Speak Easy

Increasingly I have become overwhelmed at the prospect of trying to pick up a second language. The plan has always been to pick up Spanish, and that plan is still intact. But, while Spanish and English predominate in my section of the country, many, many, ethnicities are represented, such as Polish, Lithuanian, Italian, and Portuguese, to name a few. I might add French and Arabic as well. I marvel at the way many people I meet speak more than one language and I feel left behind, with my one.

Interestingly, the one skill I picked up in the year that I have now been working in a hospital that is renown for respiratory care is lip-reading. It was daunting at first. Think of all the accents and ways of speaking you encounter in people with spoken language and it all applies to lip-leading too. People have different inflection in their expression. One day early on I came to the understanding that I was attempting to lip-read in Spanish!!!

There are neural disorders that preclude even mouthing words. Over time, after that day of the shock about trying to lip-read in Spanish, I have come to understand we are communicating regardless of spoken language. The people I am attempting to lip-read in Spanish communicate with me even though I have no Spanish. Daily, as I finish my shift, I wonder how in the world we communicated at all. And I do not have the answer.

I notice that many people express discomfort at hearing so much non-English spoken and make disparaging remarks about people they do not even know. Communication, though, transcends spoken language. I mean, even, and especially, your pets are "reading" you.

I will still stick with the plan to learn to speak Spanish but I am happy to find communication in many forms.