Why I stopped teaching my Granny how to suck Eggs

WHAT SHOULD BE THE most reasonable course of action when you are fifty, hard of hearing throughout most of your life and therefore struggling with all things linguistic, and, above all, quite an incorrigible safe player?
Yup, you choose to move to a country whose native language you have never spoken, whose culture you have never identified with, and, thus, give your life a wholly fresh twist — the reincarnation within an incarnation.

I refer to my mother in the aforementioned sentiments, and this story has been inspired by her triumphs and tribulations with the English language. Still, by no means is Mother’s the only source of poignant amusement I hereby use as a wonderful example of how linguistic grappling can, and often does, push many an unsuspecting immigrant and non-native speaker into the Bermuda Triangle of intelligibility. Being an immigrant, let alone a refugee, inescapably means a fair bit of explaining your reasoning, sentiments, and actions, especially when two different cultures and tenets clash. And whenever words are necessary, there is always danger of quite a substantial variety of confusing misinterpretations, comical misunderstandings, unintended misdemeanour, and inadvertent mischief.

I was born and bred in the country that used to be affectionately known as Yugoslavia. Already with this piece of information I may be entering ambiguous territory, sufficient to confuse and mislead even a fairly well educated person. So, when I say Yugoslavia, I actually have in my mind the socialist (no, not communist) and federal state that was spread upon a 255,804km² (that’s 98,766 square miles for you) of the Balkan peninsula and made up of six constitutional (as opposed to merely constituent) republics until 1991. And those republics are nowadays seven (this figure was correct, if only provisionally, at the time of writing) sovereign statelets. Furthermore, when I say Yugoslavia, I also mean the country that boasted a democratic consent of four official languages; Serbo-Croatian, Slovene, Macedonian, and Albanian. My primary residence was in Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina and my mother tongue Serbo-Croatian. This linguistic concoction of Serbian and Croatian variants was diluted into its main ingredients, Serbian and Croatian, upon the country’s dissolution, but Bosnian was recognised too as an autochthonous lingo. Here I will not be entering what would certainly merit a juicy debate over the reality of such a linguistic entity as the Bosnian language. By that token, I will here, as I always do everywhere, call my mother tongue Serbo-Croatian, if only because it was called so (as opposed to so-called) at the time when I was taught and educated how to speak, read, and write in my native country. Well, in fact, in Bosnia, in schools it was really officially called Serbo-Croatian/Croat-Serbian… You now probably see what I really mean by ambiguity and complications, and I have not even begun with the story.
It should be noted, if only briefly, that the Serbian and the Croatian variants and the Bosnian dialect of what used to be the unique and official Serbo-Croat language have – from the first serious ethnic tensions in late 1980s, through the war years, and until now, with the war-wounds still fresh – always initially set their respective native speakers against each other; as though one’s nationality or locality should determine one’s human qualities. Imagine, thereby, the hatred of the families Montague and Capulet, if one of the sides were designated Serbian and the other Croatian. I mean, there would be no-one to bow to the audience at the end of a performance! Moreover, if the story were further complicated in that the hapless couple went on to marry, the parties’ perceived or legitimate ethnic disparities notwithstanding, and produce offspring, those ill-fated children would then be the most tragic protagonists. Looking back, I sorrowfully realise that kids from mixed marriages, myself very much included, came up worst off. In national censuses we, especially those who were pre-teens just before the war, were usually declared or fashioned, as Yugoslavs, lest one side of the family was to take an offence. Thus, the adults’ immortal (and imbecilic at that, but that’s another matter altogether) cliché, “Who do you love most, mummy or daddy?” had suddenly acquired inconceivable, if improper, gravitas in the eve of those first so-called free elections. Even when they did mean it, those poor children did not have the diplomatic luxury (immunity?) – unlike us, somewhat older mongrels, who used to enjoy perfectly unadulterated liberties of all sorts – to reply, even if it was the truth of the matter,
“Same.”

