on foreign languages and russian roulette

just hear me out

I know this week is a weird one in the States, what with the official start of let's revisit this after the holidays season, so ahead of the long weekend and tense family gatherings, I wanted to spend some time discussing one of the subjects most near and dear to my heart, and one that you can easily bring up at Thanksgiving dinner if you're struggling for conversation starters: language.

Something fun about me is that for a long time, I didn't realize Russian roulette was any different from plain old roulette, so my freshman year of college, when my dorm was hosting a casino night, I said, very casually, very innocently, very seriously, "I hope we get to play Russian roulette."

Which is how I found out they were two — very — different games. I used my usual English is my second language excuse, which only somewhat mollified my roommates. It's the same excuse whenever my preposition anxiety gets the best of me and I pick wrong between "on" and "in."

Alas.

I understand, is what I mean to say, that language is a tricky thing. Languages, plural, even more so. Recently I've been trying to learn Catalan, because I'm in Barcelona for the time being and it feels rude not to at least try, and also because my cheeks are never as flushed as when I'm checking out at the grocery store, understanding every fifth word and even that, solely by the magic of context and unblinking concentration, before the cashier sighs disappointedly and switches to Spanish.

There are a lot of Americans in Barcelona. Like. A lot. On any given day, and particularly if I'm out and about in a couple of specific neighborhoods, I might hear more American English being spoken than Spanish or Catalan. When I was in Mexico City this summer, the same thing happened — every day, I would witness someone sauntering into a coffee shop or restaurant or consignment store and without even attempting Spanish, roll straight into English, confident that it would be understood and answered in kind by the store employee. I found this interesting.