English slippage

As a good little English major in college, I was required to study how tricky language could be, how often the signifier just does not directly correlate to the signified (Ah, literary criticism. Be still my heart.). I could write a book by now on trying to learn another language, but that's for another day. This post is about English.

I work in English. Most people here speak English. It's so pervasive - American t.v. and movies are so pervasive - that it feels almost obnoxious. Yet it's amazing to me, even here, where it seems everywhere, to find layers of the language that people aren't comfortable with. People who speak English eight hours a day for their jobs, people who have no trouble watching an American movie, will stare at me as a sentence, an expression, quickly slides off my tongue without a second thought. We speak so often in metaphors, folded into our speech patterns like spices in a dish, impossible to parse out, and mixed so thoroughly in with the watery stuff that you literally forget that they're there.

We'll put that on the back-burner I said a few days ago to a man who sometimes apologizes for his English. Blank look. No. Scratch that. We're putting the breaks... Let's try to make it as simple as possible. We're putting this on hold...Stopping this for now...

It'll snowball... I might write, before deleting it and taking an extra minute - how else would I say it? It might become an issue...

We're trying to raise the bar...I stifle to replace it, just in case of confusion, with: We're trying to do better...

At this point, we're just going to play it by ear...Oh dear. See how the chips land... And with this, readers, I'm stumped. How better to say it? Improvise? React after we see the initial results? Bleh. How boring. And those don't quite get at the meaning!

And then gradually, over the weeks, everything starts to feel slippery, everything seems questionable to me. Saying at a meeting if anyone wants to throw out some ideas might be mistaken for literally throwing them out, getting rid of them, as in what ideas are not good enough. Why is let's go imbued with action, getting something accomplished, whereas let it go - almost the same word sequence! - mean leaving something alone, holding off? And what about holding off, while we're on the subject?! It has almost the same meaning as hold on, but then there is a subtle difference there that's hard to put my finger on. Put my finger on!!

There is so much in native speech that's hard to put your finger on.

I'm not saying that these things really get in the way of communicating at the office - they don't, and most people will catch their meaning easily, if they don't know it already, in the context. But it is interesting to me, as I become just a little bit more careful about the way I say things, how these slippery phrases, the ones that seem absurd if you really think about the word sequence, are sometimes the first thing that comes to mind. How difficult they can be to put a simpler definition to. And how restrained you feel in trying as best you can to make the signifier match as closely as possible to the signified. Because who wants to improvise when you can play it by ear?

(Haven't I been writing blog posts? Surely I have. They must be around here somewhere. But I've looked for them - in between the couch cushions and under the bed, and have had no luck. Perhaps I left them on the train or carelessly strewn about the locker room at the gym. And so, I admit, weeks have been lost with no trace, no record here. I'm sorry. I'm going to try, without promises, but with a hearty, deep breath, to begin again.)