You know the situation. You're on the bus or in the supermarket line, trying your best to fit into the general milieu when a couple of fabulously exotic descent sidle up beside you and begin to talk in hushed, foreign tones.
The words are a blur, but the tone is unmistakable. Those flowing, rich expressions with too much phlegm and not enough vowels are definitely, unnervingly, about you. It doesn't sound good. Chins lower, eyebrows raise, and stifled giggles ensue. It is impossible to tell the theme of the conversation exactly but as you stare at them vacantly, you're positive you can decipher the words "philistine numbskull" ... positive. Unfortunately, ridicule is transnational.
Like many of my Kiwi counterparts, I am hopelessly monolingual. My intercultural success begins and ends with occasionally being able to convince people I'm from Belfast on St Patrick's Day. This usually succeeds only with people who are too drunk to hear. But it's not for lack of trying. Over the last 20 years I have dabbled with several languages in the hope of becoming urbane and sophisticated.
The journey started in Year 7, where I flung myself passionately into Mandarin because everything else was full. From a 12-year-old's perspective, my two-year affair with the language was a success. Whether it was due to academic devotion or the fortnightly trip to the West End Chinese Smorgasbord is still a matter of debate.
Yet as much as I delighted in the joy of oriental cuisine it also took me years to comprehend that chicken nuggets weren't, in fact, part of customary Eastern cooking. When my parents learned of my not-so-academic endeavours in Year 9, they suggested I switch to French. If it involved more eating, I was down.
This was also a failure, however. Despite their best efforts, my still-developing synapses would not wrap around past participles, present participles or, somewhat understandably, the word bouilloire. In all honesty, my dedication to the French language was only going to last until the end of the senior school Europe trip.
The scheme had been set since third form, I would hone every last accent until I was top of the class, wow Parisians with my cultured brogue and return home with a truckload of duty-free Moet and every intention of never speaking French again. I stuck with it for three years, fantasising about camembert, berets and sitting charmingly by a river picking at a $50 Happy Meal. But, again, it was not to be. Remarkably, no one was willing to fund my overseas spending binge, and a lack of financial credibility, a plan B or $6000, came between me and my dream. Au revoir Paris.
My bilingual flops left me disillusioned and, at the age of 16, I vowed to ignore any and all international idioms in favour of becoming the master of my own.
If I could conquer every last expression in the English language, I would have no need for culture. I would be the walking oracle of my native tongue, patiently educating the masses and chuckling softly when people spelled "frustration" with one "r". This plan had been going rather swimmingly until this year, when I met shorthand.
Shorthand is English in its most hideous form. Two-hundred years ago, a man called Pitman transformed the dictionary into a series of incongruous hieroglyphs in the hope of revolutionising the efficiency of English, becoming a famous academic and making every student of journalism want to travel back in time purely for the joy of tearing his vital organs out. He achieved only the latter.
I have been battling with shorthand for months, it has not got any easier, there have been no suggestions of a field trip and no mid-week jaunts to the local wonton vendor. The worst part is it has undermined my ability at my own language. Shorthand is not a different language, it is English in pictures. My brain should be able to determine which squiggle means what, where on the line it should go and why the words "as a result of" look like a caterpillar doing the macarena. But it can't.
Striving to become an expert, I have become the opposite, a victim, doomed to supermarket-line ridicule for eternity. At a time when every city in the country is abuzz with mysterious, beautiful, foreign tongues I could not be more bitter.
It is not too late for me and shorthand. With faith, commitment, and performance-enhancing drugs I will get there eventually, but I wish I knew more.
Don't give up on the rest of the world. The years of effort are worth it. Even if it just means being able to say bouilloire.