Language is hard that way
So, I was writing yesterday and asking twitter stupid questions, and I started thinking about the English language. Because it's a marvelously flexible language, and most of the time I feel like I have multiple ways of describing everything with just a word and still make it sound subtly different every time. I love that.
That being said, there are moments when English just doesn't cut it. There are moments when I can think of half a dozen words in Swedish that could fit, and not one with the right sort of tone in English. Trying to describe a place that is really fucking cold is one of them, so I'm forced to conclude that a staggering number of English speakers -- unless they're from north Canada or Alaska, and there's what, 13 people and a reindeer up there -- grow up in too warm climates.
Because I've experienced thirty-five below (Celsius, to clarify) and that's really fucking cold, okay? There were days when you walked out the door and it was like walking into a solid wall of COLD. The very first breath of air left your lungs burning like a smoker trying to run a mile, and your face felt like it had been scrubbed raw with a steel brush. Of course, you tried to keep as much of yourself covered, but that still left your breath to condense on your scarf, leaving ice crystals rubbing against your face. The hairs in your nostrils froze almost right away, you felt like you could barely breathe through your nose at all, and the muscles in your face kind of experienced a seizure then and there. Opening your jaw was hard fucking work when it was really cold. Smiling, and sometimes speaking, felt slow and clumsy and sometimes you could barely move your mouth or your lips would split open and you'd be bleeding from the cracks.
And then it didn't really matter if you were wearing gloves or mittens, your fingers still felt like they were burning, until you had to ball your hands inside your mittens to keep your pinkies from falling off. Not to mention how the skin on your thighs would always burn when you got back inside, feeling like frostbite and taking forever to get warm again, and then it didn't matter if you were wearing layers, you always ended up with popsicles for legs.
Ears too. If you weren't covering your head properly they'd feel like they were falling off within seconds, and ugh, the headache was awful. And if you had long hair, whatever hair peaking out would inevitably turn white with frost after five minutes. Tears, snot, whatever, froze to your face.
And your toes! Man, sometimes you walked out the door, take two steps and it would feel like your toes were about to fall right off, didn't matter if you were wearing heavy boots or not. And once you got back inside, your skin was always so cold you felt like you were burning all over, bright red hands, face, feet.
And see, that's a fairly decent description of cold, I feel. And yet. And yet, I could do fucking better in Swedish. I really hate it when that happens.
That being said, there are moments when English just doesn't cut it. There are moments when I can think of half a dozen words in Swedish that could fit, and not one with the right sort of tone in English. Trying to describe a place that is really fucking cold is one of them, so I'm forced to conclude that a staggering number of English speakers -- unless they're from north Canada or Alaska, and there's what, 13 people and a reindeer up there -- grow up in too warm climates.
Because I've experienced thirty-five below (Celsius, to clarify) and that's really fucking cold, okay? There were days when you walked out the door and it was like walking into a solid wall of COLD. The very first breath of air left your lungs burning like a smoker trying to run a mile, and your face felt like it had been scrubbed raw with a steel brush. Of course, you tried to keep as much of yourself covered, but that still left your breath to condense on your scarf, leaving ice crystals rubbing against your face. The hairs in your nostrils froze almost right away, you felt like you could barely breathe through your nose at all, and the muscles in your face kind of experienced a seizure then and there. Opening your jaw was hard fucking work when it was really cold. Smiling, and sometimes speaking, felt slow and clumsy and sometimes you could barely move your mouth or your lips would split open and you'd be bleeding from the cracks.
And then it didn't really matter if you were wearing gloves or mittens, your fingers still felt like they were burning, until you had to ball your hands inside your mittens to keep your pinkies from falling off. Not to mention how the skin on your thighs would always burn when you got back inside, feeling like frostbite and taking forever to get warm again, and then it didn't matter if you were wearing layers, you always ended up with popsicles for legs.
Ears too. If you weren't covering your head properly they'd feel like they were falling off within seconds, and ugh, the headache was awful. And if you had long hair, whatever hair peaking out would inevitably turn white with frost after five minutes. Tears, snot, whatever, froze to your face.
And your toes! Man, sometimes you walked out the door, take two steps and it would feel like your toes were about to fall right off, didn't matter if you were wearing heavy boots or not. And once you got back inside, your skin was always so cold you felt like you were burning all over, bright red hands, face, feet.
And see, that's a fairly decent description of cold, I feel. And yet. And yet, I could do fucking better in Swedish. I really hate it when that happens.