No one else can hear the baby speak, but I can. I can hear her say ‘up’ and ‘clap’, I hear ‘stairs’. I hear ‘string’. No one believes my baby says ‘string’, but I know she does, because she loves the bit of string that is tied to the door of the car, and she says ‘shing’. You have to listen hard, I admit that.
For months we have been on call and answer. ‘Ah da da dah,’ says the child. ‘Ah dah dee doo dah,’ I say back. This conversation is surprisingly complex, and gives me a new respect for birds, whales and chimpanzees. With three or four syllables, in all their variations, we can say, the two of us, all that we need, for now, to say.
Still, I dream of the baby turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing like, ‘Can I go to the shops?’ I know it is in there somewhere — before her first word was ever uttered, there were full sentences playing across her face. The trick is getting them out of there — like pulling down the weather.
There is nothing so exciting as speech. A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned. It is the gaze made manifest. Teaching a child to speak is giving them the world. It is better than feeding them, I realise, as I stand beside the kitchen counter, dropping scraps of words to my daughter’s up-tilted face. And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision. All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma.
I develop a theory that all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room. I test this theory any time I am at a reading or conference, I float it across the dinner table. The last time I did this, one of the writers did not answer. He had started to cry.
Anne Enright, ‘Speech’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 171-72.
Ninguén máis pode oír o que di a meniña, pero eu si. Podo oíla dicir “colo” e “palmiñas”, óiolle “chanzos”. Óiolle “amalló”. Ninguén cre que a miña meniña diga “amalló”, pero eu sei que o di, porque está engaiolada co amalló atado á porta do coche, e di “maló”. Cómpre prestar moita atención, debo admitilo.
Levamos meses coa teima da chamada-resposta. “Aa da da daa”, di a nena. “Aa daa dii duu daa”, retrúcolle eu. Esta conversa é insospeitadamente complexa e faime sentir un respecto renovado polos paxaros, as baleas e os chimpancés. Con tres ou catro sílabas, en todas as súas variacións, podemos dicir, nós as dúas, todo o que, polo de agora, precisamos dicir.
Así e todo, soño que a meniña se dá a volta e abre a boca para dicir algo marabilloso, longo e sintacticamente abraiante como “Podo ir de tendas?”. Sei que aí, algures ‒antes de ela pronunciar a primeira palabra‒, había frases completas rebuldando na súa cara. O truco está en sacalas de aí ‒como quen vaticina o tempo.
Nada hai tan emocionante como a fala. Unha meniña mírache á cara cando dis unha palabra e o que transcorre entre as dúas, cando escoitas a palabra de volta, é amor e amor correspondido. É a ollada feita son. Aprenderlle a falar a unha crianza é como lle dar o mundo. É ben mellor que darlle de comer, doume de conta cando, de pé a carón do mesado, deito migallas de palabras sobre a face alzada da miña filla. Penso entón que todas as palabras son sustento sublimado, ou a petición de sustento, ou a súa provisión. Todas as palabras acontecen no espazo entre ti e a túa querida Naiciña.
Teño a teoría de que todos os escritores teñen Nais de Categoría, Nais Severas, ás veces Nais Esixentes ‒ ese tipo de mulleres que sempre recoñeces cando están preto. Poño a proba esta teoría cada vez que leo en público ou dou unha conferencia, déixoa voar na cea sobre a mesa. A última vez que o fixen, un dos escritores non contestou. Botárase a chorar.
No one else can hear the baby speak, but I can. I can hear her say ‘up’ and ‘clap’, I hear ‘stairs’. I hear ‘string’. No one believes my baby says ‘string’, but I know she does, because she loves the bit of string that is tied to the door of the car, and she says ‘shing’. You have to listen hard, I admit that.
For months we have been on call and answer. ‘Ah da da dah,’ says the child. ‘Ah dah dee doo dah,’ I say back. This conversation is surprisingly complex, and gives me a new respect for birds, whales and chimpanzees. With three or four syllables, in all their variations, we can say, the two of us, all that we need, for now, to say.
Still, I dream of the baby turning around, and opening her mouth to say something wonderful and long and syntactically amazing like, ‘Can I go to the shops?’ I know it is in there somewhere — before her first word was ever uttered, there were full sentences playing across her face. The trick is getting them out of there — like pulling down the weather.
