Level Three. What do you Mean?

Level Three. What do you Mean?

By Michelle Lloyd.

It could be strange. Listening to derivations of sayings and people’s own interpretations of what expressions meant. There were many times when New One felt as if he had been rather led astray.

It was only in asking that New One could find out more about what was meant by this or that… otherwise he would have felt totally up the creek without a paddle.

The family had been on a short holiday, a mini break that had been quite enlightening. In an area known as beautiful by the locals, New One had stayed and played out almost every day.

In getting better acquainted with the local children New One had found his ears pricking up to all sorts of new to him phrases. At first it had been mildly off putting to not understand what was being said but then rather quickly he started to guess at the gist of it. The only problem with this method was that he kept getting left out of the rules of games and at one point, he even ended up in a right dilemma, as he got left behind and nearly lost.

On getting back to the track of their lodge, New One decided that it was best to hedge his bets and ask if he didn’t know. He feared it would be a reason for him to be singled out or laughed at but far from it, in needing some vocabulary help, New One became the centre of attention.

Helped out and hinted at, even finding out about new diction became a game in itself. It was by the time that the family were heading home that New One was almost speaking like one of the locals himself.

New One’s parents were extremely proud of his linguistic prowess but they only had one problem… his multiple phrases, abbreviations and slang showed him to be quite proficient but how were they going to understand him, themselves?