Learning a New Language

Last week, Clem's computer became terminally ill. An old friend, it has been a steady presence in his life - and mine. Perhaps it was all the poetry Clem has been writing - and the poor thing just could not sustain itself any longer.

It was not a particularly well-timed illness - although if it had been a few weeks earlier, while we were still working on our newest manuscript, the results could have been much worse. Any rate, it meant researching, buying, and installing a new computer.

Now, we both have used PC's for a couple of decades. We can cruise around within their software with considerable ease. But the time had come (for various reasons) to shift to an Apple computer.

The Apple people are very helpful. But they speak another language. They would ask, "do you use sjdhtrueyth?" And we would look puzzled. and ask for a translation.  The person would try again. "Khjrhtuc?" And the universal language of talking with our hands - workable in most places around the world - was useless.

It reminded me of traveling in foreign countries where no English was spoken. Where asking basic questions becomes a major event.

One of my favorite memories is traveling in what had beeen East Germany just a year after Reunification. We were traveling around the country by bus, in addition to trains. We quickly learned that bus tickets were sold in different places depending on the town we were in. Sometimes on the bus, sometimes in a kiosk - or elsewhere.

We were in Erfurt and wanted to travel to Wiemar, just a few kilometers away. However the reality of traveling even to the next town under Communist rule had been verboten. Thus, the question of where to buy a bus ticket was a mystery - because it was not a question that occurred to people in Erfurt (who had never been to Wiemar). In German - Whadayamean? You buy tickets where tickets are always sold! Why would you even ask?"  We finally went to a bank where someone had enough broken English to put with our broken German. So here, we learned that the tickets were sold on the bus!

So now we are both struggling to learn Apple-eese. At least the way computers are made these days, it is very hard to break them or screw them up permanently. Mekrjtivuder anyone?