Glad you’re here a whole bunch of times

Willkommen, Bienvenue, Välkommen, добро пожаловать, 歡迎, and welcome, to another thrilling edition of Mr. Ohh!’s Sideways View. You may, or may not know this but I just welcomed you six times. I did it in German, French, Swedish, Russian, Chinese, and English. Impressive huh? The multi-lingual Mr. Ohh!. Well not really, actually I only speak two languages, and only one of them was in the opening. Yes, I am, confessing to be just another liar, with Google Translate.

The two languages I speak are English and Spanish. I didn’t include Spanish in the opening because like Italian, Spanish has a gender. How you welcome someone depends on if they’re a man or a woman. I don’t know how you welcome a bunch of people without insulting half of them. When I was faced with this situation several years back, I just said, “Hola” which means “Hi.” This ended up being w way too informal, and some of them were insulted anyway. I should’ve just guessed.

Languisning in Languages

My children have friends who prefer to be called ‘they’ instead of he or she. In these cases, I like to use the phrase, “Hey Idiot” to welcome them. Yes, they’re insulted, but at least I know I’m wrong going in, and I can deal with it later. It removes a lot of the frustration. At least it does for me. I don’t know about them.

My son speaks Japanese. Why? Because he wants to. There’s no other reason. He may go to Japan someday, but most of those folks speak English, so it’s a moot point. It’s true, they’re taught it in school. This brings up an enigma to my scarred mind. We in America speak English, but we have to take twelve years of English classes in school. Then a lot of us go to college, and get English degrees. You heard right folks; Fifty-thousand-plus English degrees are given to students every year. There are hundreds of languages in the world, yet we in America study the one we already know.

On the other hand, around the third year of school in much of Europe and parts of Asia, students are taught English. This is because it’s commonly used for business. So, they prepare their children for the future while we… I’m not completely sure what we’re doing. The only thing I can figure is this. The US is a large-ish country. I’ve have traveled most of it for my various jobs. As a result, I’ve seen a great many dialects. Perhaps we’re so strict on our language so that people can go to Texas and know that, Howdy isn’t an insult. Now, Russia, and China are bigger than us, but they have separate languages in various areas. So maybe it’s not as complicated. Or maybe it’s more complicated. Or maybe I should take two aspirin, call my analyst, and change the subject completely. Yea, I’ll do that.

A Short While Later.

Trying to communicate…

Hi again everyone. My analyst says, “Hi” too. She’s really nice, and has little chocolates on her desk. Sadly, this was just a video visit, and I didn’t get one. Also, I have no idea why I’m talking about all this, so let me get to the point.

The thing is; Language is the way we communicate, and it must be clear. The sad thing is; It is also constantly changing. My daughter came to me and said, “Rachel really spilled the tea this time.” I went to get a rag to help clean it up. I walked in on four girls chatting, and they looked at me like I had six heads. Then they screamed, because I might have heard something private. My daughter calmed them all down, then asked why I was there. I said to clean up the spilled tea. They laughed at me. I turned to go, totally confused. Later I found out that ‘Spilling Tea’ means telling someone’s secrets. Huh?? How do they get that out of that?

And failing miserably

Well, I just calmly went back to my book, and pretended nothing happened. Later the princess told me, “The green tea was juicy delicious.” I had just made iced green tea, so I assumed we were talking about that. Nope! In fact, I was informed the girls didn’t like green tea. I was confused. I mean, how do you hate something juicy and delicious? It’s just not possible. My daughter rolled her eyes, and explained it all, in a tone suggesting I was stupid. “Bella is crushing on Lance who has green eyes, so spilling her trash is green tea.” I nodded my head as if I understood. It’s safer that way. I just hope Bella doesn’t get stabbed when she crushes on that lance. Assuming the lance is sharp. Then again, the lance might be hidden under her trash. That’s very dangerous. But what Bella’s garbage, along with medieval weaponry, has to do with lying about a cup of green tea, I’ll never figure out. Also, why was the lance in the trash? You could get a lot of cash for that on Ebay.

Later, I did find out Bella was going to Forrest to make Lance jel. This makes sense. I mean if you’re going to crush yourself on a lance in the trash, wouldn’t it be better to do it on a gel lance rather than a sharp steel one. Personally, I’d go for a nice soft foam. Scratch that, I wouldn’t crush on a lance at all. It does perplex me as to what’s in the forest that would soften iron into Jello. Are there magic tree nymphs in there? These kids do that Dungeon’s and Dragon’s stuff. They might’ve found some alchemy I’m unaware of. It could happen.

Next, I heard Brenda was throwing to much shade. Brenda’s not even five feet tall, and so thin you’d miss her if she turned sideways. I think she loads herself in an ink-jet printer, every morning, to print a shirt on her chest. She’s that thin. No matter how bright the sun, this girl doesn’t throw any shade at all. Now, Gloria, that’s another story. Lovely girl, and a great personality, but she can throw some shade. She’s the kind of girl I’d love to take along to the beach, if you catch my drift. Then I learned throwing shade has nothing to do with throwing shade. What it means is you’re talking about people behind their back. How is this different from spilling tea?

I think I’ve got it figured out, The world is nuts

It was time for research. Ohh I hate that. Going to the library, I found there’s actually an honest-to-goodness dictionary for this stuff; The Oxford English Dictionary of American Slang. There are even four different publishers of American slang. Each one has several editions. I was faced with the teen speak of the ages. It was mind-blowing.

Now, I know why the dinosaurs went extinct. Papa dino probably said to his teens, “Get some supplies together. There’s a meteor coming.” The kid took it as, “Go hang out with friends.” As a result, everybody died. Well, that won’t happen to me. I’m giving up early. Let those nudniks fend for themselves.