The Vine: August 4, 2005
Sars,
My boyfriend is a foreigner. That in itself is lovely. His accent and cultural insights are great and I know we’re together for the long haul. The problem is the nature of being foreign — namely, his family. I have met them several times and while they are wonderful people, I can’t talk to them. I speak English and Spanish; they’re Czech. Slavic languages are notoriously difficult to learn and while I try to pantomime and learn phrases, it’s not enough. One day I want to be fluent, but until that happens I need some advice to keep family gatherings tolerable.
M does his best to translate the important points of discussion, but since he studies in the United States and visits once a year, his parents are understandably interested in talking. Very quickly. I can handle it cheerfully for a day or two, but we don’t travel to Europe for the weekend. I visited them for five days last time (I met him; he’d already been there two weeks) and they visited us for three weeks (I spent about half the time with them, though it was better because I was working and got breaks from the constant barrage of non-understanding).
Do you have any advice so I can sit through another long dinner and afternoon at his house, listening to a language that has virtually no similarities with English? The main problem is that I feel lonely and disconnected because I can’t talk to anyone. His sister speaks pretty good English but does not live at home. His mother is learning a little bit from their downstairs neighbor, but the rate is a bit slow. We plan to visit them this summer and will be in his little town for at least a week and a half. There are few English speakers in his town. Some of M’s friends do, but they are only home at Christmas.
At best, we will live in Prague for a few years after we both finish school (his Ph.D and my master’s) so the situation will only last a few years. But still. Years.
Thanks!
Czeched Out
Dear Czeched,
I would start learning the language sooner rather than later, too, because it’s the only thing that’s going to solve the problem. I know it’s a difficult language, but so is English, and if his mother is making the effort on her end…see what I mean? Find an intensive course, or get some tapes, but it’s not really up to the family to help you understand them — especially in their own hometown. You know? I know you feel isolated by the situation, but there isn’t really a solution that won’t involve you making a bit of extra effort, I’m afraid.
In the meantime, talk to your boyfriend about it and see if there’s not some compromise you can reach where, after an hour or so of nodding and smiling, you can get up and go read a book. You don’t know what’s being said, he’s probably not enjoying translating constantly…see if it’s absolutely required for you to sit there and listen. I guess it’s not a bad idea from the standpoint of trying to immerse yourself in the language, and you don’t want to be impolite, but…there are limits. My cousins brought exchange students to Thanksgiving sometimes, and I always felt bad for them; their English was fine, but there’s “fine,” and then there’s “15 half-drunk people bellowing about five different family in-jokes,” and poor Lotte or whoever would be staring at her creamed onions and just despairing of America.
Anyway. Start taking lessons; while you’re waiting for them to take, broker a deal with your boyfriend where you put in a certain amount of Czech time and then you get to go for a walk.
O mighty Sars,
I write not with a question, exactly, but with an observation relating to advice you’ve given, and I’d like your take on it.
Reading through the Vine archives (’cause there’s no better way to waste time at work), I see a lot of people asking what to do about an unpleasant friend, roommate, or relative. A lot of your answers rightly suggest firm, polite confrontation.
These answers are usually so obvious that I find myself wondering, what’s so difficult? If your upstairs neighbor is having exceedingly loud sex all the time, go ask her to please keep it down. It’s not that complicated.
What I realized is that most people are deathly afraid of making enemies. Avoiding even the possibility of a situation where you might encounter someone who doesn’t like you is a huge, subconscious priority. It goes double for people afraid to confront their close friends about bad behavior; you don’t need to read Shakespearean tragedy to know that best friends can become the worst enemies.
This is a common thread that runs through a vast number of the emails on The Vine, and I wondered whether the same thought had occurred to you.
Best,
My Wife Is A Sociologist
Dear Soc,
Yes, I would say that people are deathly afraid of other people disliking them, even temporarily, even in a situation after which they’ll never see the other party again. And yes, it had occurred to me. I’ve done the column for five years; certain patterns do emerge.
