The shibboleth of fluency

Strangeness in the familiar

The languages we use in communication can determine how our use of words, structure, grammar, and style makes us winners or losers.

Conversation is a kind of interaction where we innately know the rules that confer belonging, distinguishing us from those who fall foul of them. However, it is placenames that defeat the foreigner in ways almost insurmountable.

When I lived in Holland, it was the beach town of Scheveningen that set the allochtoon apart from the autochtoon, until we eventually mastered the pronunciation. Any American visiting London would easily stand out whilst looking for Leicester Square or Southwark. When I do not hear 'southern' as 'surthen', I know who has travelled from afar.

Twinning the dissimilar

In South Africa, my Dutch exposes my foreign background; the placenames I pronounce in Dutch are barely recognisable to the locals.

This is where the identical needs closer observation to notice the difference. The twin test works like a linguistic shibboleth. Present someone with two nearly identical siblings and ask them to distinguish between them. The local spots the difference immediately; that distinctive mole, that particular smile, whilst the outsider sees only sameness. A casual glance reveals similarities, yet that tiny detail remains the tell.

So, it is with language. Just as twins operate in near-perfect synchrony, bewitching you with their sameness, you might navigate an entire conversation in flawless grammar. But stumble over 'Scheveningen', and the shibboleth has caught you. South Africans hear my Dutch-inflected Afrikaans and immediately spot what doesn't belong, differences imperceptible to my ear yet glaringly obvious to theirs.

Speaking so good

Tongue-tied to the point of speechlessness, you imagine running your hand through their curly hair. They smile and suddenly, as if possessed, or rather inspired, the utterance from your lips is a fluency in Afrikaans for which a shibboleth would fail to ensnare. Sometimes attraction trumps the test; inspiration defeats the very mechanism designed to expose you.

Language draws the pictures in the mind, and even if we say the words wrong because an accent defeats us, there's probably enough in it not to be misunderstood.