Living in Tongues

By Luc Sante
Published: May 12, 1996
http://www.nytimes.com/1996/05/12/magazine/living-in-tongues.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

The first thing you have to understand about my childhood is that it mostly took place in another language. I was raised speaking French, and did not begin learning English until I was nearly 7 years old. Even after that, French continued to be the language I spoke at home with my parents. (I still speak only French with them to this day.) This fact inevitably affects my recall and evocation of my childhood, since I am writing and primarily thinking in English. There are states of mind, even people and events, that seem inaccessible in English, since they are defined by the character of the language through which I perceived them. My second language has turned out to be my principal tool, my means for making a living, and it lies close to the core of my self-definition. My first language, however, is coiled underneath, governing a more primal realm.

French is a pipeline to my infant self, to its unguarded emotions and even to its preserved sensory impressions. I can, for example, use language as a measure of pain. If I stub my toe, I may profanely exclaim, in English, "Jesus!" But in agony, like when I am passing a kidney stone, I become uncharacteristically reverent, which is only possible for me in French. "Petit Jesus!" I will cry, in the tones of nursery religion. When I babble in the delirium of fever or talk aloud in my sleep, I have been told by others, I do so in French. But French is also capable of summoning up a world of lost pleasures. The same idea, expressed in different languages, can have vastly different psychological meanings. If, for example, someone says in English, "Let's go visit Mr. and Mrs. X," the concept is neutral, my reaction determined by what I think of Mr. and Mrs. X. On the other hand, if the suggestion is broached in French, "Allons dire bonjour," the phrasing affects me more powerfully than the specifics. "Dire bonjour" calls up a train of associations: for some reason I see my great-uncle Jules Stelmes, dead at least 30 years, with his fedora and his enormous white mustache and his soft dark eyes. I smell coffee and the raisin bread called cramique, hear the muffled bong of a parlor clock and the repetitive commonplaces of chitchat in the drawling accent of the Ardennes, people rolling their R's and leaning hard on their initial H's. I feel a rush-caned chair under me, see white curtains and starched tablecloths, can almost tap my feet on the cold ceramic tiles, perhaps the trompe-l'oeil pattern that covered the entire floor surface of my great-uncle Albert Remacle's farmhouse in Viville. I am sated, sleepy, bored out of my mind.

A large number of French words and turns of phrase come similarly equipped with dense associative catalogues, which may contain a ghostly impression of the first time I understood their use in speech. On the other hand, nearly all English words and phrases have a definite point of origin, which I can usually recall despite the overlaying patina acquired through years of use. Take that word "patina," for example. I don't remember how old I was when I first encountered it, but I know that I immediately linked it to the French patiner, meaning "to skate," so that its use calls up an image of a crosshatched pond surface.

Other English words have even more specific histories. There is "coffee," which I spotted on a can of Chock Full o'Nuts in our kitchen in Westfield, N.J., in 1960, when I was 6. I learned to spell it right away because I was impressed by its insistent doubling of F's and E's. The creative spellings reveled in by commerce in the early 1960's tended to be unhelpful. I didn't know what to make of "kleen" or "Sta-Prest," and it took me some time to appreciate the penguin's invitation on the glass door of the pharmacy: "Come in, it's KOOL inside." Then there was the local dry-cleaning establishment whose signs promised "one-hour Martinizing." I struggled for years to try and plumb that one, coming up with increasingly baroque scenarios.

When I started first grade, my first year of American schooling -- I had begun school in Belgium at 3 1/2, in a prekindergarten program that taught basic reading, writing and arithmetic -- I knew various words in English, but not how to construct a sentence. My first day remains vivid in its discomfort; I didn't know how to ask to go to the toilet. In addition, my mother had dressed me in a yellow pullover over a white shirt-collar dickey. It was a warm day, and the nun in charge suggested I take off my sweater. Since I didn't understand, she came over and yanked it off me, revealing my sleeveless undershirt.

As the weeks and months went on, I gradually learned how to speak and comprehend the new language, but between home and school, and school and home, I would pass through a sort of fugue state lasting an hour or two during which I could not use either language. For a while, my mother tackled this problem by tutoring me in French grammar and vocabulary as soon as I got home. It never crossed my parents' minds that we should begin employing English as the household tongue. For one thing, my parents' command of it was then rudimentary -- I was rapidly outpacing them -- and for another, they were never certain that our American sojourn was to be permanent. We were economic refugees, to use the current expression, victims of the collapse of the centuries-old textile industry centered in my native city of Verviers, but my parents' loyalty to their own country was unquestioned.

For several years our family kept up a sort of double role. We were immigrants whose income bobbed just above the poverty line, thanks to my father's capacity for working swing shifts and double shifts in factories (and thanks to the existence of factory jobs); but we were also tourists. As soon as we could afford a used car we began methodically visiting every state park, historical site and roadside attraction within a reasonable radius, taking hundreds of snapshots -- some to send to my grandparents, but many more that were intended for our delectation later on, when we were safely back in Belgium, recalling our fascinating hiatus in the land of large claims and vast distances. This was not to be, owing to family deaths and diverse obligations and uneasily shifting finances, but my parents kept up their faith in an eventual return, and a concomitant relative detachment from the American way of life.

Our household was a European outpost. My parents made earnest attempts to replicate Belgian food, a pursuit that involved long car trips to the then-rural middle of Staten Island to purchase leeks from Italian farmers, and expeditions to German butcher shops in Union and Irvington, N.J., to find a version of sirop -- a dense concentrate of pears and apples that is the color and texture of heavy-gauge motor oil and is spread on bread -- and various unsatisfactory substitutions. Neither cottage cheese nor ricotta could really pass for the farmer cheese called makee (sirop and makee together make caca de poule), but we had little choice in the matter, just as club soda had to stand in for eau gazeuse, since we lived in suburbs far from the seltzer belt, and parsley could only ever be a distant cousin to chervil. Desires for gooseberries and red currants, for familiar varieties of apricots and strawberries and potatoes and lettuce, for "real" bread and "real" cheese and "real" beer, simply had to be suppressed.