Having abandoned the war-torn Sarajevo, I eventually immigrated into the United Kingdom in November 1992, and this was no random choice. Indeed, one of the key reasons why I had decided to move here was my already-established fluency in English which made me realise this language was, academically and practically, as if made for my manner of communicating and expressing my feelings and thoughts.
Funnily enough, however, Mother had once famously prophesised I was never going to acquire a decent command of English language, let alone total fluency. She was helping me prepare for my first exam at an extramural English course I was taking. (I always had Russian in school and always joked that I should be perfectly fine regardless of who was to rule the world, Russians or Americans.) Anyway, the only way in which Mother, entirely unversed in English at the time, could assist me was to read out words in Serbo-Croatian from the course-book’s glossary and have me translate them into English. The dispute ensued when we came upon the word ispiti. Even though I had realised it was a bit unusual to have a pluralized word in the glossary, I nevertheless confidently proceeded with exams, which is indeed what ispiti are.
“Nowhere near,” Mother replied.
“Oh, then it’s examinations,” I assumed.
“Absolutely not,” Mother was growing disgusted with my poor preparation.
“Um… Tests?” I was growing confused.
“God, no!” Mother was infuriated with my lack of knowledge.
“OK, give me a clue,” I was growing frustrated that I was being accused of not adequately studying, and my vocabulary was already, I had been repeatedly told by my teachers, of admirable proportions.
“Hm! All right, it’s two words.”
“Two!?” I was much puzzled. But then a triumphant idea crossed my mind. Yep, that must be it. “Question papers!” I proudly asserted.
“You are clueless, and your father and I are wasting vast amounts of money on something that will amount to nothing in the end. The actual word is drink up, and I advise you pick yourself a cheap hobby instead of misusing your parents’ both trust and funds on learning this most important of the languages and in which you evidently have neither interest nor willingness to master even at the lowest level,” Mother indignantly tossed the book aside and left the room in the same manner.
Not quite able to fault her, I was laughing my head off. The Serbo-Croatian verb ispiti, meaning to drink up, is both spelt and pronounced in the exact same way as the plural form – ispiti – I had been ineffectively stabbing at; exams, examinations, and tests. And yes, question papers for that matter.

Six English courses and seven years later, I found myself in the United Kingdom, the specifically chosen new home country of mine. As I said, I had already become fluent in the language, and my gargantuan vocabulary often occasioned complimentary amazement by native and non-native speakers alike. However, it was my Americanised accent and a good deal of Americanisms I had absorbed for far too many reasons to mention here, which caused natives’ mild reproaches in an equal measure. Be that as it may, I nevertheless rested assured it was going to take me six or so months fully to adopt the UK English. Not without an incident or two, I very soon found out and to my embarrassment.
I was waiting for my bus home once, ironically — after an English class, the series of which I was obliged to take, where I had bragged what a piece of cake for me it‘d be to switch to “the Briddish way.” An elderly lady came up to the group of people in amongst whom I too was standing.
“Excuse, young man,” she approached me; “are you in the queue?”
Well… I had never heard of the word queue; it was always line for me.
“No, ma’m,” pondering for a moment, I replied; “I say, I’hm from Bah’-znia,” I explained as though I had just emerged from New Orleans, Louisiana.
(This might be a coincidence in the non-linguistic sense, since we, Balkanite types, found the concept of waiting in an orderly fashion to be one of the most irksome social aspects to adjust to, but that too is another matter.)
Or the one with a friend of mine, whose gorgeous dog Fergie I used to take on regular walks. A month or so into the friendship with my canine companion, Christine pointed out to me I must ensure Fergie stay off the road when we were on the street. I was adamant she had nothing to worry about; I was conscientious of that in particular, since I was still getting accustomed to the traffic on the wrong side of the road, as it were. Unconvinced, Christine asked me to demonstrate the very technique in which Fergie obeyed my command.
