Lost in Translation.

By the time I was eight I had learned from her enough French and German to understand that English was merely one of many ways to express things. A single everyday object could be called assiette orTeller as well as plate – or were plates themselves subtly different in France and Germany? Mademoiselle’s French and Latin prayers seemed to invoke absolutes beyond the ken of our Sunday school pageants. At the same time, I was discovering how the everyday sounds of English could mislead you by having more than one meaning. One afternoon at home I opened a random book and read: "Where is your husband, Alice?" "In the library, sampling the port." If samples were little squares of wallpaper or chintz, and ports were where ships dropped anchor, this hardly clarified the behavior of Alice’s husband. Long after Mademoiselle’s exegesis, the phrase haunted me. Words weren’t what they seemed. The mother tongue could inspire both fascination and distrust.”