It wasn't easy constructing a version of Belgium in an apartment in a wooden house, with wood floors and Salvation Army furniture and sash windows and no cellar -- not that the situation didn't present certain advantages, like central heating, hot running water and numerous appliances, none of which my parents could afford in Belgium, where we had actually been more prosperous. "Belgium" became a mental construct, its principal constituent material being language. We spoke French, thought in French, prayed in French, dreamed in French. Relatives kept us supplied with a steady stream of books and periodicals, my father with his Marabout paperbacks, my mother with the magazine Femme d'Aujourd'hui (Woman of Today), and me with history books for kids and comic magazines, in particular Spirou, which I received every week. Comics occupy a place in Belgian popular culture roughly comparable to that held in America by rock-and-roll, and like every other Belgian child, I first aspired to become a cartoonist. The comics I produced were always in French and clearly set in Belgium. (I couldn't abide American superhero adventures, although I did love Mad and the Sunday funnies, which were more commensurate with a Belgian turn of mind.) Somehow, though, I decided I wanted to become a writer when I was 10, and having made that decision never thought of writing in any language but English. Even so I continued to conduct my internal monologues in French until late adolescence. For me the French language long corresponded to the soul, while English was the world.

My parents learned the language of their adopted country not without some difficulty. My father could draw on what remained of his high-school English, complete with pronunciation rules that wavered between Rhenish German and the BBC, but otherwise my parents had arrived equipped only with the 1945 edition of a conversation manual entitled "L'Anglais sans peine" (English Without Toil). This volume, published by the Assimil firm of Paris and Brussels, is sufficiently embedded in Francophone consciousness that you can still raise a snicker by quoting its opening phrase, "My tailor is rich." (English speakers, of course, will have no idea what you are talking about.) The book could not have been much help, especially since its vocabulary and references were attuned not to 1960's America but to Britain in the 1930's: "The Smiths had wired ahead the time of their arrival, and were expected for lunch at Fairview." This was also true of their other textbook, a reader called "Short Narratives" published in Ghent: "The proprietor of an eating-house ordered some bills to be printed for his window, with the words, 'Try our mutton pies!' " There were also some evening classes at the Y.M.C.A. in Summit, N.J., where we eventually settled, but I don't recall their lasting very long.

My parents' circle of acquaintances was almost entirely Belgian. My father had grown up in a tenement apartment in Verviers downstairs from the Dosquet family, whose children became his closest friends. The second daughter, Lucy, married an American G.I. after the war and they went to live in his native northern New Jersey. In 1953, her younger brother, Leopold (known as Pol), who was the same age as my father, followed suit with his wife, Jeanne. They were enthusiastic about the States and wrote rapturous letters. In 1957, when the prospects of my father's employer, an iron foundry that manufactured wool-carding machinery, were beginning to look grim, Jeanne Dosquet returned on a visit, and we all spent a week at the seaside resort of De Panne, at a socialist hostelry called the Hotel Germinal, where plans were made for our own emigration.

After our arrival, we briefly shared an apartment with the Dosquets, a tight and uncomfortable situation. They introduced my parents to such Belgians as they had met by chance, in particular the three Van Hemmelrijk sisters and their mother, bourgeois French-speaking Antwerpers who had somehow ended up in America in straitened circumstances. There were others, too: a couple from Dolhain, near Verviers, who worked as caretakers of an estate in Tuxedo Park, N.Y., and another French-speaking Fleming, whom I only ever knew as Marie-Louise "du facteur," because she had once been married to a mailman. She contributed another item to my burgeoning English vocabulary. One evening, while we were all watching television, Cesar Romero appeared on the screen: "Such a handsome man!" Marie-Louise exclaimed in English. To this day any appearance of the word "handsome" calls up the faint but unmistakable impression of Cesar Romero, in my mind's eye.

Even non-Belgian acquaintances tended to be foreigners whose grasp of the local tongue was as limited as ours. In Summit, our downstairs neighbors for a while were Hungarians named Szivros, who had fled their country after the doomed Budapest uprising of '56. Since we did not yet own a television, Mrs. Szivros would stand at the foot of the stairs of an evening and call up, "Missis, missis! 'Million Dollar Movie!' " Given the landscape, then, it is not surprising that my parents were somewhat at sea, knocked about among languages.

Sometimes, especially under pressure, my parents would reach for one tongue or the other and find themselves instead speaking Walloon, the native patois of southern Belgium. Walloon, now moribund, is usually identified as a dialect of French, whereas it is actually as old as the patois of Ile-de-France, which became the official language -- the 11th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in fact describes it as the northernmost Romance language. Like English, Walloon incorporates a substantial body of words that derives from Old Low German, so that it could, if unconsciously, seem like the middle ground between English and French. An often told story in my family related how Lucy Dosquet, when her G.I. suitor arrived looking like a slob, angrily ordered him in Walloon, "Louke-tu el mireu!" He understood perfectly, and studied his reflection.

Walloon was the household tongue of all the relatives of my grandparents' generation. Their parents in turn might have spoken nothing else; that no one bothered to establish rules for the writing of Walloon until the very beginning of this century, just in time for its decline in currency, partly accounts for the fact that nearly everyone in the family tree before my grandparents' time was illiterate. Walloon enjoyed a brief literary flowering that started in the 1890's but was largely killed off by World War I. My paternal grandfather acted in the Walloon theater in Verviers during its heyday, and my father followed in his footsteps after World War II, but by then it had largely become an exercise in nostalgia. Today, only old people still speak Walloon, and poor ones at that, since its use is considered rude by merchants, businessmen and the middle class in general, and young people simply don't care. Young Walloons nowadays have been formed by television, movies and pop music, much of it emanating from France, and they have seemingly acquired the Parisian accent en bloc.

