by Nina Shevchuk-Murray

LET ME TELL you some things about being a non-native speaker. I know what it means to speak in words that only foggily reflect my true feelings and ideas, to settle for less, because less is better than nothing. I know how to memorize words and start using them. I know that a language is a system, and its structure can and will be labeled, classified, and represented as a network of relationships representing physical reality. I learned English from BBC radio and The New York Times.

For a few years, my brain and cheeks hurt from keeping the proper articulatory base, with that unbearable flat “e” and my mind strained to fill in the gaps—the vernacular English, the onomatopoeic, the baby-talk, the puppy-talk, political abbreviations, words for elementary bodily functions, euphemisms. In the late summer of 2002, I entered my marriage to Sean Murray and the English language. I was the kind of person about whom Sam Seaborn, a “West Wing” character says: “You gotta love the guy who doesn’t understand ‘frumpy’ but knows the word ‘onomatopoeia.’” I might not recognize “pushing up the daisies” for what it really means, but I can lecture on the etymology of the words “husband” and “wife” (both originally referring primarily to economic functions, not familial). I am an adjunct instructor of English. I read, I breathe, I eat, I write. I get visions of myself as a hitchhiker on the side of the great capitalistic highway that higher education has become: I jump into a vehicle of an occasional course, strike up a conversation with whomever is already riding, and get off to take care of the rest of my life. The little monetary value assigned to the services I render, the back seat in the shared cubicle, the unreliability of my engagement (will enough sections fill? Will I get hours tutoring in the writing center?)—all convince me that I am but an accidental bystander on the great all-American college highway.

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