There is nothing so exciting as speech. A baby looks at your face as you say a word, and whatever passes between you as you hear the word back, is love and love returned. It is the gaze made manifest. Teaching a child to speak is giving them the world. It is better than feeding them, I realise, as I stand beside the kitchen counter, dropping scraps of words to my daughter’s up-tilted face. And I think that all words are sublimated nurture, or a request for nurture, or its provision. All words happen in the space between you and your dear old Ma.
I develop a theory that all writers have Major Mothers, Serious Mothers, sometimes Demanding Mothers — the kind of women you always know when they are in the room. I test this theory any time I am at a reading or conference, I float it across the dinner table. The last time I did this, one of the writers did not answer. He had started to cry.
Anne Enright, ‘Speech’ in Making Babies: Stumbling into Motherhood, London: Vintage, 2005, 171-72.
Ninguén máis pode oír o que di a meniña, pero eu si. Podo oíla dicir “colo” e “palmiñas”, óiolle “chanzos”. Óiolle “amalló”. Ninguén cre que a miña meniña diga “amalló”, pero eu sei que o di, porque está engaiolada co amalló atado á porta do coche, e di “maló”. Cómpre prestar moita atención, debo admitilo.
Levamos meses coa teima da chamada-resposta. “Aa da da daa”, di a nena. “Aa daa dii duu daa”, retrúcolle eu. Esta conversa é insospeitadamente complexa e faime sentir un respecto renovado polos paxaros, as baleas e os chimpancés. Con tres ou catro sílabas, en todas as súas variacións, podemos dicir, nós as dúas, todo o que, polo de agora, precisamos dicir.
Así e todo, soño que a meniña se dá a volta e abre a boca para dicir algo marabilloso, longo e sintacticamente abraiante como “Podo ir de tendas?”. Sei que aí, algures ‒antes de ela pronunciar a primeira palabra‒, había frases completas rebuldando na súa cara. O truco está en sacalas de aí ‒como quen vaticina o tempo.
Nada hai tan emocionante como a fala. Unha meniña mírache á cara cando dis unha palabra e o que transcorre entre as dúas, cando escoitas a palabra de volta, é amor e amor correspondido. É a ollada feita son. Aprenderlle a falar a unha crianza é como lle dar o mundo. É ben mellor que darlle de comer, doume de conta cando, de pé a carón do mesado, deito migallas de palabras sobre a face alzada da miña filla. Penso entón que todas as palabras son sustento sublimado, ou a petición de sustento, ou a súa provisión. Todas as palabras acontecen no espazo entre ti e a túa querida Naiciña.
Teño a teoría de que todos os escritores teñen Nais de Categoría, Nais Severas, ás veces Nais Esixentes ‒ ese tipo de mulleres que sempre recoñeces cando están preto. Poño a proba esta teoría cada vez que leo en público ou dou unha conferencia, déixoa voar na cea sobre a mesa. A última vez que o fixen, un dos escritores non contestou. Botárase a chorar.
Translation commentary
Manuela Palacios and Arturo Casas
Is the mother-baby language universal? One would feel inclined to affirm that it travels well between Ireland and Galicia when one reads Anne Enright’s onomatopoeias in the call and answer game between the mother and the child: ‘Ah da da dah’, ‘Ah dah dee doo dah’. We do not need to change the order of the syllables or their basic sounds in our translation into Galician. We can simply make minor adaptations in the spelling that convey minor alterations in the pronunciation to adapt those sounds to Galician phonetics: ‘Aa da da daa’, ‘Aa daa dii duu daa’.
However, when we look beyond onomatopoeias and pay attention to actual nouns, the whole hypothesis of a universal language crumbles and the crude reality of the contrast between Anglo-Saxon and Latin lexicon makes itself evident to the extent that those genuine monosyllables ‒ ‘up’, ‘clap’, ‘stairs’, ‘string’‒ must be transformed into words with two or even three syllables ‒‘colo’, ‘palmiñas’, ‘chanzos’, ‘amalló’‒ with the concomitant effect that either the baby in the Galician version is older and at a more advanced stage in her linguistic development or the mother’s imaginings about her child’s proficiency are exceedingly fanciful ‒ a feature that actually suits the humorous tenor of this excerpt.