I was raised in a Belgian bubble, though, which means, among other things, that my speech is marked by the old Verviers Walloon accent, which causes observant Belgians some confusion. They can't reconcile that accent with the American flavor that has inevitably crept in, nor with my age and apparent class status. My French speech is also peppered with archaisms; I find myself unconsciously saying, for example, "auto" instead of "voiture" to mean "car," or "illustre" instead of "revue" to mean "magazine," expressions redolent of the 30's and 40's, if not earlier.

The sound of Walloon, on those rare occasions when I hear it, affects me emotionally with even more force than French does. Hearing, as I did a few months ago, an old man simply greeting his friend by saying, "Bodjou, Djosef," can move me nearly to tears. But, of course, I hear much more than just "Hiya, Joe" -- I hear a ghostly echo of my maternal grandfather greeting his older brother, Joseph Nandrin, for one thing, and I also hear the table talk of countless generations of workers and farmers and their wives, not that I particularly wish to subscribe to notions of collective ethnic memory. Walloon is a good-humored, long-suffering language of the poor, naturally epigrammatic, ideal for both choleric fervor and calm reflection, wry and often psychologically acute -- reminiscent in some ways of Scottish and in some ways of Yiddish. Walloon is often my language of choice when, for instance, I am sizing up people at a party, but I have no one to speak it with at home. (My wife hails from Akron, Ohio.) I sometimes boast that, among the seven million people in New York City, I am the only Walloon speaker, which may or may not be true.

My three languages revolve around and inform one another. I live in an English-speaking world, of course, and for months on end I may speak nothing else. I do talk with my parents once a week by phone, but over the years we have developed a family dialect that is so motley it amounts to a Creole. I cannot snap back and forth between languages with ease, but need to be surrounded by French for several days before I can properly recover its rhythm, and so recover my idiomatic vocabulary -- a way of thinking rather than just a set of words -- and not merely translate English idioms. This means that I am never completely present at any given moment, since different aspects of my self are contained in different rooms of language, and a complicated apparatus of air locks prevents the doors from being flung open all at once. Still, there are subterranean correspondences between the linguistic domains that keep them from stagnating. The classical order of French, the Latin-Germanic dialectic of English and the onomatopoeic-peasant lucidity of Walloon work on one another critically, help enhance precision and reduce cant.

I like to think that this system helps fortify me in areas beyond the merely linguistic. I am not rootless but multiply rooted. This makes it impossible for me to fence off a plot of the world and decide that everyone dwelling outside those boundaries is "other." I am grateful to the accidents of my displaced upbringing, which taught me several kinds of irony. Ethnically, I am about as homogenous as it is possible to be: aside from one great-grandmother who came from Luxembourg, my gene pool derives entirely from an area smaller than the five boroughs of New York City. I was born in the same town as every one of my Sante forebears at least as far back as the mid-16th century, which is as far back as the records go. Having been transplanted from my native soil, though, and having had to construct an identity in response to a double set of demands, one from my background and one from my environment, I have become permanently "other." The choice I am faced with is simple: either I am at home everywhere or I am nowhere at all; either I realize my ties to human beings of every race and nationality or I will die, asphyxiated by the vacuum. Mere tolerance is idle and useless -- if I can't recognize myself in others, no matter how remote in origin or behavior they might appear, I might as well declare war upon myself.

On Intercultural Communication

"How shall I talk of the sea to a frog if it has never left its pond? How shall I talk of the frost to a bird of the summer land if it has never left the place of its birth? How shall I talk of life to a sage if he is a prisoner of his doctrine?"

Chung Tsu, 4th Century B.C.

Teaching?

"If a doctor, lawyer, or dentist have forty people in his office at one time, all of whom had different needs, and some of them whom didn't want to be there and were causing trouble, and the doctor, lawyer or dentist, without assistance, had to treat them all with professional excellence for nine months, then he might have some conception of the classroom teacher's job."

Donald D. Quinn

Crna Macka, Beli Macor

Crna Macka, Beli Macor (Black Cat, White Cat), an awesome comedy by Emir Kusturica with lovely soundtracks by Goran Bregovic! Genuine laughter is guaranteed :D

Bir Can Baba Klasigi Daha!

Can Yücel`in Mal Beyanı

1-Avşa adasında üç daire, dört üçgen, beş dikdörtgen
2-Gökyüzünde bi bulut
3-Bitlis'te beş minare
4-Biri yazlık, biri kışlık iki platonik sevgili
5-Büro mobilyası ve çelik kapı üreten bir fabrikanın öğle üzeri yaslanıp sigara içilen beyaz duvarı
6-Islıkla da çalınabilen dört anonim türkü
7-Palandöken'de bir palan, iki döken
8-Kastamonu'da üç kasto
9-Üç fay hattı
10-Bir çarşamba, iki perşembe, üç cuma
11-Dünyada mekan
12-Ahirette iman
13-Denizde kum
14-Uzayda yerçekimsizlik
15-Bi çuval gazoz kapağı
16-Bi kibrit kutusu sigara izmariti
17-On sekiz saç biti
18-Biri İngilizce 6 adet küfür
19-Yirmi tane boş naylon poşet
20-Sevenlerin kalbinde kurulmuş bir taht
21-Bi sürü saç sakal, kil, tüy, yün
22-Üç ayri parkta üç ayrı belediyeye ait üç ayrı banka reklamlı bank
23-Bi ayakkabı çekeceği
24-İki büyük taş kütlesi
25-Bir adet ağaç gölgesi
26-Üç kuş kanadı sesi
27-Bi sürü kedi köpek
28-Bi marmara denizi
29-Camına yaslanıp seyredilen iki piliç çevirmeci
30-Her akşam karıştırılan dört çöp bidonu
31-Çalıp çalıp kaçılan beş melodili apartman zili
32-Nakit 15 kuruş
33-Anne babadan kalma yarısı yasanmış bi ömür

Çok içten, çok samimi...

