For all the languages that I've played with or spoken, their difficulties and complexity, I still have the impression sometimes that I have the most trouble with english.
My german singing teacher in Paris was always terribly impressed with the Shubert lieder's that she'd give me, and how easily I pronounced the new syllables without stopping to worry that I was doing something difficult.
The Italian Vaccaj's? I helped her with the pronnunciations.
French? Hebrew?
I can mutter intelligibly for at least a few sentences before someone figures out that I'm not from there.
Polish? Almost, despite it being twenty years since I've spoken it.
But one little scottish folk song that my teacher handed me yesterday afternoon...
I can't figure out what have the words mean, let alone pronounce them. I stumble. I substitute words.
It's very disconcerting. Perhaps it comes from taking the language for granted. Perhaps it comes from never having gotten comfortable enough in it whilst out trying to conquer everything from hexadecimal to C++ to corporate banker french.
In my head I am still singing it, though. Ye bank and braes, ye bonnie Doon...
What's a Doon?
How can ye be sae fresh and fair? How can ye chant, ye little birds, and I sae weary and fu' o' ca'e...
Yesterday morning I took the subway downtown just after rush hour, like a grownup.
There was a lady in a pearl-white coat, looking uncomfortable in her skin, but still shockingly beautiful amidst bag-eyed faces.
At Eglinton, I asked a man which way was north, the intersection looked familiar but I'd suddenly gotten utterly turned around.
He called me dear when he answered, his grin splitting his face.
There are a lot of faces like that in Toronto. Shameless, huge-as-the-world grins.
Priceless gems in so many cities, I have had the fortune to see such visions.