Essential Communication

Instant Messenger is perhaps the greatest invention ever. I know that numerous significant relationships in my life have evolved, continued, reconnected, or even started via IM. I used to believe that IM was a little dangerous. In the early days of using it, I would offend or be offended much too easily. I think that this is because all of the cues that we seek in face-to-face human communication, the body language, gestures, expressions, and syntax, are all gone. Only the words on the screen remain between the people trying to make themselves be understood. It's gotten better since a type of IM-specific syntax has emerged (God bless Emoticons), and overall we've all grown a little more used to relating to our friends this way.

Tonight, IM allowed me a four-way conversation in three languages between participants in three different countries: AK and me in the US, Orlando in Venezuela, and Francisco in Peru. The lively brew of Espanglish was dizzying and exuberant, as were the asides in French between AK and me. The two guys, acquaintances from their school days, caught up in full Venezuelan slang, NONE of which they teach you in the rarified world of "Buenos dias. Me llama Jessica. Como estas?" like you learn in school.

And amongst these essentials of communication, Venezuelan-style, was my education in speaking "de la calle." People love to hear non-native speakers swear in the unfamiliar tongue, and so I learned words like "cono" (sorry, no tilde on this English keyboard) and "naguevonada". ("Shit" and "Holy Fuck" respectively. My apologies if anyone is offended.) Chino and AK hashed out the meanings in a hilarious bout of etymology, again in Espanglish, for our collective benefit.

But the best part about learning to swear like a Venezuelan, or to watch Fran and Chino talking like old school friends, was to see the exchanges between all of us, the way the cultures mingled and wrapped around one another like clothes agitating gently in a washing machine. To sit back and listen, to get thrown in, to observe tangents in Spanish or take off on them in English, to engage and acquire and interact. All of this is so thrilling to me. We can see each other on web cams and we can hear each other's voices(in a manner of speaking), all in real time from across thousands of miles and two very different cultural perspectives. Access to the language is my ultimate access to Venezuela, South American in general, and my acclimatization starts here, in Chicago, online.