Poem: "And Then It Clicked"
Dec. 24th, 2021 01:18 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ysabetwordsmithThis poem is spillover from the October 6, 2020 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by a prompt from Anonymous. It also fills the "Vulnerability: unable to communicate" square in my 8-1-20 card for the Five Moments of Intimacy Bingo fest. This poem belongs to the Sounds of Civilization series. It comes between "Clear as a Whistle" and "The Flesh of Many Voices."
"And Then It Clicked"
After the diplomats
came the traders.
The Avari enjoyed
travel and politics, but
had no head for numbers.
The Jikiki looked like
giant insects instead of
birds, with bright green wings
and long legs for leaping.
Their temperament was
too sharp for diplomacy,
but they did brisk trade.
Unlike the Avari, though,
the Jikiki could not whistle
in Silbo Gomero, and
other human languages
were even worse.
Their rigid mouthparts
were entirely unsuited
to soft human sounds.
They did a little better with
some African languages
that had fewer of the fricatives
the aliens found so difficult.
The linguists and translators
who spoke many African tongues
fared quite well in the trades.
And then it clicked.
The Jikiki liked Xhosa,
a language with consonants
made of clicks and clucks that
were easier for the insectoid aliens
to hear and to pronounce.
It was harder for humans
to learn as a foreign language,
but still easier than trying
to learn alien ones.
So Xhosa became
the language of trade.
* * *
Notes:
English, which is currently a leading world language, has some phonemes and other features that make it difficult for non-native speakers to master. Among these are the two "th" sounds beginning "thick" and "then." Look on the map and you'll see that not only are they rare in general, they're absent from most of Africa, which is why so many African accents use th-stopping.
Xhosa is an African language that uses click consonants.
Katydids and other insects often use clicking sounds.
"And Then It Clicked"
After the diplomats
came the traders.
The Avari enjoyed
travel and politics, but
had no head for numbers.
The Jikiki looked like
giant insects instead of
birds, with bright green wings
and long legs for leaping.
Their temperament was
too sharp for diplomacy,
but they did brisk trade.
Unlike the Avari, though,
the Jikiki could not whistle
in Silbo Gomero, and
other human languages
were even worse.
Their rigid mouthparts
were entirely unsuited
to soft human sounds.
They did a little better with
some African languages
that had fewer of the fricatives
the aliens found so difficult.
The linguists and translators
who spoke many African tongues
fared quite well in the trades.
And then it clicked.
The Jikiki liked Xhosa,
a language with consonants
made of clicks and clucks that
were easier for the insectoid aliens
to hear and to pronounce.
It was harder for humans
to learn as a foreign language,
but still easier than trying
to learn alien ones.
So Xhosa became
the language of trade.
* * *
Notes:
English, which is currently a leading world language, has some phonemes and other features that make it difficult for non-native speakers to master. Among these are the two "th" sounds beginning "thick" and "then." Look on the map and you'll see that not only are they rare in general, they're absent from most of Africa, which is why so many African accents use th-stopping.
Xhosa is an African language that uses click consonants.
Katydids and other insects often use clicking sounds.