Patterns like…people not really having an actual question. Heh.
Dear Sars,
A Vine letter on the word “unique” reminded me of my own question about the word.
I know that unique is an absolute, but what about something to do with scope, such as “locally unique” vs. “globally unique”?
In software specifications (admittedly not a bastion of proper grammar), if something is “locally unique,” then it’s unique within its own local area, but if it’s “globally unique,” then it’s unique throughout the entire application.
It’s as if — say a class of kids had only one kid named “Mary.” Then the name “Mary” would be locally unique within that classroom, but not globally unique, because there are other kids in other classrooms in the world with the name “Mary.”
I know that the whole point of the word is that there can be only one, but I think what one is doing in this case is defining scope, rather than actually modifying the word.
It’s the same as saying “Mary’s name is unique throughout her class at school. But Mary’s name is not unique throughout the entire country.” Right? Can you say that?
Probably Wrong
Dear Probably,
Well, according to the usage note in the 11C, how you modify “unique” depends on the intended meaning. And the 11C lists “unusual” as a definition, which…uch. What is the point of having a word like “unique” if it’s water-down-able to mean “hey, neat!”? Did it always carry that definition, or have we just given up on enforcing the rules unique to “unique”? Probably it’s the latter; why teach correct usage more rigorously when we could just let lazy, stupid, counterintuitive crap like “irregardless” drag the entire language down to its level?
I don’t have any problem with “globally/locally unique”; it’s the same as saying “unique to [X],” I think. It’s the QVC-speak usage like “really unique” that drives me crazy, because what they actually mean is “really unusual,” and should just say that, so that there’s still a difference between “unique” and “unusual.”
But if the 11C is all, “…What? It’s fine!”, then I guess it’s fine. Qualify “unique” at will, folks. What the hell, use some quotation marks for emphasis while you’re at it. I’ll be over here, nursing a scotch and reading David Foster Wallace.
Hi, Sars,
I have a tricky situation, and I was hoping that you could shed some light on it. I googled about in The Vine archives, but didn’t find anything.
My friend “Brad” is engaged to a very sweet girl called “Janet.” I like Janet a lot, but I’m definitely not as close to her as I am to Brad.
Brad’s confided in me that they’ve been having huge, days-long arguments over the issue of having kids, and that they’ve called off the wedding “for now” while this gets resolved. She’s absolutely adamant that she wants kids, and doesn’t feel fulfilled without them, et cetera; he’s 100% sure that he doesn’t want them at all. I’ve been trying to steer him towards the idea of seeking couples counselling (they haven’t done this), and generally being a listening ear.
Whenever I see Janet, on the other hand, she acts as though everything’s just peachy. That’s fair enough, since we’re not as close, and she clearly doesn’t feel the need to spray her concerns about her relationship to me. Similarly, I don’t feel like I have the right to ask her nosy questions, usual drill.
Here comes the sticky bit.
This afternoon, Janet and I were having a Martha Stewart-y chat about decorating their guest bedroom, and it sort of got into a discussion about how one’s family plans affect decisions about buying a house, blah blah blah. Then Janet told me that she was going to stop using birth control and start trying to conceive soon, basically making it sound as though all this was being done with Brad’s approval and knowledge. Cue my OMGWTF face. I couldn’t think of anything more profound than “Wow, I didn’t pick Brad as the daddy type.” She’s all, “Oh, he’ll change his mind and it’ll all work out for the best.”
I’d like to believe she’s just blowing smoke up my arse to keep up the happy families appearance, but nothing was setting off my bullshit detector there. I’m sure that Brad would have said something to me if his attitude to having kids had changed — I mean, we’d spoken the day before, and he told me that they’d had another argument about it.
Sars, I feel like I should say something to Brad, but I don’t really feel like I have a right to fling more drama in their direction. I’m sure Janet would be mortified if she knew that Brad was talking to me about this intensely personal stuff, but Brad has a right to know if Janet’s sticking pins in her diaphragm or something. Normally I’d have no trouble keeping my nose out of people’s business, but it’s not like she’s talking about impulse-buying a new sofa here. Should I say something to Brad, or keep schtum? And if I do say something about it, how the hell do I bring it up nicely?
