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

cities of the Panglish-speaking worlds. The Lavender Lamp Cafe had food that was different. We kept
calling the young waiter back to ask him what this was and what that was and how it was made. And
then, as we were talking to him about a soup that he told us was made with three different kinds of
flowers, I asked the wrong question. "I understand that in Panglish this is called Three-Flower Soup," I
said. "But what do you call it in your language?"

The boy frowned at me, looking baffled; I was sure he couldn't be more than fifteen, and it was
disgraceful that he was working. "Panglish is my language," he said.

"I'm not making myself clear," I said. "Look тАж Wait, what's your name?"

"I'm called Fyee," he said. One syllable. A good old Panglish name, never mind the fact that starting
words with an FY cluster was totally unPanglish. "Fyee Bahron."

"Well, Mr. BahronтАФ"

He raised his hands. "I'm Fyee," he said quietly. "My father is Mr. Bahron."

"I'm sorry. Fyee, then. Fyee, what I meant was this: What is Three-Flower Soup called in your native
language? The native language of the Losheffans?"

"Three-Flower Soup," he said.

I should have stopped then. I had no business whatsoever pursuing the matter, and it was obvious that I
was embarrassing the boy. But I'm a linguist, and I really did think that Fyee and I were just involved in
one of those standard "What are your people called?"/"We're called The People" loops.

"Then could you tell me," I said, trying a different path to the information I wanted, "how you would
translate 'Three-Flower Soup' into your own native language? If you were eating it at home, for example,
with your family?"

"Excuse me," he said. "I will call my father." And the man who came back with Fyee from the kitchen to
our table looked at me as if I were being the Ugly TerranтАФwhich I was; he was quite rightтАФand said
immediately, "Miss, Panglish is our native language. And we call this soup Three-Flower Soup."

I did shut up then, hoping I could salvage the situation and restore the sort of atmosphere that's
appropriate for a pleasant evening out and a good dinner. I thanked him for his help, adding almost-
Yegerrian compliments for his restaurant and his son and his food until he seemed to me to be mollified.
But my mind was racing. Because Panglish isn't anybody's native language; Panglish is an artificial
synthesis of the many different Englishes that spread over Earth in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries. Linguists had finally scrubbed the bugs out of it and written a thorough grammar, and it had

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 We Have Always Spoken Panglish

been accepted as the international and interplanetary auxiliary language in the 2350s. Everywhere in the
known universe, children learned their native language at home as they always had done, and then
learned Panglish when they started school. If I hadn't completely misunderstood, the two Losheffan
males were claiming that that wasn't true here; they were claiming that there was only Panglish here now,
and that there had never been any other language. It had to be a misunderstanding; I had to be asking the