This past June while visiting my friend Kaila in Germany, we played a fun linguistic challenge–an experiment of sorts–while cooking dinner. Kaila is half German and half Norwegian; Miles, her roommate, is half German and half Greek; and I am full American but a wanna-be Spaniard. So we decided to cook stuffed tomatoes while only speaking in each others’  non-intelligible languages, a.k.a. Norwegian, Greek, and Spanish. (Also, the recipe was in Greek so we couldn’t cheat! Only Miles held the secrets.) It involved lots of gestures and repetition of words in alarmingly high voices, but the tomatoes turned out to be a success!

Miles with the Greek tomatoes.

About The Author

Jenny

Jenny Marshall studied Language, Culture, and Society at the University of California Santa Barbara, and now teaches English in Spain. Here she writes about the intersection of language and culture, and lives a life translated by travel.