Bir eşi olmalı insanın
Rüzgar onun kokusunu getirmeli,
Yağmur onun sesini.
Akşam... onu görecek diye, pırpır etmeli yüreği,
Ayakları birbirine dolaşmalı heyecandan, eve dönerken,
Cennetten köşe almışçasına
Sevdiği, sakındığı, bakmaya kıyamadığı...
Her bir hücresinden aşkın fışkırdığı,
Çölde okyanusu yaşadığı bir eşi olmalı insanın!!!
Ben seni ölene dek seveceğim boş laf!!!
Ben seni sevdikçe ölmeyeceğim...

Can Yücel

Fantastic Mr. Fox

Fantastic Mr. Fox (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0432283/)

Welcome to the fantastic world of Mr. Fox: his life is fantastic, his wife is fantastic, and his neighbors, not so fantastic!

LOL :)

"To do is to be" - Descartes

"To be is to do" - Voltaire

"Do be do be do" - Frank Sinatra

Happy holidays!

Mary and Max

Mary and Max (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0978762/)

I must admit that I was a bit prejudicial about it until I found myself almost in tears at the very end :')

See it!

Persepolis (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0808417/)

I am quite impressed with the narrative style of Marjane Satrapi and such powerful use of images in an animated movie...

A FAIRY TALE

Once upon a time, and not so very long ago, there lived a man whose name was LIANGWIDJ T. CHING. He had a beautiful daughter called GRAMMARELLA.

LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was very proud of his daughter and he talked about her wherever he went. They were not rich; GRAMMARELLA and her faithful servant, TRANSLATIO, worked very hard. But they were happy. Then everything changed...

People began to recognize LIANGWIDJ T. CHING’s talents. He became a rich man and an eligible marriage prospect. Soon LIANGWIDJ T. CHING married a famous lady whose name was LYN GUISTICS. She had two proud and spoilt daughters called PSYCHO and SOCIO.

After the wedding, things changed dramatically. GRAMMARELLA still did all the work in the household, but she was never allowed to appear in public and LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was forbidden to speak about her. (As for TRANSLATIO, he was locked in the coal shed and all but forgotten). But LIANGWIDJ T. CHING was besotted by the glamor of the lady he had married that he willingly went along with everything.

He gladly paid out for PSYCHO and SOCIO to chase after every new fad and fashion that came on the market. Every fortune-hunter in the land sought his house.

One day the King announced that there would be a grand Communicative Ball. Everyone was invited. The theme of the ball was to be “Creativity”. PSYCHO and SOCIO wanted to be the finest dressed people at the ball, but they were not creative enough to make their own clothes. So poor GRAMMARELLA had to cut and sew their new dresses.

She had no fine clothes of her own, however. She was left alone in her old and shabby clothes, while everyone else went off to the Communicative Ball...

THE END

By TOM HUTCHINSON

NOTE: I don't remember how and where I exactly got this text from, but it made a really nice wrap up at the end of an "Approaches, Methods, and Techniques in ELT" presentation when I was a grad student at METU, Ankara.

ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF

Dearest creature in creation,
Study English pronunciation.
I will teach you in my verse
Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
So shall I! Oh hear my prayer.

Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
Dies and diet, lord and word,
Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
(Mind the latter, how it's written.)
Now I surely will not plague you
With such words as plaque and ague.
But be careful how you speak:
Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
Cloven, oven, how and low,
Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.

Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
Exiles, similes, and reviles;
Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
Solar, mica, war and far;
One, anemone, Balmoral,
Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
Scene, Melpomene, mankind.

Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
Blood and flood are not like food,
Nor is mould like should and would.
Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
Toward, to forward, to reward.
And your pronunciation's OK
When you correctly say croquet,
Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
Friend and fiend, alive and live.

Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
And enamour rhyme with hammer.
River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
Doll and roll and some and home.
Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
Neither does devour with clangour.
Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
Shoes, goes, does. Now first say finger,
And then singer, ginger, linger,
Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.

Query does not rhyme with very,
Nor does fury sound like bury.
Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
Though the differences seem little,
We say actual but victual.
Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
Dull, bull, and George ate late.
Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
Science, conscience, scientific.

Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
We say hallowed, but allowed,
People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
Mark the differences, moreover,
Between mover, cover, clover;
Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
Chalice, but police and lice;
Camel, constable, unstable,
Principle, disciple, label.

Petal, panel, and canal,
Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
Senator, spectator, mayor.
Tour, but our and succour, four.
Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
Sea, idea, Korea, area,
Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
Doctrine, turpentine, marine.

Compare alien with Italian,
Dandelion and battalion.
Sally with ally, yea, ye,
Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
Say aver, but ever, fever,
Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
Heron, granary, canary.
Crevice and device and aerie.

Face, but preface, not efface.
Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
Ear, but earn and wear and tear
Do not rhyme with here but ere.
Seven is right, but so is even,
Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.

Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
Is a paling stout and spikey?
Won't it make you lose your wits,
Writing groats and saying grits?
It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
Islington and Isle of Wight,
Housewife, verdict and indict.

Finally, which rhymes with enough --
Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
Hiccough has the sound of cup.
My advice is to give up!!!

Written by Dr. Gerald Nolst Trenite (1870-1946), a Dutch observer of English.

*Many thanks to my friend Alvaro A Fernandez for the update on the author's identification ;)

Hemingway's best and shortest story:

"For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Yes, only six words... Great, isn't it?

X: A Fabulous Child's Story by Lois Gould © 1972

Once upon a time, a baby named X was born. This baby was named X so that nobody could tell whether it was a boy or a girl. Its parents could tell, of course, but they couldn't tell anybody else. They couldn't even tell Baby X, at first.

