Language is semi consciousness

Then there is the language, curt is what it is, or can be.

In a shop, buying cheese from a grumpy old sales assistant, where I’ve bought the same cheese in the same amount for about 10 years. She has smiled once, and that was at Ksenia, my daughter. There’s no dislike on either side just a vast and unquestioned indifference on her part and, for about 7 of those 10 cheese buying years, something similar on mine. I did use to try.

Anyway we have a conversation which, in Russian, is polite, if not warm.

Me:   Syr Est?

Her:  Est.

Me:   Daitye

Her : Vot

In English, translated word for word that is:

Me:   Cheese is?

Her:   Is

Me:    Give

Her:   There

And it’s ok in Russian, but in English it’s all wrong.

When Medvedev wanted to tell Obama: “I will tell Putin” he phrased it: “I will transmit this information to Vladimir”. Or I just got an email saying only: “Send me your visa and registration so I can renew the documents.”

No “could you, would you, might you, please, thank you”, no “can you, do you mind, will you be so good as to” Just the imperative. As she writes it she hears in her head the plural polite form of that imperative, as I read it I hear a woman talking to recalcitrant and dimwitted child.

And most everything that happens here happens in this language, as you might expect. And if language is, largely, consciousness, then everything looks slightly different. And when you try to make sense of it you have to figure that in too.

Lots and lots of 1 or two syllable utterances work here.

Vot: “Here, there, there you are, here you are.”

Mozhno: “Can I? Is it possible?” Which with context and gestures serves for : ‘Can I go here? Can you give me…..? May I smoke?’

Nelzyar: “Forbidden, you can’t, I’m afraid not, Go fuck a dog you perfidious foreign bastard”

When I was first here, sitting in an office and watching people open the door and shout questions at admin girls, I used to think everybody was irritated. Now I find myself irritated at the smiling courtesy of foreigners.

Get on with it; we might all be dead next week.