a visit to Alhambra – its beauty immeasurably amplified by the background snow-capped peaks of the Sierra Nevada mountains. As I write this, our ALSA bus ride to Madrid has put the mountains behind us, and those plains of “My Fair Lady” fame stretch to the horizon on both sides of us.

From a language perspective, Spain continues to feels like a homecoming. For starters, my ear loves the sound of Spanish. How could a language that is so inherently musical not be classified as a “romance” language?

I’m also conscious that Spanish is now rivalling French as my least foreign of foreign languages. With increasing frequency, when I ask a question in Spanish, the verbosity of of the response suggests the responder actually believed I could speak the language.

But I think there’s something more at play – a subtle sort of equilibrium. We’re not entirely helpless in a Spanish environment, but without question, we remain vulnerable. And that vulnerability keeps us in that state of openness – emptiness – that allows the traveller to connect with people and possibilities that, at home, would more likely slip by unnoticed.

Our Saturday evening in Algeciras was a case in point.

We had spent the day in a grueling six-hour hike of Gibraltar. The most striking of the rock’s many striking features is that there is no top-down or bottom-up approach to visiting its attractions. Whether the next attraction is above or below you, you’ll inevitably hike steep, ear-popping paths up and down to get there.

A view from atop Gibraltar – and, yes, we hiked-up from sea level! An airport runway can be seen on the left of the photo. This crosses the only street leading to and from Gibraltar, so pedestrians and vehicular traffic must yield to arriving and departing aircraft.

It was a remarkable and exhausting day. Blessed by the gods, we limped into the bus terminal on the Gibraltar end with the sun setting and only five minutes to wait for the next 40-minute bus ride back to Algeciras. Proof, that our decision to defer a well-earned pint until closer to home was the right one.

And while the bus dropped us virtually at the door of our pension, we ignore our sore and now-tightened muscles to do the 15-minute hike back along the waterfront to Plaza Alta, Algeciras’s el centro.

It was Carnival weekend downtown. We had taken in the Friday night parade and dance in the main public square. It became immediately evident that Saturday’s festivities had started much earlier in the day – likely with the start of siesta at 2:00. There seemed to be no escaping the noisy, drunken crowds on the streets and in the otherwise alluring bars.

In desperation, we hiked up one more street, and there, off a tiny public square, we found Mesón Las Duelas a pub just big enough for a bar and three small tables. Best of all, with the exception of an older gentleman patron and two older female servers, it was empty. And quiet.

Before our happily-ordered mugs of beer arrived, we determined the food menu consisted entirely of tapas, several of them on display in a glass case atop the bar.

Tapas, if you don’t know, is a Spanish style of serving food. Essentially, they’re appetizer-sized portions of main dishes, attractively presented on saucer-sized plates, generally with some form of bread or cracker on the side. As with East Indian meals, it’s a terrific way to sample a wide variety of foods and flavours. Marian and I find six or seven shared selections leaves the two of us comfortably full.

If there’s a down-side to tapas – and I strain to find one, it’s a foreigner’s difficulty in understanding the typically long menu list of sometimes subtle variations on a theme. It’s not as straight-forward as the chicken dish versus the lamb dish versus the salmon dish, etc.

Seeing me eyeing the displayed tapas, the older gentleman, obviously a friend of the owners’, launched into a description of each, mostly in Spanish, but with just enough English thrown in to leave me entirely confused. His enthusiasm engaged the full staff, which I would come to realize were the mom-and-pop owners and, I suspect, one of there sisters hired as a waitress. The conversation quickly escalated well over my head.

I developed a theory a few years ago that I’ve seen proven so often that I now consider it a law – certainly as much of a law as those fronted by Logan and Zaffron. Simply put: the most powerful phrase in any foreign language, and, therefore, the first phrase one should learned, is some variation on: I’m sorry, but I only speak a little _______ (insert name of language here).

Beginning with an apology signals that you’re not a smart-assed tourist who knows full-well that “they” really do understand English, so long as it’s spoken s-l-o-w-l-y and LOUDLY. Having invested the effort required to apologize in the receiver’s native tongue signals the sincerity of your acknowledged of your shortcomings.

Forewarned that extraordinary decoding will be required, this phrase almost always causes a noticeable shift in the receiver’s body language as he or she adopts an active listening stance. Just as often, I get a sense that they make a conscious effort to slow-down and dumb-down their end of the conversation for my benefit.

As Saturday evening’s tapas discussion hit the linguistic stratosphere, I pulled out the phrase. In Spanish – faultlessly delivered, I’d like to think, I apologized for speaking solo un poquito de español and for understanding tapas nada.

Having thus surrendered, we were immediately welcomed as friends.

It took no time to determine – in Spanish – that we’d have six dishes, four meat and two fish selections. With that, we were dismissed to sip our beers while our hosts determined our menu.

Carnival celebrations in Algeciras, Portugal are probably entirely responsible for a meal – and a connection – that will be a highlight of this trip.

Suffice to say, it was a foodie experience to die for – and we’re nothing close to foodies. And when we had finished our main course dishes, we asked la Senora if los postres were on the menu.

She dashed off to the kitchen, returning with two serving platters, one bearing a chocolate offering, the other a fruit custard. Her face brightened when we switched our initial order of two chocolates to one of each. This, after all, was about sampling. No sooner had we started into our desserts when she returned with two complimentary tumblers of brandy, topped with whipped cream and a dash of cinnamon.

Being vulnerable foreigners, our bill could have been just about anything our hosts decided to charge. Instead, it was decidedly less than we expected. With our payment, we offered the Kingston lapel pins that we always carry with us. “Ah, Canada,” one of them commented, before I had a chance to identifying our home and native land.

It was evidently important that we given a wallet-sized calendar in return. Our token gift exchange was topped off with kisses, handshakes, and warm good-byes. Without question, it’s a connection – no matter how brief – that will stand as one of the highlights of this three-month adventure.

This trip is reconfirming my sense that Logan and Zaffron have it right: how the world occurs to us is largely based in language. It’s also making me see that how we occur to the world is also largely based in language.