Wie bitte?

If I’m sounding a tad more Teutonic today it’s because I recently - and rather unsuspectingly - took part in an integration ceremony. I have now an urge to barbecue nine months of the year and buy jars of Nutella large enough to hold all my written correspondence with German bureaucracy. Other side effects include worsening of pre-existing syntactic complications, also commonly known as the inability to write sentences containing less than three subclauses or syntactic non-linearity, together with an increased belief in the all-healing powers of homeopathy. 

It all started with yet another letter from the unending sea of paper that life in Germany entails (I have yet to reconcile this epistolary enthusiasm with the equally Teutonic fondness for forests). This latest missive congratulated me on passing the so-called German language test for immigrants and invited me to a ceremony where two very official sounding officials would hand over my certificate. The letter also encouraged me to bring along my children, who would be freed from school upon the presentation of said letter. Since my progeny currently amounts to zero I wondered if it would absolve my fiance from attending his pre-planning planning meeting instead. Though, like most children, he would probably sit at the back and play during the whole ceremony. And I don’t want to take his iPhone away. 

I had no choice but to attend the event sans better half and non existent quarter halves. Thursday afternoon thus found me in a chalk-smelling mossy green locale in Antonstrasse’s Volkshochschule, together with the 20-odd other recipients and their children, partners and other assorted family members. I was one of the few people, it seemed, that had arrived without an entourage, a camera, or a recent visit to the hairdresser. I had already gathered that I wasn’t part of the usual demographic, not only was I the only female there dangerously close to her 30s without descendants, I was also in the rather lucky situation that I did not need the certificate for visa reasons, nor would it have any effect on my professional prospects. My posts might often give the wrong the impression, but I was there just for the love of German. I’m a professional linguist, I can’t live in Berlin and not learn the language. Yet there are many people that don’t - hence the integration courses. All the people gathered that Thursday in room 305 had successfully completed such a course. The only non-compliant element to be found, much to the chagrin of the representative of the integration ministry, was the sound system. Microphones rarely want to integrate.

We all waited patiently in our seats while I tried to discreetly eyeball the cake table. A couple of babies started loudly protesting, perhaps also piqued by the lack of Hanuta bars (Danish butter biscuits at a German induction ceremony? I thought I was there to be integrated, not the other way around) While I pondered the symbolic ramifications of baked goods, the integration ministry delegate successfully integrated the microphone. What followed was a predictable speech on the importance of language to German society. Partly catering to the linguistic level of the attendants, partly to hammer the message home, her rhetoric was littered with keywords such as “society”, “community”, “common language”, and “increased opportunities”. She reminded me of a nationalist Buddhist monk repeating a particularly cherished mantra. We were then serenaded by a capella version of the national anthem. I really wanted a Hanuta bar. We were called individually to receive our certificates. One by one we went up and were handed a red rose and our certificate by the two official looking officials. I also found out why so many of the recipients had been to the hairdresser. We were meant to greet the suits and then have our picture taken sandwiched between them as a memento. I had not been coiffed nor did I have a photogenic baby to accessorise my certificate and rose. Merely my awkward smile. If I had known in advance that the pampers count was going to be this high I could have borrowed one - I live in Prenzlauer Berg after all. For an integration ceremony I was feeling rather out of place. 

The capella group reappeared and gave us a Spring hymn, for which they received some integration singing roses. Then the teachers were honoured with some more red buds too. Maybe Interflora was sponsoring the event. I would have preferred Hanuta. We all politely clapped. Then people broke off to get some tea, Turkish tea, coffee and decidedly non-German biscuits. Alas, I had another appointment, and left with my rose and certificate, soon to be accompanied by an integration Ritter Sport.

I’m writing you this letter to tell you I’m on my way

I’m coming home

And nothing, nothing, nothing can’t get in my way

Babe, I’ve changed…

– Goldhawk Road, Tina Dico

Some time ago I was labelled fat-skinny by Grazia, a rigorous publication with impeccable scientific credentials, and a respected authority on nutrition and €4,000 must-have ostrich bags. Now, I would never normally harbour doubts against such an assertion, but I have occasionally pondered whether fat-skinny is yet another hare-brained collective delusion courtesy the thick-thin Grazia writers. It is, after all, the year of the rabbit.

Now my beloved Guardian (et tu, Brute?) informs me that my voice inhabits a grey zone, a metaphorical one, as opposed to the physical space occupied by my semantically indecisive body mass. You see, I have been put into the “exophone” box (provided that my fat skinny body fits, of course). Exophone, derived from the Greek prefix “exo”, meaning “outside” and the word “phone” denoting “voice” or “sound”, refers to the phenomenon of writing in a language other than the one you were born into. Like I’m doing right now. At this very instant. Have you found any syntactic incongruity yet? A suspiciously foreign word choice that grates on your native ears? A dubiously placed preposition perhaps? If you haven’t, you’re probably going to now.

I grew up speaking Danish and Spanish. Does my Spanish background betray me? Perhaps my vocabulary is characterised by a marked preference for Latin etymology rather than Anglo-Saxon. Anglo-Saxon, i.e. Old English, is a West Germanic language. So is Danish. Well, it is actually a North Germanic language. I’m sure all you Germanic connoisseurs detected a certain je Norse sais quoi in my writing*. What can I say, it’s in my blood. My Spanish plasma does not contain red blood cells, it contains rrrrred blaaad sills. I am an exophone, forever condemned to a self-imposed linguistic exile, forever shackled to this phoney feeling. 

