"Suzette Haden Elgin - We Have Always Spoken Panglish" - читать интересную книгу автора (Elgin Suzette Haden)

always curly тАж so the Sheffans are a bit taller than Terrans and have six toes instead of five тАж they both
could still move right into any home or office on Earth and never be spotted as ETs.

"Of course I don't think he's a snob," I said, trying to sound entirely casual, no judgment of any kind
implied. "He's a physicistтАФwhy should he be interested in the people of Benedict's Gate? Fortunately,
however, even physicists are interested in food. Which way to the restaurant?"

It was close by, close enough that we decided to walk. The streets were narrow and twisting and
crowded; the buildings that lined them were rarely separated from the sidewalks by more than a flat
steppingstone under the front door. And calling the walkways "sidewalks" was using the term loosely,
since they were so narrow that we had to walk in single file. I wasn't surprised. In any slum where the
population keeps growing but the boundaries are fixed, so that space grows ever more precious, that
happens, and is in no way unusual. There was something unusual, however, and it wasn't just the
decoration: Benedict's Gate was the first clean slum I had ever seen. Since endangered languages
ordinarily are spoken by poor people, I've worked in dozens of slums, and I'd never seen a truly clean
one before. Benedict's Gate was grotesquely crowded, and in many ways very strange-looking, but the
word "squalid" just didn't apply. Which meant that the word "slum" didn't apply either, strictly speaking,
because "Squalid" is one of the defining semantic characteristics of "slum"тАж

Oops. That line of thought wouldn't doтАФI must not let myself get interested in Benedict's Gate or its
inhabitants. That was always a danger when you did fieldwork; USCOL sent you to find out about the
Whuffledinger verbs, but you found the Whuffledingers living among the Baffleclangers, and their verbs
turned out to be far more interesting than the ones assigned to you, so you thought you'd just look at two
or three of them, just gathering knowledge for the sake of knowledge, what could be more pure? And
first thing you knew, you were deeply into the analysis of the Baffleclangers' language and far behind
with the job you were being paid a very handsome salary to do. There was no quicker way to find
yourself assignedтАФpermanentlyтАФto a desk in Washington, D.C.

Focus on the restaurant, Alyssa.

The Lavender Lamp Cafe was a small square building with a tiny front courtyard and a door opening
directly into the dining room. A lavender lamp hung over the door, justifying the name, and the
decorative patterns were rows of white-tipped ocean waves in various shades from the palest lavender to
deep purple. Not my favorite colors but pleasant enough.

"How do they make the mud-colors glow like that?" I asked Bru as we went inside.

He shrugged. "I have no idea," he said. "Something about the native soil, I suppose, or something they
put in the liquids they mix it with. We can ask somebody while we're here, if you like. The family that
runs this place is always willing to join a conversation."



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 We Have Always Spoken Panglish

"No," I said. "Thanks, but it's not necessary. It's not important."

I forgot my questions when the food came; I tend to forget everything when the food comes, if it's at all
good. On the other side of the boundary wall we ate well, but we ate the things you eat everywhere in the