You see, it was all part of a very important Secret Scientific Xperiment, known officially as Project Baby X. The smartest scientists had set up this Xperiment at a cost of Xactly 23 billion dollars and 72 cents, which might seem like a lot for just one baby, even a very important Xperimental baby. But when you remember the prices of things like strained carrots and stuffed bunnies, and popcorn for the movies and booster shots for camp, let alone 28 shiny quarters from the tooth fairy, you begin to see how it adds up.

Also, long before Baby X was born, all those scientists had to be paid to work out the details of the Xperiment, and to write the Official Instruction Manual for Baby X's parents and, most important of all, to find the right set of parents to bring up Baby X. These parents had to be selected very carefully. Thousands of volunteers had to take thousands of tests and answer thousands of tricky questions. Almost everybody failed because, it turned out, almost everybody really wanted either a baby boy or a baby girl, and not Baby X at all. Also, almost everybody was afraid that a Baby X would be a lot more trouble than a boy or a girl. (They were probably right, the scientists admitted, but Baby X needed parents who wouldn't mind the Xtra trouble.)

There were families with grandparents named Milton and Agatha, who didn't see why a baby couldn't be named Milton or Agatha instead of X, even if it was an X. There were families with aunts who insisted on knitting tiny dresses and uncles who insisted on sending tiny baseball mitts. Worst of all, there were families that already had other children who couldn't be trusted to keep the secret. Certainly not if they knew the secret was worth 23 billion dollars and 72 cents -- and all you had to do was take one little peek at Baby X in the bathtub to know if it was a boy or a girl.

But, finally, the scientists found the Joneses, who really wanted to raise an X more than any other kind of baby -- no matter how much trouble it would be. Ms. and Mr. Jones had to promise they would take equal turns caring for X, and feeding it, and singing it lullabies. And they had to promise never to hire any baby-sitters. The government scientists knew perfectly well that a baby-sitter would probably peek at X in the bathtub, too.

The day the Joneses brought their baby home, lots of friends and relatives came over to see it. None of them knew about the secret Xperiment, though. So the first thing they asked was what kind of a baby X was. When the Joneses smiled and said, "It's an X!" nobody knew what to say. They couldn't say, "Look at her cute little dimples!" And they couldn't say, "Look at his husky little biceps!" And they couldn't even say just plain "kitchy-coo." In fact, they all thought the Joneses were playing some kind of rude joke.

But, of course, the Joneses were not joking. "It's an X" was absolutely all they would say. And that made the friends and relatives very angry. The relatives all felt embarrassed about having an X in the family. "People will think there's something wrong with it!" some of them whispered. "There is something wrong with it!" others whispered back.

"Nonsense!" the Joneses told them all cheerfully. "What could possibly be wrong with this perfectly adorable X?"

Nobody could answer that, except Baby X, who had just finished its bottle. Baby X's answer was a loud, satisfied burp.

Clearly, nothing at all was wrong. Nevertheless, none of the relatives felt comfortable about buying a present for a Baby X. The cousins who sent the baby a tiny football helmet would not come and visit any more. And the neighbors who sent a pink-flowered romper suit pulled their shades down when the Joneses passed their house.

The Official Instruction Manual had warned the new parents that this would happen, so they didn't fret about it. Besides, they were too busy with Baby X and the hundreds of different Xercises for treating it properly.

Ms. And Mr. Jones had to ve Xtra careful about how they played with little X. They knew that if they kept bouncing it up in the air and saying how strong and active it was, they'd be treating it more like a boy than an X. But if all they did was cuddle it and kiss it and tell it how sweet and dainty it was, they'd be treating it more like a girl than an X.

On page 1,654 of the Official Instruction Manual, the scientists prescribed: "plenty of bouncing and plenty of cuddling, both. X ought to be strong and sweet and active. Forget about dainty altogether."

Meanwhile, the Joneses were worrying about other problems. Toys, for instance. And clothes. On his first shopping trip, Mr. Jones told the store clerk, "I need some clothes and toys for my new baby." The clerk smiles and said, "Well, now, is it a boy or a girl?" "It's an X," Mr. Jones said, smiling back. But the clerk got all red in the face and said huffily, "In that case, I'm afraid I can't help you, sir." So Mr. Jones wandered helplessly up and down the aisles trying to find what X needed. But everything in the store was piled up in sections marked "Boys" or "Girls." There were "Boys' Pajamas" and "Girls' Underwear" and "Boys' Fire Engines" and "Girls' Housekeeping Sets." Mr. Jones consulted page 2,326 of the Official Instruction Manual. "Buy plenty of everything!" it said firmly.

So they bought plenty of sturdy blue pajamas in the Boys' Department and cheerful flowered underwear in the Girls' Department. And they bought all kinds of toys. A boy doll that made pee-pee and cried, "Pa-Pa." And a girl doll that talked in three languages and said, "I am the Pres-I-dent of Gen-er-al Mo-tors." They also bought a storybook about a brave princess who rescued a handsome prince from his ivory tower, and another one about a sister and brother who grew up to be a baseball star and a ballet star, and you had to guess which was which.

The head scientists of Project Baby X checked all their purchases and told them to keep up the good work. They also reminded the Joneses to see page 4,629 of the Manual, where it said, "Never make Baby X feel embarrassed or ashamed about what it wants to play with. And if X gets dirty climbing rocks, never say 'Nice little Xes don't get dirty climbing rocks.' "

Likewise, it said, "If X falls down and cries, never say 'Brave little Xes don't cry.' Because, of course, nice little Xes do get dirty, and brave little Xes do cry. No matter how dirty X gets, or how hard it cries, don't worry. It's all part of the Xperiment."

