The Shape of Language
A poem about speaking in (different) tongues
I wrote first a few weeks ago about my latest language-learning venture. I’m still faithful with on-line Spanish lessons, making progress and then backtracking to review, wondering when I’ll stop stuttering on the trilled “r” and start letting it dance instead. And enjoying the odd kind of fun you can have when you’ve practiced several languages, feeling how each one reconfigures your lips and tongue as well as your brain.
SPEAKING IN SHAPES 2025 French shapes my mouth into a wind-tunnel – consonants tick and dissolve at the gate of my teeth, ribbons of vowels flutter smooth (precieux!) in the breeze of that far-back, fricative r. German shapes my mouth into a Gothic dome – disciplined a’s and o’s like notes of plainsong, clusters of consonants (menschlich), figures sculpted at the base of every vaulting archway. Spanish has not taught my mouth a shape, not yet; just here a word and there a phrase comes singing (¡claro que sí!), tunes played by chance before my lips and tongue have learned this instrument. English is my mouth’s own shape, its whole shape, filling it (like bread, like fruit) like the first song I ever learned, the alphabet song, surely, every letter music, every word at home.
So charming. And this is SO spot on:
"ribbons of vowels flutter smooth (precieux!)
in the breeze of that far-back, fricative r."
Oh!! The alphabet song. My heart leaps. Such a beautiful poem on sound. My musical self celebrates. ♥️