The addition of German to my linguistic repertoire is not going to help matters (and it will certainly upset the North versus West Germanic equation, as I assume that German is  Omni-Germanic). Not that I speak Luther’s language fluently, not by any means, but I have established friendships in which German is the main medium of communication. The German I is not as fully-fledged as the English I, the Danish I, or for that matter the Spanish ¡ay, caramba!. Which one is the real I? Is it a combination thereof? I have spent roughly a third of my life in each of Denmark, England and Spain.

Most of my adult life has taken place in England, so it is only natural that I should formulate my adult thoughts in English. They’re few and far between to begin with. Most of my half-baked ideas and fully-fledged rants are product of over-dinner conversations with my English fiancé (I should’ve probably plumped for the Anglo-Saxon “betrothed”, but I have no dowry and Richard III is no longer king of England). It is only natural that I should want to record these exchanges and conclusions in English. Why would I want to translate them into Danish or Spanish, stripping them in the process of subtle yet vital nuances and removing them from the original context. Because I can’t feel in English? 

Karen Blixen: Not included in the Guardian’s list.

The term “exo” in “exophone” implies an emotional disconnection, a semantic slap to the face. And I never liked metaphorical violence, or real insults for that matter. The linguistic essentialism latent in the term troubles me. Am I unable to express genuine emotions in English? Perhaps the 1985 Spanish me is somehow more real than the 2011 English me. Maybe I have an immutable mother tongue kernel to which I’m no longer loyal. That would be rather unfortunate, because for the past 10 years English has been the language in which I have loved. I was proposed to in English, I accepted in English. In fact my constant bad punning and penchant for wordplay could be read as an ongoing love letter to my future husband, a homage to the linguistic treasures I’ve stumbled across during our decade-long dialogue.

Or maybe I am destined to forever be the exophone, never the ex-phoney, because I will always be phoney, a linguistic transvestite masquerading as an English speaker. Pity, I actually prefer the newly coined “ex-phoney” , which is a misleading hybrid just like myself. The prefix “ex”, like “exo” denotes “out of, from out” but it normally precedes words borrowed from Latin. The “phoney” found in “ex-phoney” is also not a corruption of the Greek “phone”, as some might assume, but an alteration of “fawney”, a gilt brass ring used by swindlers, from the Irish Gaelic “fáinne”, meaning ring. You could say that “phoney” is a phoney “phone”, an etymological red herring. No wonder a phoneys like myself likes it. So to recap, “exophone” is made up of two Old Greek components. “ex-phoney” is composed of the Latin suffix “ex”, cognate of the Greek “exo” and customary chaperone of Latin nouns, plus an Irish Gaelic corruption disguised as a Greek word. A true linguistic mutt.

“Exophone” is, on the other hand, a pure Hellenic neologism coined presumably by exophonic people themselves, who wanted to put their Classics degrees to use and whose dabblings in the Greek language should, according to their own linguistic intolerance, be as genuine as the Sirtaki dance in Zorba the Greek. Confused yet? You should be.

All this fancy terminology cobbled together from two dead languages, Latin and Old Greek… who since the 6th century has been able to claim that Latin is their mother tongue? Apart from the Pope, of course, whose views are, incidentally, also stuck in the Dark Ages. 

Thanks to the enthusiastic coining of these exophones, Latin and Old Greek now boast a larger semantic pool than they did in the times of Socrates & co. Because nobody actually speaks these languages anymore, it is quite common to encounter accidental amalgamations of Latin and Greek roots. The word “television”, for an instance, is a well-known example, consisting of the Greek word “tele” (far) and the Latin word “visio”. These hybrids are known as heteroradicals (the Pope is a huge fan), “heteroradical” being, of course, also a heteroradical word (from the Greek “hetero” meaning “to differ” and the Latin “radix” i.e. root). You might be shocked to hear that some purists dislike these heteroradicals. I believe these are the same people who get their pedantic panties in a twist every time they suddenly encounter a split infinitive. I am more astounded by the fact that a purist should show opposition to a word containing “hetero” and “radical”.

I am also slightly perplexed by people who can so authoritatively argue about an obsolete language that has been relegated to scientific nomenclature and intellectual pomposity. And also used to label, in the best Foucaltian fashion, linguistic dissidents like me, who have spent most of their adult lives thinking, dreaming and being perplexed in an adopted language.

Some time ago I went to see Tina Dico in concert. Danish by birth - her surname is actually Dickow - this singer-songwriter spent a large part of the last decade living in London. I actually attended a gig at the Union Chapel during my own London years. And now she was in Berlin, touring after her recent return to Denmark. She was no longer based in the British capital and yet the city had left a visible imprint. Her Danish cadences had, like mine, been gradually eroded and I even detected the hint of an Estuarian accent. Dico has always composed in English and her songs often revolve around the themes of exile, belonging and travelling. Berlin’s Admiralspalast was thronged that evening with the Danish diaspora and as the opening chords to “Count to Ten” echoed throughout the hall, they rose to their feet, as if following an invisible command, and enthusiastically accompanied Dico in her tales of transience and topographical dislodgement. They were all singing in English, united by their Danishness. Singing in Berlin, many accompanied by their German partners. I could hear one of them waxing lyrical about Dico’s English lyrics in fluent German to her partner. I guess I had stumbled into an exophone convention.

*Anglo-Saxon purists, I have some bad news for you! (apart from the obvious fact that you’re Anglo-Saxon purists in the 21st century): The UK (particularly northern England) attracted some - presumably very lost - Vikings on the way to Mallorca in the ninth century. As a result, English contains large swathes of North Germanic words. In fact, “Words of Scandinavian origin rarely look or feel foreign to modern English-speakers. They have been completely assimilated, and most denote everyday objects” (From The Secret Life of Words: How English Became English, Henry Hitchings.)