The Building of Language

When I first moved into my building about 15 years ago, my condo building was rather empty and dull. Cultured is hardly the word I would use to describe my family; Chinese is a better word because that’s the only type of people my parents would ever talk to. But as time soon passed we heard different languages throughout my condo as different families began moving in. My mom was bewildered and wondered why she could not understand them and failed to realize that they were not speaking her native language. Soon enough as weeks passed no language was easily deciphered as we heard many different languages being spoken at once when we stepped outside of our condo building. With time my mother became accustomed to these “outsiders” as she would call them due to the fact that there were hospitable “outsiders” contrary to her beliefs. Our neighbors would come down to our home and bring in fruits and other delicacies. As my mom attempted to communicate to them she resorted to speaking her native tongue and our neighbor also resorted to their native tongue as well. So we ended up with my mother speaking Chinese and my neighbor speaking what I believe was Korean. The end result is a screaming and laughing contest with one person trying to speak over the other person. It is interesting how language works, even though neither party understands a word that is being said, they continue screaming as if they did understand. Perhaps it was the fact that they did not understand each other that kept them going or maybe it was this desire to understand more about each other through laughter and basic facial expressions. The language in my condo varies greatly and everyone picked up on basic vocabulary. I found that my mother was speaking words of Korean to me instead of saying it in Chinese. Language is contagious.