Lost in translation

You say pants. I say pants. I wear your pants under my pants. She pants out, "Fantastic. That is just pants! I'm panting to try them on."

What in the devil are you panting on about?

YES. EXACTLY!

Are we talking trousers or are we talking knickers? Or are we just talking? Are we huffing? Or puffing? Or blowing the house down? Fabulous? Are you joking?

Now, that's pants.

And we are just talking English to English here. Do other cultures have more meaning in pants? Maybe in some culture pants means shoes? Who knows?


Have you ever said something and someone misinterpreted it entirely, and they are so convinced that it made you doubt if what you say meant what you say or what he think you say?

Happens to me all the time.

And I would go home and think, "Wait, but that is not what I wanted to say. How did things got messed up?" The funny thing is, it always happened after I got home and never in the heat of the moment. I would always be too confused even to try to explain what I meant originally while the discussion is in process.

I blame this impossible-to-understand entry on Ted Leo and the Pharmacists' The Ballad of the Sin Eater.

and when i say, "me" i mean my brain.
and when i say "give me the cure" i mean to kill the pain.
and when i say "kill the pain" i meant to get the devil out.
and when i say "devil" i mean the manifestation of doubt!

...
..

Alright. Took me a while and 3 trips around the bush to get my point straight. My point is there are flaws in the spoken language. There will always be that little translation black hole, even if the same language if being used.

The idea sparks out with the arguement on the evolution of the English Vocabulary. We bend and twist the language until we barely recognize it anymore. Not that it's a bad thing. Some new words offer clarification to the existing vocabularies.

My friends are broken up in 2 main camps. One considered themselves the "English Elitists" and the other, the "Language Liberation Artists."

I don't know, the conservative side of me still believe in grammars and the correct usages of the vocabulary. However, there is something lingering in the back of my brain that contradicts it. Perhaps, the fact that English is not my native tongue has something to do with it.

I need a few more days to cook this up into a coherent idea. As for now, I'm panting for some lesson in J.R.R. Tolkien's Elvish.

La.