My Languages

Thisis a fun picture with the Hancock tower in the background, and it looks tiny! Just a fun trick of the eye.

So, I am excited to report that I am multilingual. Then again, I think most people are. Once we get out of the idea of a typical language like English and Spanish (so I'm up to two there), we'll find that many of us speak secret languages.

First of all, I speak music. I have always thought that it's cool that musicians can read a page of music as quickly and fluently as a page of written words. Each note consists of so many facets: length, pitch, style, and tone. And yet, musicians can sight read new music quickly. And, of course, you could say that each instrument a musician plays is like an entirely new language.

There are also the silly technical languages that we all speak. For instance, I speak accounting and flying. Even though the language is English, I find myself using day to day terms that the average person would not use or understand. So now I'm up to six.

There's also computer languages, and there are a lot of types of these. There's programming languages: I used to know a bit of Basic and Visual Basic. My friend speaks Mac. (I'm learning, but I'm only fluent in PC). And then there's typing! Any good typist has an amazing skill! Think about it. We hit the keys so quickly, just like with music, without even thinking. But the order of the keys on the keyboard don't seem to make much logical sense. It's muscle memory.

There's sports: if you play or know the lingo. I can't claim any of these languges. But I've heard guys who almost go into another language when they talk about sports and the current players and stats. Fanatasy football? I definately don't speak that.

What other languages are out there? I think there might be regional languages, when we know the traditions and cultures of our places. I'm not talking about dialects. I'm talking about being able to show someone the ropes of your native situation. Everyone's an expert here. I know the language of my family - their quriks and traditions...I guess it's a stretch.

So what does that bring me up to? English, Spanish, Piano, Violin, PC, Typing, Accounting, and Flying. Eight languages. I'd say that's pretty good for someone just out of college.