Feature

Speaking in Tongues

© LUCIA FOSTER-FOUND 2022 WWW.LUCIAFOSTERFOUND.COM

Trying to redress the gains made during Covid, Christmas, another Christmas and the golden, guiltless era of the broken bathroom scales, she was on a diet. Fantasising about food, she’d taken to binge watching Rick Stein’s Weekends and eating vicariously through Rick. “What about Portugal?” Gazing at Rick consuming a custard tart, she tried not to dribble. “The food in Lisbon looks really good..” Himself dragged his gaze away from his tablet. “Well, we haven’t had a holiday in years. I’m game.” “But I warn you” she gave him a stern look “I don’t know any Portuguese, not one word, so there’s no point in telling people I’m fluent.” Still in the dark why he found that so hilarious, inevitably she’d mastered versions of ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand’ in several languages. Himself chuckled. “But you are fluent darling. Compared to me anyway – I only speak English. But in fact, now I think of it, I do know some Portuguese.” He announced with confidence. “You do?” After nearly a quarter of a century together, this was a rare revelation. “Yes. Marmalade.” “Marmalade?” “Yes. It is, I believe, the only Portuguese word in the English language.” He said with the air of someone imparting great knowledge. She had no idea if this was true, but it did sound entirely feasible. “Marmalade. Is that it? Only, we’re going to struggle a bit once breakfast is over.” Nodding, he agreed. “You’re right. Me randomly chirping in with ‘marmalade’ reminds me of when I was in Germany and only mastered ‘wurst’.” “Well, there’s worse things in German than ‘sausage’ that you could have said, Darling. An ex-boyfriend taught me to say ‘Ich bin ganz verrückt’ when shop assistants asked if I needed help. I thought I was telling them that I was quite alright.” “So what were you really saying?” “That I was quite mad.” Himself laughed a lot more than she considered strictly necessary. “That’s funny! It’s all Greek to me anyway. Actually – Greek is harder, what with the cyrillic alphabet and all.” He went back to his tablet, a frown on his face. “Talking of foreign lingos, I messaged this guy, wanting some info on something he’s selling and all I got was a couple of words in a language I can’t identify. Here, have a look.” He passed her his tablet. “Ah yes,” she said with the air of someone imparting great knowledge “AFAIK means As Far As I Know and AMA stands for Ask Me Anything.” Himself looked bemused. “I feel there’s a secret code that I’m not a party to. For example, what is ‘foam-o’? Apparently during Covid lockdowns people stopped having it.. And what does it mean when someone wants you to Prime Minister them?” He asked as an afterthought. “FOMO. Fear of missing out. I suppose the upside to no social gatherings was that people weren’t stressing about being invited. I don’t know about the other thing. Did they mention Boris at all?” She considered that might open up a few interesting options. “Not specifically – they wrote ‘PM me’.” He gave a puzzled shrug. It was her turn to laugh louder than was decent. Having explained that PM meant Private Message, she went on to mention that being called the GOAT didn’t mean someone was accusing you of being an actual goat and YOLO was not a low fat yoghurt. He sighed. “How do you know all this?” he said and reached for the TV remote control. “Because, darling LOML” when he looked puzzled, she said “you can look that one up” and winked before continuing “if I didn’t know all this, I wouldn’t appreciate half of the stuff the kids send, tag or share with me.” But Himself was distracted. Gripping the old remote control, he was laboriously typing something out on YouTube using the tiny buttons. She threw him the sleek new remote with its in-built voice function. “I know you’ve a quaint, if somewhat misplaced loyalty to life before Alexa, but all you have to do is press the microphone button and tell it what you’re looking for.”

He looked sad and a little sheepish. “I’m not being a Luddite believe me, I’ve tried talking to it. In English. But it says it doesn’t understand me; seems I’m.. speaking in tongues..”