I count myself fortunate to have been able to travel to many different countries in the world but, for all the countries I have visited, I remain singularly inept at speaking any languages other than English.

Now, I know that this is a common English cliché.  English people have a reputation for being notoriously sluggish about learning different languages; an unwillingness helped by the fact that so many people overseas are very proficient at speaking English.  However, I am not so sure that I fall into this particular stereotype.

I actively enjoy the fact that when I travel abroad I can understand very little.  Far from being a hindrance, I find my lack of comprehension a positive asset.  It adds to the excitement of being in a new place; increases the sensation of ‘otherness’.  I also find my lack of understanding surprisingly restful.  Whereas in an English-speaking country, I am continually bombarded by unwanted information: programmes on the TV; signs in shop windows; people’s overheard conversations; headlines on newspapers; advertisements and posters; when I am overseas, all of this uninvited stimuli diminishes to a pleasant background blur.  Written language becomes nothing more than pretty pictures; spoken language simply random sounds.  To immerse myself in this world of incomprehension is like taking a detox from the 21^st century.

I find the same principle also works when it comes to religion.  There is little I enjoy more than listening to a Latin mass in a tiny church far removed from anywhere that I consider familiar to me.  I invariably achieve a sense of personal spirituality by allowing myself to be swept along listening to the solemn cadence, immune to the meaning of the bewildering jumble of unknown words.  It is only with understanding that I find my spiritual bubble bursts.  For me, neither William Tyndale nor King James did me any favours.  I like both my religion and my overseas travels served up in unfathomably unintelligible doses.

© E. C. Glendenny

It doesn’t take much to baffle E. C. Glendenny.