“As of recent, I can do it only by physically pulling her onto the pavement,” my friend woefully explained.
The three of us walked outside my friends’ house perimeter, reached the street, and I casually instructed Fergie,
“Fergie, sidewalk!”
The gorgeous dog duly obliged, but Christine, an English teacher by profession, almost yielded to an obvious temptation to push me off the — pavement, of course.

It is only natural for an immigrant, definitely a refugee, to try and cling to their own ethnic heritage regardless of the extent to which one has assimilated a new milieu. This is especially true of many of my Yugoslav compatriots who may have deliberated to immigrate, but the fundamental reason – the filthy civil war – was never our choice. Or fault. Yes, I agree, everyone could have remained in their place of origin, exposed to humiliation and persecution. But then again, the Yugoslav war of dissolution was markedly ugly in that each side claimed their conviction of and moral rights to being the goodie in the conflict, whereas all of them were the baddies one way or another in the actual reality. It is because of this, and a kind of regret and remorse, that so many of us, immigrants from my neck of the woods, still make traditional regional dishes (by definition, scandalizing our new compatriots whose dietary dispositions we, in turn, find distressingly inadequate) and consume potent drinks and beverages, have satellite TV mainly for the sake of the former country’s broadcasts, bewilder whoever it may concern with seemingly bizarre customs and observances, and so forth.
And all this can also be adduced as the most plausible explanation as to why we, instinctively or out of nostalgia, same difference, treat the English language through a prism of our mother tongues.
There was the case of a Serbian woman who sent a birthday card to her dear English teacher of English, and the birthday wishes she conveyed were genuinely heartfelt and eloquent. Except, one minor discrepancy had also crept in; she had selected a card on the front of which was a lovely looking flower and the inscription “With deepest sympathy.” The trouble was, she assumed sympathy was an anglicised form of what is simpatija in Serbo-Croatian — affection.
At one point during my studies in London, my grandmother phoned me from our Scotland home, excitedly proclaiming she had figured out the best possible Christmas present for me, she could not keep it secret, she had straightaway to tell me what it was. I humoured her by acquiescing.
“Well, everybody has a mobile phone these days, but not you. And you’d rather spend money on your, whatcha-call-it, scluba [sic] diving. So, this prezzie will allow you to have both. It’s a waterproof mobile phone! Also, that way your mother would be able to speak to you when you‘re underwater; that‘ll stop her worrying sick, right?” a jubilant granny announced.
Even though granny could not speak English at all, she often assumed she was able to understand more than she was given credit for. And to prove her point, the dear sweet lady religiously watched TV and tirelessly, if erroneously, talked of various items of information she had gathered, always embellishing them the way she herself considered fit or desirable. Even when her interpretations defied sheer logic, she would not buckle under the pressure of, or accept one single reason to embrace, common sense. This time round, she had seen a Vodafone commercial, and as the word voda stands for water in Serbo-Croatian… You get the picture.
My friend from Macedonia was visiting once. Among other things she wished to experience in Scotland, Katarina also wanted to sample Angus beef. We went to a great steakhouse. Lamentably, the waiting staff’s attitude, dour and grumpy, was a total opposite of the food-excellence.
“Please, I’ll have a bloody steak,” Katarina excitedly placed her order, taking for granted as she was that what was bloody in Macedonian should be same in English, as opposed to the idiomatically correct rare.
Sizing her up and down, and probably jealous a little of Katarina’s stunning physical appearance, the waitress hissed,
“Ye wantin’ feckin’ chips wi’ it?”

And it works the other way round also. By this, I mean literally translating English phrases and idioms into Serbo-Croatian. Or not just anglicising Serbo-Croatian words with abandon, but blending two or more words together, thus creating a portmanteau that is a linguistic monstrosity whose meaning can hardly be guessed, let alone readily understood. Unless, that is, you yourself should be an immigrant in your own right. This patois I call Immigrantese (also spelt Immigrantезијски).
