WEBVTT

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One of my favorite
places to hang out

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is the language
lab, universities.

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I don't know if many of
you have frequented them.

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I would go there, of course, to
see the people in the pilots'

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headphones and everything.

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But what I really like is
hearing the obsessive regret

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that goes on in so many
different languages.

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If you remember, it's only
ever the same problems,

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but is the same problem in
god knows how many languages.

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This is about a language
lab at Cornell University.

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"Doing Spanish, a young girl
resumes her lament, briskly,

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in a blood-chilling monotone.

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'My father is very sick, he
is growing thin and pale.

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Yes, my mother is sick too,
and we are terribly worried.'

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For half an hour, a
slim marzipany voice

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renders color, fruit,
and weather in French.

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He orders lunch in a
cafe, then his mood sours.

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'I was hungry,' he moans
to his tape recorder.

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And mispronouncing only
one vowel, says instead,

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'I had a woman.'

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Sniggers from the
Belgians and Ghanaians.

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A Black face drifts around
the booth wall like a nimbus:

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faim, not femme.

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He wags a long finger:
bad trouble you mix them.

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Hunched over a machine, a Syrian
mutters, 'I am not your sister,

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I am nobody's sister.'

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A Bolivian boy waves from
a corner seat, his teeth

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fiery in the bomb-bright neon.

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'Hola, Diana, how's
your sick family today?'

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His new English wobbles
like a first bicycle.

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'About the same,' I answer,
dragging off my headset.

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'Mom's dying, dad's still
in that same auto wreck.'

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'I'm sorry, so terribly
sorry,' a Korean bows,

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as if telling Hail Marys.

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'So sorry, so terribly sorry, so
sorry,' while a spiky red-head

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repents in Portuguese for all
the heresy and lust she looks

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forward to.

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Only false gods
rule in this babble

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of curt pleas and
one syllable verbs,

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where the heart's always blunt
enough to slap a noun on.

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And too willingly, the felt
dissolves in the salable.

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The room swells with an
extra Afghan, Thai, or Swede

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and the occasional onlooker,
trying to make sense of it,

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finds the world shrunk to 25
bright islands, an archipelago

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of madness and regret."

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[APPLAUSE]

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