Polyglots Have The World On A String

The lighter side of communicating in multiple languages

Why multilingual folks have more fun

There’s an old joke that goes something like this: What do you call a person who speaks four languages? The answer is quadrilingual. A speaker of three languages? They’re trilingual. Someone with two languages? Bilingual, of course. And someone who knows only one language? Well, that’s an American, or a Brit, depending on the audience.

But even among Anglophones, there are enough bilinguals to enjoy this joke:

A Frenchman on a business trip in London decides to go to a posh restaurant and orders a “bloody steak*.” The offended waiter answers, “And would you like some BLOODY POTATOES with your BLOODY STEAK?!”

Or this one:

A lone Frenchman on a train in Mexico is looking out at the landscape. While observing a charming waterfall, he spots a curvaceous woman bathing beneath it. Staring admiringly, he sighs, “C’est la vie…” The local man sitting across from him, also eying the beauty, declares, “Sí, yó tambien la vi!”**

(C’est la vie, for this purpose, is not to be considered French. It’s a stock phrase that is more popular in English than in French, like RSVP and Cherchez la femme... )

English/French/Spanish trilinguals will, of course, be able to savor both jokes equally.

So, it’s simple math: multiply this merriment by the number of languages you speak, or can read. In the latter case you can also laugh in more than one language, especially while texting: Jajaja is Spanish for Hahaha.

Advanced French speakers will do well to pick up a bit of verlan, the French backwards slang, as well. Verlan itself is verlan for l’envers (the reverse). If you’re a guy and you know that lingo, you automatically become un keum chébran (un mec branché = a cool dude in regular French youth speak). There are many jokes based on a verlan pun. Unfortunately the only one I seem to remember is not fit to be repeated in polite company.

Living languages and “dead” ones

When polyglots meet, it can be pure heaven. I’ve found a few on Medium, and I think we ought to start a club. How about it, Mathias Barra, ICO (Ludovico), and Salam Khan?

In India I have a dear friend who speaks even more languages than I do. Whenever I get into her car for a longish drive, her first words to me are, “What language shall we speak today?” It could be French, Italian, or German. We have Hindi, too, in common, but hers is way better than mine, so I don’t go there.

Both of us also have studied ancient, so-called dead languages. But where mine are quite rusty, Adity is the kind of person whose idea of summer fun is traveling to Edinburgh for a refresher course in Ancient Greek. Mine is more like curling up on the couch to binge watch subtitled Korean historical dramas like Jumong and try to figure out nouns, verbs, forms of address (Pyeha, jabileul bepusoseo! “Your Majesty, have mercy!”) and formules de politesse like Please, Thank you, and, I hope your Highness is well rested this morning. Learning the Hangul alphabet is next on my list.

Both of us, however, would crack up over a joke like this one: Julius Caesar walks into a bar and orders a martinus. The bartender frowns and says, “Oh! You mean ‘martini’, right?” “No,” says Caesar. “I only want one.”

It has me in stitches every time.

The downsides

On the other hand, always being the designated asker for directions and orderer of meals on a family vacation can be a mixed blessing. If we get lost, or if the portions are too small, it’s my fault. There’s a certain feeling of power, sure. Then again, I always suspect the waiters peg me as a bossy, overbearing wife (they might be right.)

Asking for any type of information can be trying, especially if it’s not one of my better languages, but my pronunciation is good enough to prompt a torrent of rapid whatever-it-is. And then there was the time I was accused of posing as a tourist, because my German was “too good.”

I was on an intercity train in Germany with my American friend, Barbara. Having missed breakfast we’d bought some croissants at the station, just before boarding. We headed straight for the restaurant car. It was fancy, starched linen table cloths and all. I ordered us coffees. We opened our paper bag of baked goods and started to munch. When the elderly waiter brought the coffee, he scowled and said something that I didn’t catch right away.

When I politely asked him to repeat, the man yelled, “Don’t you play dumb now! You order in perfect German and suddenly you don’t understand?” It dawned on me that there must be some rule about not bringing in outside food that he thought we were trying to circumvent. I protested that I really was an ignorant foreigner and even pulled out my passport to prove it. The guy humphed, turned on his heels and stormed off.

Barbara and I still laugh about it when we meet. Of course, it’s much more funny in retrospect.

*Literal translation of “un bifteck saignant,” i.e. a steak done medium rare.

**“Yes, I saw her, too!”

Desiree Driesenaar Anuradha Christine Van den Hove Nancy Ann Winar