Whenever the Joneses pushed Baby X's stroller in the park, smiling strangers would come over and coo: "Is that a boy or a girl?" The Joneses would smile back and say, "It's an X." The strangers would stop smiling then, and often snarl something nasty - as if the Joneses had snarled at them.

By the time X grew big enough to play with other children, the Joneses' troubles had grown bigger, too. Once a little girl grabbed X's shovel in the sandbox, and zonked X on the head with it. "Now, now, Tracy," the little girl's mother began to scold, "little girls mustn't hit little -" and she turned to ask X, "Are you a little boy or a little girl, dear?"

Mr. Jones, who was sitting near the sandbox, held his breath and crossed his fingers.

X smiled politely at the lady, even though X's head had never been zonked so hard in its life. "I'm a little X," X replied.

"You're a what?" the lady exclaimed angrily. "You're a little b-r-a-t, you mean!"

"But little girls mustn't hit little Xes, either!" said X, retrieving the shovel with another polite smile. "What good does hitting do, anyway?"

X's father, who was still holding his breathe, finally let it out, uncrossed his fingers, and grinned back at X.

And at their next secret Project Baby X meeting, the scientist grinned, too. Baby X was doing fine.

But then ir was time for X ro start school. The Joneses were really worried about this, because school was even more full of rules fro boys and girls, and there were no rules for Xes. The teacher would tell boys to form one line, and girls to form another line. There would be boys' games and girls' games, and boys' secrets and girls' secrets. The school library would have a list of recommended books for girls, and a different list of recommended books for boys. There would even be a bathroom marked BOYS and another one marked GIRLS. Pretty soon boys and girls would hardly talk to each other. What would happen to poor little X?

The Joneses spent weeks consulting their Instruction Manual (there were 249½ pages of advice under "First Day of School"), and attending urgent special conferences with the smart scientists of Project Baby X.

The scientists had to make sure that X's mother had taught X how to throw and catch a ball properly, and that X's father had been sure to teach X what to serve at a doll's tea party. X gad to know how to shoot marbles and how to jump rope and, most of all, what to say when the Other Children asked whether X was a Boy or a Girl.

Finally, X was ready. The Joneses helped X button on a nice new pair of red-and-white checked overalls, and sharpened six pencils for X's nice new pencil box, and marked X's name clearly on all the books in its nice new bookbag. X brushed its teeth and combed its hair, which just about covered its ears, and remembered to put a napkin in its lunch box.

The Joneses had asked X's teacher if the class could line up alphabetically, instead of forming separate lines for boys and girls. And they had asked if X could use the principal's bathroom, because it wasn't marked anything except BATHROOM. X's teacher promised to take care of all those problems. But nobody could help X with the biggest problem of all - Other Children.

Nobody in X's class had ever known an X before. What would they think? How would X make friends?

You couldn't tell what X was by studying its clothes - overalls don't even button right-to-left, like girls' clothes, or left-to-right, like boys' clothes. And you couldn't guess whether X had a girl's short haircut or a boy's long haircut. And it was very hard to tell by the games X liked to play. Either X played ball very well for a girl, or else X played house very well for a boy.

Some of the children tried to find out by asking X tricky questions, like "Who's your favoritesports star?" That was easy. X had two favorite sports stars: a girl jockey named Robyn Smith and a boy archery champion named Robin Hood. Then they asked, "What's your favorite TV program?" And that was even easier. X's favorite TV program was "Lassie," which stars a girl dog played by a boy dog.

When X said that its favorite toy was a doll, everyone decided that X must be a girl. But then X said the doll was really a robot, and that X had computerized it and that it was programmed to bake fudge brownies and the clean up in the kitchen. After X told them that, the other children gave up guessing what X was. All they knew was they'd sure like to see X's doll.

After school, X wanted to play with the other children. "How about shooting some baskets in the gym?" X asked the girls. But all they did was make faces and giggle behind X's back.

"How about weaving some baskets in the arts and crafts room?" X asked the boys. But they all made faces and giggled behind X's back, too.

That night, Ms. And Mr. Jones asked X how things had gone at school. X told them sadly that the lessons were okay, but otherwise school was a terrible place for an X. It seemed as if Other Children would never want an X for a friend.

Once more, the Joneses reached for their Instruction Manual. Under "Other Children." they found the following message: "What did you Xpect? Other Children have to obey all the silly boy-girl rules, because their parents taught them to. Lucky X - you don't have to stick to the rules at all! All you have to do is be yourself. P.S. We're not saying it'll be easy."

X liked being itself But X cried a lot that night, partly because it felt afraid. So X's father held X tight, and cuddled it, and couldn't help crying a little, too. And X's mother cheered them both up by reading an Xciting story about an enchanted prince called Sleeping Handsome, who woke up when Princess Charming kissed him.

The next morning, they all felt much better, and little X went back to school with a brave smile and a clean pair of red-and-white checked overalls.

There was a seven-letter-word spelling bee in class that day. And a seven-lap boys' relay race in the gym. And a seven-layer-cake baking contest in the girls' kitchen corner. X won the spelling bee. X also won the relay race. And X almost won the baking contest, except it forgot to light the oven. Which only proves that nobody's perfect.

One of the Other Children noticed something else, too. He said: "Winning or losing doesn't seem to count to X. X seems to have fun being good at boys' skills and girls' skills."

"Come to think of it," said another one of the Other Children, "maybe X is having twice as much fun as we are!"

So after school that day, the girl who beat X at the baking contest gave X a big slice of her prizewinning cake. And the boy X beat in the relay race asked X to race him home.

From then on, some really funny things began to happen. Susie, who sat next to X in class, suddenly refused to wear pink dresses to school any more. She insisted on wearing red-and-white checked overalls-just like X's. Overalls, she told her parents, were much better for climbing monkey bars.

