language
I work at the National Test Pilot School, where pilots, engineers, and other students come from all over the world to take courses and earn certificates and degrees as Flight Test Engineers and Flight Test Pilots. It’s really badass and an amazing environment to work in — full of passion and diligence. I meet so many incredible, remarkable, fascinating, big-hearted people!
My whole life, I have loved languages, culture, geography, and travel. It’s always been a major point of interest and curiosity for me to learn about other countries, and I want to see them all (ok, not quite 😜). Now, I meet people from many countries on a regular basis, and it’s not uncommon to hear several different languages being spoken throughout the day, all around the school! How amazing is that?!
It’s been a terrific fit for me — the role I was hired for, the company itself, and the environment and people.
One of the newer students is from Israel, and we had lunch together in the break room a couple weeks ago. His English is excellent, but he’s also still learning and fine-tuning his fluency. Sometimes he has vocabulary or grammar questions. Sometimes a word escapes him.
As someone who would LOVE to be a multilinguist and has dreamt forever of being fluent in Spanish, for starters, this actually blows my mind almost daily… I cannot fathom how all these students and instructors have not only learned second — or third or fourth! — languages but have also mastered them so competently as to work their careers in that foreign country, in another language, to give and listen to lectures in their second language, and on and on! It is a fact of sheer awe and wonderment to me. To be so fluent in your second language as to be able to carry out all needed professional communication AND to speak with ease in social matters, casual lingo, make jokes, understand linguistic nuances, have the massive vocabulary for any topic you wish to discuss… there are so many words!!! And even further, inflections and contexts! It’s just stunningly cool and desirable to me. It seems impossible. My envy gives me the reminder that I want it too, and I must devote myself to learning and achieving it. Because I LOVE it. Language is so rad.
So this student from Israel sat down at my table, and we shared our lunch break, talking amiably. He’s easy to like and has a warm smile and personality. He is kind, humble, and cheerful. So far, I have only ever seen him in a good mood, even when facing many challenges. We were discussing the local area, how his family is getting settled in their big move to another country, cultural foods, grocery shopping, that sort of thing. He mentioned the windmills filling the Mojave Desert and Tehachapi Pass (there are thousands, and they’re one of the most distinctive, more well-known features of Tehachapi and Mojave). Only, he did not know the English word for windmill. As I told him, he repeated it back to me, then asked me how it’s spelled, and he closed his eyes and focused on the letters.
I have always found it so interesting some people are so strongly visual and others very verbal or textual. I am like this student: I need things spelled out for me. I remember people’s names by how they are spelled. If I’ve read something over and over, I’m much more likely to be able to bring it to mind. If I’ve seen someone’s name in my calendar or on a website or wherever, it’s far easier for me to remember. And when I think of a person, I might see their face in my mind, I might picture memories or plans with them, but I also predominantly see their name spelled out, the letters floating in my mind!
Language connects, broadens, and expands. The world is massive and only gets bigger the more you know and learn. We must experience. We must enjoy it together and find our place with all other creatures on the planet. We are one!
I love the bridges built through common language. I love learning more about other people and seeing how alike we all are, despite completely different cultures and communication. I love hearing language that feels, literally, in every sense of the word, foreign. I love humanity.