Thanks for reading, Sars, and thanks in advance for any advice you can give.
Sincerely,
God, I Hope There’s A Vaccine for Baby Rabies
Dear Me Too,
Well, you know my position on interfering in stuff like this, but…you know, it’s like you said. She’s not talking about buying a car. She’s talking about having a kid, and if she manipulates Brad into doing that without his consent, it’s going to come back to bite everyone in the ass — first and foremost the kid.
And, you know, she’s right that a lot of people swear up and down they don’t want kids and feel very strongly about that, and then, when the time comes that they’re dropped into the situation anyway, they step right up and deal with it and do great and are fabulous parents. But…a lot of people don’t react that way, is the thing, and the other thing is that, if she’s planning to go off birth control without his knowledge, she’s lying to him and she’s not respecting his wishes. It’s going to kill the relationship, probably, because eventually, he’s going to find out, and it’s going to trickle down to the child…I just think it’s a disaster waiting to happen. Maybe Janet’s right and I’m wrong. But I doubt it.
So, I think you have to assess whether she was serious, or whether she was just bullshitting to make it sound like she’d “won” the argument, and if it’s the former, well, she didn’t say it to you in confidence from what I can tell, so I don’t really see a problem passing it along to Brad. I mean, I do see a problem, obviously, because they’ll get into another big fight about it, but if that’s not what she wanted, she should have kept her trap shut, probably. So, don’t editorialize, except to say that you hope you’re wrong about the interpretation of Janet’s comments; just tell Brad exactly what she told you and let the chips fall where they may.
I don’t love telling you to do this, because it’s something they should work out on their own, but if Janet’s serious, I think Brad needs to know that more than you need to stay out of it.
Dear Sars,
A few weeks ago, one of my best friends called me up to talk about what she had planned for her birthday. “On Friday I’m having everyone over for pizza and pool,” she told me. “But on Saturday a small group of my closest friends are getting dressed up and going downtown to a fancy restaurant for dinner — you made the cut.”
So I bought a dress, requested the night off from work, and found a nice present for my friend. We met at her house and drove downtown together and ate a pleasant meal. And then the check came — actually, make that plural: Checks. We each had a separate bill.
I was shocked. This was her birthday party (one of them, actually, and we just won’t go into the weirdness of the fact that she threw herself two nineteenth birthday parties), so I had assumed that her parents had given her their credit card and sponsored the meal. Or she could have — she has this posh internship that pays three times the amount I make at my crappy summer retail job.
I incidentally had just under the amount I owed (including the automatic gratuity) in my purse, and actually had to borrow a couple of dollars from the friend in question. That was embarrassing.
Was I wrong to assume that as the host of the party she would pay the bill? I feel like I’m missing something. It wasn’t as if we’d gone out to Friday’s or something.
Signed,
Socially Awkward Enough Without Crap Like This
Dear Crap,
I would have assumed that, as the birthday girl, she doesn’t pay any part of the bill; everyone else pays their portion, and then covers hers.
Maybe this isn’t how anyone else does things, but in New York City, we tend to have birthday gatherings in bars and restaurants because we can fit more of our friends into a pub than we can into our apartments. But when I send out an Evite saying that my birthday party is at XYZ Bar, it doesn’t imply that I’m going to pay for everyone’s drinks; it just means that 1) it’s my birthday and 2) we’re all meeting up at this one place.
I suppose you could argue that, because she put the evening together, she’s the “host,” but I wouldn’t have made that assumption, personally. In fact, I would never assume someone else is paying unless I’ve been told explicitly that that’s the case, or unless it’s a gathering in someone’s home.
Again, maybe it’s just a city thing, but all an invitation like that would suggest to me is that my friend wanted to have a nice dinner with friends on her birthday, not that she’d be paying for it.
[8/4/05]
Tags: etiquette friendships grammar the fam