Immigrantese may not be regarded as a language, but I like to believe it should be allocated some form of philological recognition. Doubtless, it is a ludicrous way of expressing oneself, but if it is performed instinctively, in bona fides, balancing between two intrinsically commendable aspirations – namely, cherishing own roots and respectfully embracing a new environment – then it does deserve a special mention. Although we have indisputably lost the true sense of belonging both to and with the place of our origin, it would be, we argue, downright pathetic to deny our roots. On the other hand, most of us consciously and conscientiously strive to assimilate and accept the new societal and cultural norms to the degree whereby any objectionable behaviour on anyone’s part is their prejudicial claptrap, not stemming from our own unwillingness to integrate. Therefore, I plead for a greater appreciation of Immigrantese. For you see, rather than being an offshoot of intellectual laziness, or inadequacy, Immigrantese really is the spin-off of cherishing one’s roots within a newly-established environment.
And yet, and yet… There are also occasions when Immigrantese gets to be performed merely because of one’s labial inability to pronounce or auditory inadequacy in distinguishing certain words. (If I am to commit my wit and wisdom to a sequel to this essay, I promise to tackle the singular issue of ethnic genetics and their impact on one’s physique, but let us not delve into that here.) At times, a non-native speaker will come up with something similar-sounding, they may, or may not be corrected (we prefer to be), and the case is pretty much closed there and then. In some other instances, however, a non-native speaker comes up with a similar-sounding word and an honest malapropism creates unpretentious mirth more frequently and more intensively than it does confusion.
My mother rates very prominently among the top four most respected people I have met. One of her most commendable decisions was to come over and join me in Scotland. At the risk of unduly repeating myself, I must nevertheless reiterate that Mother’s lifetime, upon the arrival, was one in which taking risks and the English language had featured only as mere observations by an onlooker who would have nothing whatsoever to do with either. And she was already fifty. And at least forty per cent deaf ever since she was eleven years of age. But the fabulous lady is possessed, among a great quantity of other admirable qualities, with a studious nature that accepts no limits or obstacles in reaching the final goal. That being so, within three or so years Mother was near-fluent, if not in the speech then most certainly in comprehension of words and expressions. Well, written ones, because of her aural impairment. It is really the pronunciation that has most dramatically affected Mother. Her own pronunciation. She jokes to this day that she will be deported for one and only reason — her mistaken use of some word or phrase in place of the apposite one.
One time she voiced her worry for me to my then-girlfriend. I was forever barefoot in the flat and my room was freezing cold.
“[He] is crazy;” she bemoaned my lack of concern for own health, her voice filled with motherly concern. “He never uses slappers!”
“Mrs Marić, do you really think I would be with him if he did?” asked a surprised Martina.
“But look at [you]! You always have slappers,” Mother reasoned, pointing at Martina‘s indoors footwear. Only then did Martina realise why Mother had launched such an apparently curious complaint.
Perhaps I myself should be considered partly responsible over some of her blunders. During one of our practising sessions I’d devised to help her with the language, I detected what I thought was a brilliant means of refreshing Mother’s memory when she could not remember some word. Having witnessed the wonder of her secondary-school German subconsciously coming back, I then proceeded to recommend she anglicise the word she could remember in German, or one of the Latin/Ancient Greek origin that she would ordinarily use in Serbo-Croat, and the English word on the tip of her tongue would transpire. “Yeah, just anglicise it,“ I reiterated my genius idea. The system has worked to this day, but not infallibly so, and maybe she truly ought to have an immigration lawyer on stand-by just in case.
Spectacularly, Mother could not remember the phrase to be a good laugh when she was once asked to describe my personality in the course of a conversation with some officials to which we had been summoned. So, she resorted to the mnemonic trick I had worked out for her. Anglicising the bastardised Turkish word we use in colloquial Serbo-Croatian, šega [pronounced: shê’gã], Mother proudly pronounced her son a great shag. It may have been a great pity that those officials were not blessed with sense of humour, if only because one of them was pretty attractive, but at least we were not issued with a one-way ticket to Sarajevo in the aftermath.