Then Jim, the class football nut, started wheeling his little sister's doll carriage around the football field. He'd put on his entire football uniform, except for the helmet. Then he'd put the helmet in the carriage, lovingly tucked under an old set of shoulder pads. Then he'd start jogging around the field, pushing the carriage and singing "Rockabye Baby" to his football helmet. He told his family that X did the same thing, so it must be okay. After all, X was now the team's star quarterback.

Susie's parents were horrified by her behavior, and Jim's parents were worried sick about his. But the worst came when the twins, Joe and Peggy, decided to share everything with each other. Peggy used Joe's hockey skates, and his microscope, and took half his newspaper route. Joe used Peggy's needlepoint and her cookbooks, and took two of her three baby-sitting jobs. Peggy started to run the lawn mower, and Joe started running the vacuum cleaner.

Their parents weren't one bit pleased with Peggy's wonderful biology experiments, or with Joe's terrific needlepoint pillows. They didn't care that Peggy mowed the lawn better, and that Joe vacuumed the carpet better. In fact, they were furious. It's all that little X's fault, they agreed. Just because X doesn't know what it is, or what it's supposed to be, it wants to get everybody else mixed up, too!

Peggy and Joe were forbidden to play with X any more. So was Susie, and then Jim, and then all the Other Children. But it was too late; the Other Children stayed mixed up and happy and free, and refused to go back to the way they'd been before X.

Finally, Joe and Peggy's parents decided to call an emergency meeting of the school's Parent's Association, to discuss "The X Problem." They sent a report to the principal stating that X was a "disruptive influence." They demanded immediate action. The Joneses, they said, should be forced to tell whether X was a boy or a girl. And then X should be forced to behave like whichever it was. If the Joneses refused to tell, the Parents' Association said, then X must take an Xamination. The school psychiatrist must Xamine it physically and mentally, and issue a full report. If X's test showed it was a boy, it would have to obey all the boys' rules. If it proved to be a girl, X would have to obey all the girls' rules.

And if X turned out to be some kind of mixed-up misfit, then X should be Xpelled from the school. Immediately!

The principal was very upset. Disruptive influence? Mixed-up misfit? But X was an Xcellent student. All the teachers said it was a delight to have X in their classes. X was president of the student council. X had won first prize in the talent show, and second prize in the art show, and honorable mention in the science fair, and six athletic events on field day, including the potato race.

Nevertheless, insisted the Parents' Association, X is a Problem Child. X is the Biggest Problem Child we have ever seen!

So the principal reluctantly notified X's parents that numerous complaints about X's behavior had come to the school's attention. And that after the psychiatrist's Xamination, the school would decide what to do about X.

The Joneses reported this at once to the scientists, who referred them to page 85,759 of the Instruction Manual. "Sooner or later," it said, "X will have to be Xamined by a psychiatrist. This may be the only way any of us will know for sure whether X is mixed up-or whether everyone else is."

The night before X was to be Xamined, the Joneses tried not to let X see how worried they were. "What if-?" Mr. Jones would say. And Ms. Jones would reply, "No use worrying." Then a few minutes later, Ms. Jones would say, "What if-?" and Mr. Jones would reply, "No use worrying."

X just smiled at them both, and hugged them hard and didn't say much of anything. X was thinking, What if-? And then X thought: No use worrying.

At Xactly 9 o'clock the next day, X reported to the school psychiatrist's office. The principal, along with a committee from the Parents' Association, X's teacher, X's classmates, and Ms. and Mr. Jones, waited in the hall outside. Nobody knew the details of the tests X was to be given, but everybody knew they'd be very hard, and that they'd reveal Xactly what everyone wanted to know about X, but were afraid to ask.

It was terribly quiet in the hall. Almost spooky. Once in a while, they would hear a strange noise inside the room. There were buzzes. And a beep or two. And several bells. An occasional light would flash under the door. The Joneses thought it was a white light, but the principal thought it was blue. Two or three children swore it was either yellow or green. And the Parents' Committee missed it completely.

Through it all, you could hear the psychiatrist's low voice, asking hundreds of questions, and X's higher voice, answering hundreds of answers.

The whole thing took so long that everyone knew it must be the most complete Xamination anyone had ever had to take. Poor X, the Joneses thought. Serves X right, the Parents' Committee thought. I wouldn't like to be in X's overalls right now, the children thought.

At last, the door opened. Everyone crowded around to hear the results. X didn't look any different; in fact, X was smiling. But the psychiatrist looked terrible. He looked as if he was crying! "What happened?" everyone began shouting. Had X done something disgraceful? "I wouldn't be a bit surprised!" muttered Peggy and Joe 5 parents. "Did X flunk the whole test?" cried Susie's parents. "Or just the most important part?" yelled Jim's parents.

"Oh, dear," sighed Mr. Jones.

"Oh, dear," sighed Ms. Jones.

"Sssh," ssshed the principal. "The psychiatrist is trying to speak."

Wiping his eyes and clearing his throat, the psychiatrist began, in a hoarse whisper. "In my opinion," he whispered -- you could tell he must be very upset --"in my opinion, young X here-"

"Yes? Yes?" shouted a parent impatiently.

"Sssh!" ssshed the principal.

"Young Sssh here, I mean young X," said the doctor, frowning, is Just about-"

"Just about what? Let's have it!" shouted another parent.

"...... just about the least mixed-up child I've ever Xamined!" said the psychiatrist.

"Yay for X!" yelled one of the children. And then the others began yelling, too. Clapping and cheering and jumping up and down.

"SSSH!" SSShed the principal, but nobody did.

The Parents' Committee was angry and bewildered. How could X have passed the whole Xamination? Didn't' X have an identity problem? Wasn't X mixed up at all? Wasn't X any kind of a misfit? How could it not be, when it didn't even know what it was? And why was the psychiatrist crying?

