Breaking down barriers within our own language means taking time to listen

There is no official language in the United States. Maybe that’s where things started to go… There is no official language in the United States. Maybe that’s where things started to go wrong. Maybe our forefathers should have shelved the idealism for a moment and weighed in on the side of practicality, selecting English as our language of choice. And because we don’t have an official, national language, we’ve digressed to the point that we don’t understand one another.

I’m not talking about Spanish or Farsi. It’s not a bi-language problem. Rather, It’s a problem between people that share many or most of their heritage, social and educational characteristics. It’s a gender problem.

Yesterday I watched clips of President Bush staring blankly at Condoleeza Rice, as she desperately tried to explain something to our commander in chief. It got so bad that I thought she was going to break out a wipe-off board and start drawing diagrams.

OK, maybe that’s a bad example, but not too long ago I was catching up with my dearest friend, Charlie, and she was telling me about this gorgeous, young investment banker that she had gone on a few dates with. He’s charming, well-educated — Harvard, I believe — and he works with hedge funds. He’s the kind of guy our mothers dream of us bringing home to Christmas dinner.

Charlie is enamored with her new beau, and her Banker seems equally intrigued. So after their second date, he invited her back to his posh, big-city apartment. They were incredibly drunk and although they didn’t do the deed, well, let’s just say that Three 6 Mafia would be proud of my girl. The following day, Charlie’s friend Lana asked the Banker, in true girl fashion, how things were going with Charlie.

“Well, I was pretty wasted last night, but I got some action,” the Banker said.

When word got back to Charlie, she was mortified. Had the Banker written her off as a fling? And so Charlie, who had made a move because she was confident that her actions would not be confused as “slutty,” found herself placing every aspect of her encounters with the Banker under a microscope, while waiting and hoping that he’d call.

What Charlie, or any girl for that matter, would have wanted to hear would be something like, “We had a good time. I want to see her again.” Instead, the Banker recounted the events of the previous night in an overly simplified way. The simplicity made Charlie feel cheap.

Maybe I’m getting wiser in my old age, or maybe I’m just around men more often than I realize, but after recognizing the aforementioned language problem plaguing the genders, I’ve taken it upon myself to try to debunk some of it’s pitfalls. One of the first things I learned in my quest to understand where it’s all gone wrong is that women speak a more elegant, subliminal form of English, and men speak a less-refined, 1.0 version of the language — Menglish.

When women are hungry, they might say something like, “I haven’t eaten since last night,” while men simply say, “Food, now.” So, applying this understanding of the underdeveloped Menglish to Charlie’s dilemma, I can simply deduce that what the Banker said was only to be taken as fact. He indeed was wasted and did, in fact, get some action. And Charlie, who had the pleasure of being a younger sister of older brothers, understands this concept and realized — after some self-searching — that he wasn’t speaking of her in a cheap, disparaging way, but merely stating the events of the previous evening.

However, there are times when this overly simplified language is more harmful and irresponsible than helpful. Take my friend Bruno. He told our friend Ashley that she was a slut and she took great offense to his assertion. His justification? She sleeps with a ton of guys. While Ashley cannot deny this fact, as she has slept with dozens of men, sometimes keeping it simple leads to simply being a jerk.

Men would argue that women’s English is vague and unclear. When a man hears, “I haven’t eaten since last night,” he’s still waiting for the punch line. “So…do you want to eat now? Are you telling me this because it’s something you’re proud of? Are you on a new diet? Am I supposed to tell you that you look thin?” Well, you get the idea. Men are left confused by the lack of obvious direction in the woman’s statement.

I still argue that women, as a gender, are more artful and less obvious in their speech. For women, it’s a skill. Our speech is painting like Monet while men are taking high-resolution digital photographs. And who would take a photo of a car engine over a Monet?

So maybe making English the official language isn’t the solution — at the end of the day we’re all using the same words. Maybe the only solution is to train ourselves to listen differently to each other. Sure, I appreciate the simplicity of Menglish, but I prefer the more graceful, subtle brushstrokes of ladies’ English.