A word or two between friends

The following short story first appeared in an anthology of short stories and poems, published in April 2018 in aid of the Kerry Cancer Support Group

I wish I'd paid more attention during Mrs Williams' French classes at school. As it turns out perfecting the art of being a gobby little know-it-all didn't prove to be as useful in life as the ability to speak other languages. My mother tried telling me. Years later I learned my lesson the hard way. Newly appointed as Director of Europol I visited Paris for an introductory meeting with the international adviser to the Minister of Interior. Seconds into the initial formalities I was forced to admit that French was Greek to me, as it were. He peered over his half-moon glasses and said, in perfect English and with a maximum air of superiority, how 'disappointed' he was that a senior EU official had such limited capacities. I've had this nervous twitch ever since with all things French.

 But he had a point. The limits of my language mean the limits of my world, Wittgenstein wrote, and that is evident when you work in such an inter-cultural environment as the EU. One loses not just the obvious practical benefits of being able to communicate better, but the ability truly to connect and understand. When a Brit finds something 'interesting' he really doesn't at all. That and other similar clichés are well known in the corridors of Europol by staff who have long since worked me out, but such aphorisms generally hold true and go some way to understanding the real person and what he really means. I see and hear similar examples around Europe all the time. The Dutch are famously blunt, but more due to the economies of their language rather than from a cold disposition. While English speakers will find a dozen ways of equivocating there is only one way in Dutch to say 'that's a stupid idea.' And so that is what's said. Finns and some Eastern Europeans are the same, for the same reason, while the characteristic undulations of experiencing joy and despair in Celtic and Mediterranean cultures are heard through the natural lyricism of their languages. All the while there is plenty of scope for misunderstanding, sometimes to comic effect. In an attempt to break a negotiating deadlock in one EU meeting a French delegate once said, via the interpreter, that 'what this issue really needed now was some Norman wisdom.' Cue fits of laughter and second-rate TV impersonations from the British and Irish delegations, much to the chagrin of the French speaker.

 ‘Chagrin’, of course, is a French word, an example of how languages also often carry DNA traces of a nation’s history and cultural development. Nowhere in Europe is this more evident than in Malta. This small island has been a geopolitical feature of the Mediterranean for centuries, with the language spoken today reflecting the rich mix of foreign empires and peoples that have come and gone over the years. Maltese sounds Arabic, Italian, English, and a little French, all at the same time.

 As for me, I actually did grow up speaking another language. Most of my Welsh is now a distant memory but some words have never left me. 'Hiraeth' doesn't have a translatable word in English. Its closest definition is a longing for something profound and often unattainable, which gives rise in the Welsh culture to a feeling of never being satisfied or fulfilled. A 'glass half-empty' outlook as my (non-Welsh) wife has often observed. Perhaps not the best natural mind-set for someone in a position of leadership, but it's part of who I am, as the language of Welsh very well explains. At least most of my Irish friends and colleagues seem to get the concept, though …

Rob Wainwright