Actually, he had stopped crying and was smiling politely through his tears. "Don't you see?" he said. "I'm crying because it's wonderful! X has absolutely no identity problem! X isn't one bit mixed up! As for being a misfit -- ridiculous! X knows perfectly well what it is! Don't you, X?" The doctor winked. X winked back.

"But what is X?" shrieked Peggy and Joe's parents. "We still want to know what it is!"

"Ah, yes," said the doctor, winking again. "Well, don't worry. You'll all know one of these days. And you won't need me to tell you."

"What? What does he mean?" some of the parents grumbled suspiciously.

Susie and Peggy and Joe all answered at once. "He means that by the time X's sex matters, it won't be a secret any more!"

With that, the doctor began to push through the crowd toward X's parents. "How do you do," he said, somewhat stiffly. And then he reached out to hug them both. "If I ever have an X of my own," he whispered, "I sure hope you'll lend me your instruction manual."

Needless to say, the Joneses were very happy. The Project Baby X scientists were rather pleased, too. So were Susie, Jim, Peggy, Joe and all the Other Children. The Parents' Association wasn't, but they had promised to accept the psychiatrist's report, and not make any more trouble. They even invited Ms. and Mr. Jones to become honorary members, which they did.

Later that day, all X's friends put on their red-and-white checked overalls and went over to see X. They found X in the back yard, playing with a very tiny baby that none of them had ever seen before. The baby was wearing very tiny red-and-white checked overalls.

"How do you like our new baby?" X asked the Other Children proudly.

"It's got cute dimples," said Jim.

"It's got husky biceps, too," said Susie.

"What kind of baby is it?" asked Joe and Peggy.

X frowned at them. "Can't you tell?" Then X broke into a big, mischievous grin. "It's a Y!"

NOTE: Many thanks to Dr. Kelly Wissman (RDG610 Literacy in Society, Fall 2008) who has given me a chance to gain a deeper understanding of gender issues...

ANGUISH LANGUISH...Read it aloud...

Heresy ladle furry starry tailing udder warts, warts welcher altar girdle deferment firmer once inner regional virgin:

Wants pawn term dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage honor itch offer lodge, dock florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, and fur disk raison pimple colder, "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut."

Wan moaning Ladle Rat Rotten Hut's murder colder inset, "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter and shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groin-murder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily doily inner florist! And yonder no sorghum-stenches, don't stopper torque wet strainers!"

"Hoe cake, Murder," resplendent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, and tickle ladle basking and stuttered oft.

Honor wrote tutor cordage offer groin-murder, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut mitten anomalous woof. "Wail, wail, wail!" set wicket woof. "Evanescent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut! Wares are putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?"

"Armor goring tumor groin-murder's," reprisal ladle gull. "Grammar seeking bet. Armor tickling arson burden barter and shirker cockles."

"O, hoe! Heifer gnats woke," setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, "Oil tickle shirt court tutor cordage offer groin-murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter. Am den...O bore!"

Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, ants whinny retched a cordage offer groin-murder, picked inner widow, and sore debtor pore oil worming lion inner bet. Inner flesh, disk abdominal woof lipped honor bet, punched honor pore oil worming, and garbled erupt. Den disk ratchet a monal pot honor groin-murder's nut cup and gnat-gun, and curdled ape inner bet.

Inner ladle wile Ladle Rat Rotten Hut a raft attar cordage and ranker dough ball. "Comb ink," setter wicket woof disgracing is verse. Ladle Rat Rotten Hut entity bet rum and stud buyer groin-murder's bet.

"O, Grammar!" crater ladle gull historically. "Water bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!"

"Battered lucky chew whiff, sweat hard," setter bloat Thursday woof wet a wicket small honors phase.

"O, Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomalous prognosis!"

"Battered small chew whiff, Toiling," whiskered dole woof, and mouse worse waddling.

"O, Grammar, water bag mouser gut! A nervous sore suture bag mouse!" Daze worry on-forger-nut-ladle dot ladle gulls' lost warts. Oil offer sodden, caking offers carvers, and sprinkling otter bet, disk hoard-hoarded woof lipped own pore Ladel Rat Rotten Hut and garbled erupt.

Mural: Yonder nor sorghum-stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.

See http://www.crockford.com/wrrrld/anguish.html for more information.

NOTE: My warmest greetings to Prof. Ernest Scatton who introduced this great piece in ALIN552, Spring 2008...

Amcasının yeğeni...!!!

Aramıza hoşgeldin Ekin İlter Varlı :) Ailemizin en genç üyesi oluşunun tarif edilemez sevincini yaşıyoruz ve tüm sevdiklerimizle bu eşsiz mutluluğu paylaşıyoruz!!! Henüz tanışamadık yüzyüze ama umarım çok uzun sürmez...

Gözlerinden öperim,

Amcan Ozan

PS: Hahaha, vay be sırf bu titri kullanabilmek için bu mesajı yazdım desem :))) Ozan Amca, heheeeyyttt!!!

Uyarı!

Çalma listesindeki parçaların çoğu 30 saniye ile sınırlı, araştırdım soruşturdum, IMEEM'e (bu hizmeti sağlayan site) dava açmışlar... Sebebiyse gayet makul "telif hakları" mevzuu. Artık sanatçılar ya da yapımcı şirketler izin verdikçe parçalar teker teker tam sürelerine kavuşacaklar, mış, yani öyle olacak diye umuyoruz :))) İnandım mı? Kat'iyetle hayır!!!

Introduction

Ozan Varli is currently a full time graduate student and a Fulbright Scholar in TESOL (Teaching English to the Speakers of Other Languages) program, Educational Theory and Practice Department, at State University of New York at Albany.

His research interests are CALL (Computer Assisted Language Learning), CMC (Computer Mediated Communication), Instructional Technology, Curriculum Development, and Global Education.