Of course, I understand that the differences in phrases and idioms, proverbs and sayings, between two languages are really the differences in mentalities, since the general incongruence is inexorably brought about by divergences in history and culture, and the society those shape. And of course I should accept this if I am to be a well-read writer in the English language, as I am indeed striving to become. And I have done, accepted this, yet I can never escape a slight pang of regret that some weird and wonderful proverbs and phrases from my ancestors’ lands make no sense, or do make — fun, when they are directly translated into English. At first, my regret was that the artless charm in some of my earlier works, littered with such untranslatables, in my mother tongue could not be reproduced in my newly adopted language of expression.
A Serbo-Croat phrase denoting that something costs – to put it in the idiomatic English – an arm and a leg has nothing to do with one’s anatomic extremities, but it costs one kao Svetog Petra kajgana. The literal translation is, [it costs] like scrambled eggs cost St Peter. Suffice to say, there is no verifiable way of ascertaining that St Peter ever ate an overpriced omelette, and if he indeed did, how much the said omelette had cost, given it was charged at an allegedly exorbitant price, what method the payment was in, how many eggs and what ingredients it comprised of, etc., but there you go.
Talking of eggs, the culinary expression sunny side up in English (yes, I am aware, US English originally) is infinitely more logical than ours, jaje na oko — egg upon an eye. If I were to use it, I can effortlessly imagine being asked what should possess our peoples to place eggs on eyes, whether this is a kind of cure or relief for eyes afflicted by ailments, conditions, overuse, or what the hell. Yet hardly ever would it occur to anyone to identify the word with food or cookery; after all, how many people, even animal species, have yellow/orange eyes?
To say he is his father’s spitting image may resemble to our own idiom on je pljunuti otac, but then again, not quite; ours, directly translated, really means he is like his father, spat on. God in Heavens, what sort of barbarians are we? Who and why would spit on the poor fellow’s dad? Is it truly a fact that fathers should be customarily/arbitrarily spat on/at in our country, and, if so, what on earth is the rationale behind such a norm? Small wonder, one might be bound to conclude, we end up fighting each other every half a century or so.
My UK compatriots are always curious and eager to learn some Serbo-Croatian from me and I am always appreciative and happy to oblige, but one should realise why I am keen on avoiding certain phrases. Like spava k‘o zaklan, which means [he] sleeps as if [he were] slaughtered. This one in particular made me contemplate — have we indeed butchered each other so recklessly throughout the history insomuch that slaughter should nowadays so nonchalantly (matter-of-factly?) enter our metaphoric dreams? Then again, we also demonstrate our peace-loving side in an outlandish demonstration entailing one’s axe falling into honey – pala mu sjekira u med – which is to say one has become prosperous, through luck or a clever discourse. Does that mean we will stop bickering once we deposit our weaponry in honey, i.e. when we achieve significant material wealth? Probably, because when one has lots of money, one has so much money as if it were a salad, or so the Sarajevan idiom goes; if salad be the symbol of one’s affluence, this must be because nowhere in the world is salad eaten so copiously, also being a de rigueur side dish, as it is throughout Yugoslavia. Still, what remains fundamentally unanswered is how on earth an axe (of all things) can feasibly fall into honey in the first place, taking into consideration that honey in Yugoslavia is preserved in closed receptacles, just like anywhere else on the planet.
