The other day, Mom and I were talking about language and how much it defines a place. Born in Washington, D.C. and raised in Florida (which, despite its geography, let's agree, has never really been Southern), she settled in South Carolina, and in some ways, found herself in a place that might as well have been a foreign country. She told of a time when she informed a neighbor she'd lost something. "Well, what went with it?" the neighbor asked my puzzled mother, who wracked her brain to figure out whether her missing item had an accomplice. "It was only later that I realized that 'What went with it?' meant 'Where did it go?'" she said. Over the years, she's become more adept at deciphering the order of words and other peculiarities unique to language in the American South. In fact, just the other day I heard her pronounce "can't" as "cain't."

It's not the only good story I've heard about someone trying to adjust to the language of a place. My friend's father, a Colombian newly arrived in Tennessee as a graduate student, recalled with delight how a cafeteria worker wanted to know if he wanted some "groovy" with his mashed potatoes; it was the hippie era, so he was feeling groovy, even if it was "gravy" she was talking about, her mountain accent unfamiliar, at that time, to his ears.  

Over time, the language of a place works its way into us if we stay there long enough. The other night, I realized I was speaking in tongues without thinking about it... though not the tongues associated with Deep South religions that  involve fainting, crying, and holding snakes. Here, in the town where I was raised, I find myself reacting occasionally to situations with a word in Spanish, the language that is such an important part of where I live and who I have become. "‘Ño!" I said the other night, after listening to a scandalous story on the local news channel, a shortened, slangy version of the word "coño," itself an all-purpose exclamation and cuss word, all rolled into one, often used to express mock surprise or disgust. The word--at least in Francisco's family--is often accompanied with a particular gesture that took me awhile to learn but which is now an automatic response. It's happened a few times, and when the word or phrase slips out of my mouth, I realize it's out of place and out of context. But I can't help it.

Place gets into us. It enters our eyes and impresses memories. It leaves imprints in the nose and in the ears, where all it takes is a whiff or a whistle to transport us to where we've been and what meant something to us... maybe even if we didn't realize it at the time. And place sits on the tongue, too, curled up in the words we say, the way we say them, the way they shoot down the highway of synapses between our brain and our mouths, rooting us firmly to a place even when we're far away from it.