The Words Are Hard In Any Language

Marisol has been in this country nineteen years and she runs a payroll department.

She writes reports. She has difficult conversations with people about money in her second language, weekly, and she is good at it. Nobody at her work would describe her as somebody who struggles.

At that counter she understands perhaps half.

And here is what is worth saying at the top, because otherwise this whole thing goes to the wrong place. It is not the English.

She knows the word for wheel. She knows the word for oil. What she does not know are perhaps forty specialized terms that have nothing to do with fluency and that no ordinary vocabulary in any language would contain.

Those terms are hard for people who were born here. Her neighbor, who has spoken English her whole life, understands about the same fraction. Marisol has watched her do it, standing right there, nodding at the same words.

But Marisol does not experience it that way, and this is the whole trouble.

When she does not understand a word at work, she asks, immediately, with no feeling attached, because at work she is a competent woman who has hit an unfamiliar term.

When she does not understand a word at that counter, something else happens. There is a small drop, and a thought arrives that is not a thought about cars, and the thought is: nineteen years.

And so she does not ask. Because asking there is not asking about a part. It is admitting something about the nineteen years, and she is not going to hand that to a stranger on a Tuesday morning.

Her daughter, who was born here and is twenty two, came with her once and asked four questions in a row without any apparent effort, and Marisol was proud and something else at the same time, and she has thought about that afternoon more than she would like.

The specialized words belong to nobody's mother tongue

Let me put down what I am not doing, so nothing has to brace.

I am not going to guess at what that car needs. I have not seen it and it would help nobody. And I am not going to say a word against the man at the counter, who was using his own trade vocabulary the way everybody does and had no idea any of it landed anywhere.

What I want to establish first is a plain fact, because the whole message stands on it.

A specialized vocabulary is not part of any language. It is a separate thing that sits on top, and it is acquired by working in that trade, and it is acquired by nobody else.

There is no version of any language in which those words are general knowledge. Not English, not Spanish, not any of them. A person who grew up two streets from that garage speaking nothing but English still has to be told what those words mean, because the words were never in the language, they were in the job.

So the nineteen years have got nothing to do with it.

You are not failing at English at that counter, and no part of what is happening there is a report on nineteen years. It is written that except utterance be given by the tongue, words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken, which is 1 Corinthians 14 putting the burden of clarity on the speaker, and His Spirit is the one who makes that a fact about a service desk in an ordinary week.

Now, let me put the passage down properly, because Paul does something surprising with it.

So likewise ye, except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air.1 Corinthians 14:9

He is writing to a church where people were speaking in a way nobody present could follow, and his entire argument is that speech that is not understood has failed, regardless of how true or how spiritual it was.

Ye shall speak into the air. That is his verdict on it. Not: the listeners should try harder. Not: the listeners should have prepared. The speech itself did not land, and therefore it did not happen.

He puts the whole responsibility on the person doing the talking.

You have never been the one carrying the burden of clarity, and Scripture puts it on the speaker without any qualification at all. 1 Corinthians 14 says the unintelligible speech is spoken into the air rather than saying the hearer failed, and the Holy Spirit is what makes that reassignment reach a counter on a Tuesday.

Ask for it in writing

Here is the practical thing, and it is one small request that does something extra.

Can you write that word down for me?

Not: what does that mean. That one is fine and it works and there is nothing wrong with it. But the written version does three things the spoken one does not.

It slows the room to the speed of a pen. Nobody can talk fast while writing.

It produces an object that leaves the building with you, which means the word can be looked up later, in your own time, without anybody watching and without any of the nineteen years in the room.

And it moves the whole thing out of the category of a conversation and into the category of a transaction, which is a category Marisol is extremely comfortable in and where she has never once felt small in her life.

You have permission to ask for something in writing, and the written word never once requires a person to receive everything by ear in the moment. 1 Corinthians 14 aims the whole argument at being understood rather than at any particular method of getting there, and the Spirit of God is what makes a pen and a piece of paper an entirely legitimate route.

And I want to say the thing about your daughter, because I think it has been sitting there since that afternoon.

She asked four questions without effort, and it was easy for her, and it was easy because she has never once had a moment at a counter where a word arrived and a whole history arrived with it.

That is not a comparison in which you come off badly. That is a mother watching a child stand somewhere she paid for.

You were the one who made that afternoon possible, and Scripture puts the honoring of that kind of work in a household rather than in a moment at a desk. It is written that her children arise up and call her blessed, which is Proverbs 31 giving the verdict to the family, and His Spirit is what makes that verdict weightier than four easy questions.