Many foreign students of my origin and mother tongue are also often interested why Spanish villages are so distant to us (as opposed to, say, Argentine ones, or, more logically, those in New Zealand), for we use the idiom španska sela, which stands for exactly the same thing as it is double Dutch to an English native speaker. Just as well I have not been asked, yet, why we say of one heartily laughing smeje/smije se kao lud na brašno, which means, word for word, he laughs like a lunatic at flour. I have encountered a few people, my native compatriots, whose mind was troubled by a mental condition, a genetic disorder or one gained through the hardship we have endured from time immemorial, but never has any of them exhibited a hysteria over the ground grain in a powdery form, nor is the end product, I assure you, of some laughable presentability. Conversely, if laughter be the best medicine, why bother with antidepressants? Since we have the very same saying in Serbo-Croat, I wonder if it has ever occurred to anyone to prescribe, say — a healthy portion of wheat firsts for those worst affected, or a wee dose of maize meal to those with cases of transient gloom.
All this neatly brings me to my all-time favourite pet-untranslatable, the Serbo-Croat word inat, explaining which I, as an immigrant, have always explained myself. Inat must indeed be accounted for here, because we, immigrants from the former Yugoslavia, brought it with us, and inat, stays with us even when we wholly absorb and act in the manner of a chosen home-country.
Linguistically, inat is not necessarily one of those exasperating wee words whose very translatability is inaccessible because of its many and diverse meanings, dependent upon the context. In fact, quite opposite is the case, for inat has only one meaning. Profoundly and indelibly rooted in the psyche of practically all peoples from the former Yugoslavia, inat is a state of mind, but also a social phenomenon; inat is not merely within the essence of our being, deeper and wider than any definition might render it intelligible, it is the essence of our being. Many former Yugoslav ethnologists and etymologists, historians and sociologists, and a number of foreigners with the same academic pursuits and those with cultural, sentimental, even economic interests in that part of the world have attempted to tease out and spell out what inat is all about. Agreed, there are some undeniably remarkable, comprehensive, and smart essays in this regard, but not one of them can be accepted as the ultimate rendering; after a typical Yugoslav has perused any explication upon inat, he or she will come up with the one inevitable comment, “Yes, it is exactly like that, but… there’s much more to inat than that.”
Dictionaries state inat to be a word of Turkish origin, and its meaning as one’s whimsical/confrontational attitude, capricious behaviour, spiteful conduct, and/or act of defiance. They also indicate inat as the disposition/frame of mind of one challenging/disputing/daring the other, especially if the other commands superior position over the one behaving with inat. Thus, inadžija (one embodying and doing things out of inat) is a quarrelsome individual, provoker, caustic/biting person, teaser, villain/rogue, even a gallows joker can be considered applicable. If you ask for my opinion, well, yes, it is exactly like that, all this is fine, spot on even, but… well, there’s much more to inat than that.
Some years ago, when Croatian dairy farmers had fallen out badly with the government over the price of milk and the latter’s fiscally preferential treatment of imported, Slovenian milk, what did they do? Out of inat, the farmers who found themselves aggrieved by their government’s measure spilt away their own milk and those who did not spill it — were giving it away absolutely free. (And to think that the saying there is no use crying over spilt milk does not even exist in the Croatian language…)
When we, immigrants, go back to visit families and friends in Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia, and the rest, in many instances it is our impoverished relatives and friends paying for drinks, meals, and social frolicking we all engage in although we earn average in a one-week’s wages more than what the best-paid of them make in a month. Aye, this is partly due to the people’s extraordinarily hospitable nature, partly a particular brand of dignity the people are possessed with, but mostly it is inat.
A few of us, immigrants in London, once gathered to watch a certain football match. We rooted for Slovenia in the first half and Serbia [and Montenegro, as it was then] throughout the second half, and this apparently contradictory support was inat at its finest; not because we still felt defiant or sentimental over what used to be one Yugoslavia, but simply because we were — Bosnians.
The megalomaniac tyrant Milošević was being voted for in Serbia for far too long for anyone’s good, economic or otherwise. This was not an obvious case of rigged elections or a result of people’s repression and anxiety, though it should not be refuted that these elements were, in part at least, in evidence, but because his politics and, consequently, Serbian people as a whole were being ostracised and demonised by most of the whole world because of the bastard in question. Palpably, then, he was to be voted in, and voted in he was. Repeatedly so and out of the people’s sheer inat!
