On love across a language barrier

The majority of both my long- and short- term relationships have been across a national boundary. Long term I've lived with Greeks, Germans, and Czechs, all of whom have been fluent in conversational English. Short term I've had a couple flings where I've had to rely heavily on the medium of a bilingual dictionary.

First thing to say is that if you love languages, then the experience of getting up close and personal with the speech organs of a non-native speaker is extremely sensual. Indeed, even more so when they are limited to their own tongue. All you have to do is listen to the language used by phoneticians to describe the position and movement of these organs during the act articulation to realise just how carnal the act of speaking actually is.

For a start there are rhotic and non-rhotic accents of English depending on whether the /r/ sound is consistently pronounced when present. In rhotic accents like my own Scottish version of English, the /r/ in words like carpet, work and bird is pronounced as a explosive tap of the tongue against the hard-flesh ridge where the teeth meet the palette. In Spanish, the /r/ in equivalent contexts would be trilled by holding it in position against this ridge, and passing a fast-moving current of air over it until it begins to quiver. In American and Irish English, you simply get a slight tongue curl back in the direction of the soft palette like the end of particularly extravagant lick.

As the most exposed of the speech organs, the lips present the most visually thrilling aspect of articulation. And here too the language used to describe their movements and contact with other speech organs is highly graphic. 

Let's stick with consonants for the time being. Whereas vowels are characterised by the free movement of air through the mouth, consonants momentarily impede or block this movement. Sometimes the air is partially blocked, as is the case with the infinitely sensual labio-dental fricatives /f/ and /v/. As the name suggests, these sounds are formed by biting the bottom lip gently enough to allow air to escape only under pressure. Pressure builds up behind the narrow opening and is released slowly under a degree of friction, greater or lesser depending on the strength of that bite.

At other times, the lips are responsible for the sudden release of tension, as is the case with the bi-labial plosives /b/ and /p/. Air pressure mounts behind the sealed lips which suddenly yield and part with a burst of sound.

And then there are the vowels. There are twelve monophthongs or short vowels in Southern British English. They differ in terms of the position of the tongue and the lips. The tongue can be high or low; front or back within the mouth. The lips can be pursed or spread. For vowels articulated with a low tongue position and spread lips, like the /a/ in cat, the viewer has maximum access to the speaker's mouth, and can clearly see the tongue lying broad and flat. For pursed-lip vowels in which the tongue is high in the mouth, like the /u:/ in blue, the lips are neatly puckered up as if ready to kiss.

So far I've mostly been describing the mechanics of producing English language sounds. But of course, speakers of languages other than English produce sounds which are entirely absent from this repertoire. And it is precisely these sounds that exert the greatest fascination for me, for the speaker is manipulating their speech organs in a way which is entirely novel. Normally, we don't get close enough to speakers to notice these movements. But with the proximity which romantic intimacy allows, we can not only see these differences, but can request private shows in the form of slow motion replays.

Take for example the Spanish sound /β/ in the middle of the word lobo. The so-called voiced bilabial fricative is one of the most characteristic sounds in Spanish, and one wholly absent from English. Whereas we have a /v/ sound where the teeth are clearly visible on the bottom lip, Spanish speakers can make an approximation to this sound using their lips alone. 

The result for a English-speaking lover poised on an barstool in close proximity is instant fascination. Here is a mis-match between the sound that you hear and the position of the speakers' lips. An anomaly that you notice precisely because as a lover, you spend a great deal of time focused upon those lips in anticipation of pending intimacy. 

With this realisation, your attention becomes ever more trained on their lips in an attempt to better understand how they can produce the illusion of /v/ with their lips alone. Your comprehension of content drops off as the language you are exposed to becomes less a stream of meaning than a bodily act, one in which soft tissues meet and part, alternately creating and releasing tension. Instinctively you begin to empathise with your lover's movements, to feel their muscle tone increasing as their lips spread and purse, as well as the tapped and flicked contact of their tongue against the soft tissue of their mouth. And then you give in and beg them for a demonstration, in slow motion of course, so that you might fully both satisfy your curiosity and sharpen your appetite for what might eventually occur when you both stop talking.

If this sounds like foreplay, then imagine what role the reading of poetry might play in the bed of international lovers? Above all other forms of literature, poetry showcases not only the sounds of a language, but also the rhythm. Through poetic devices such as alliteration, assonance, rhyme and meter, patterns of sound and rhythm are foregrounded in much the same way as the lover's fascinated gaze transforms bare conversation into a carnal act. It is the unique status of poetry that it yields nothing in terms of meaning to a listener unacquainted with the language, yet everything in terms of sound. In the international bed, poetry can only be a carnal and sensual act, one which focuses the lovers on the intimacy of each others' lips and tongue in an act of empathy.