Yet inat can be, and often is, utilized into activities that create beauty and prosperity. Look at the glorious city of Belgrade, demolished in various assaults and conflicts forty and more times throughout its bloody history, each and every time emerging more opulent and more fascinating. Or my native Sarajevo whose own denizens, sacrificed by one side and shelled by the other, were besieged for 43 months, but whose legendary wit and spirit remained practically unscathed throughout the conflict.
And here’s the most instructive one. Serbia’s greatest folk hero – who, as the abundant stories and epic poems of Serbian folklore instruct us, slays thousands of the invading Ottoman troops and administrative leaders, does all sorts of equally numerous courageous, dignified, and noble deeds for the sake of his beloved Serbian folk – Kraljević Marko, was once interrogated, horrendous torture and all, by the hateful and hated Turks.
“Marko,” they demanded, “what would it take for you to get turkicised?”
(By turkicise, I mean the Ottoman/Turkish regular practice, especially in Bosnia, of forceful or sly conversion of the local population to Islam.)
As if on cue, the ultimate, fearless champion, the very Rambo of Serbia’s cause, proudly replied,
“Inat!”
This apocryphal story illustrates, better than any other explanation I know, the very core of inat. My uncle Vladimir, the very harshest and most meticulous scrutator of things Yugoslav I have ever come across and an immigrant in his own right, wholeheartedly agrees.
“It does,” he says; “but there is, of course, much more to inat than that.”
The only thing I seem never to have never fathomed about inat is whether its unquestionable complexity truly demands an additional elaboration upon any given clarification of it, or my people feel compelled to dismiss the explanation, no matter how great or poor — just out of inat.

Being an immigrant is peculiar, and I am never quite clear whether being an immigrant should be seen as a social category, a personal/intellectual attitude, or a mental condition. And in my own capacity as an immigrant, I often find myself favouring and actively using whenever it is understandable or inoffensive to a fellow interlocutor, the German word for translation – Übersetzung – though God knows that I dislike the sound of German almost as much as I adore the one of English. But Übersetzung implies setting [something] over there, and that is precisely what being the immigrant in a foreign-speaking country means. Whatever you bring, or not, with you into your adopted country, you inescapably and irrevocably carry your roots with you. They are ever with you and within you, gushing in veins like the Red Sea that ought to be crossed, but whose salt and sediment will forever remain tattooed upon your soul to remind you that you may have been set, and settled, over, but you are always within yourself.
Things indeed change only to remain the same, and differences should only exist so that we can celebrate our common humanity. Same is true of tongues; they may differ in nuances, but all of them strive to express ourselves. Inadequately, beautifully, prosaically, or passionately — it really does not matter. What truly does matter, therefore, is not a mere dialect of naming, but the language of meaning. Wherever there is meaning, there is understanding; wherever there is understanding, there is freedom; wherever there is freedom, there is happiness. And since true happiness is not a matter of conditional tenses, but maximising what you have at present and what you yourself are becoming in the process, if you want to be happy — be. As simple as that. Very few people appreciate the boundary of a freedom, but fewer still comprehend the freedom of a boundary; if you should have misgivings over my wee if you want to be happy — be inspiration, I urge you – whether you are an immigrant/refugee or a native – to assimilate the freedom in any given boundary. Especially if you are an immigrant. For the immigrant is not a human wreck with a bundle of bare minimum of belongings on the back and the barren bundle in heart and mind — Jesus and Einstein too were immigrants in their own right.

And finally, if you now reckon you can now sympathise with my deliberation to stop teaching my granny how to suck eggs, I am sure you got it wrong. You see, in colloquial Serbo-Croatian, jaja – eggs – stands for testicles.
Cheers mate!