After 9 Years, Expat Accordionist Squeezes into Asia's Music Scene

QUESTIONS FOR ALEXANDER
SHEYKIN

This Uzbek-born Russian has seen the "elephant" twice — first in his native Russia and now in Korea. Meanwhile, he has introduced Koreans and other Asians to another bellower: the accordion.

When did you realize that you wanted to be an accordionist when you grew up? My mother and her twin sister both play the accordion, so it's been part of my life ever since I can remember. When I tried to play myself at age 6, it came naturally. It's the only thing I've ever excelled at. My only doubt was about whether I could make my living as an accordion player. Fortunately, I persisted.

Piano & button accordions,
courtesy Wikimedia Commons

This may not be true in Russia, but when people hear the word "accordionist" in the West, they tend to picture a wandering minstrel accompanied by a monkey who passes around a tin cup. Part of what I do is educating people that the accordion isn't just polka and the kind of folk music a busker might play. There are two basic types: the button accordion and the piano accordion. The former has its origins in Russian folk music, while the latter was patented in Vienna in 1829. I chose to learn the piano accordion because that is what my mother and aunt played, and I fell in love with the sound.

What was it about the sound that captured your fancy? Because it has bellows as well as reeds, the accordion can make a sound reminiscent of the human voice. It has breath, it has timbre, it has a soulful tone. The other thing I like is the accordion's versatility. It can play in the highest registers or the lowest, loud or soft. An accordionist can be a soloist or an accompanist. He or she can play any style of music, be it classical, jazz, rock, or folk. I often refer to my instrument as a portable mini-orchestra.

On that note, let's hear you play:



You were born in Uzbekistan, one of the five so-called Stans of Central Asia, which achieved their independence from the Soviet Union when you were around 15 years old. Is it fair to say that experience made you something of a crazy mixed-up kid? I was born in one place, Uzbekistan, but can't live in it, and I can live in in another place, Russia, but it doesn't feel like home. The situation was, and remains, crazy for me, yes.

But you were lucky insofar as Russia provides top-notch musical training. Russia places the accordion is on the same level as violin, requiring 14 years of rigorous training. My mother gave me lessons when I was very small. She enrolled me in music school in Uzbekistan when I was around nine years old. After five years, it was time to go to music college. I went to Kazakhstan for that phase, after which I went to Russia for five years of additional study at the Ural State Conservatory. So, yes, I'm well trained!

Why do you think you found it so challenging to adjust to life in Russia? I first moved to Russia at age 20. The people seemed insensitive and thicker skinned compared to what I was used to, and the country itself was unwelcoming. Even though I'm Russian, I had to wait until I'd graduated from the conservatory before I could obtain citizenship and sponsor my mother and sister to come over. They now live in Yekaterinburg, on the eastern side of the Ural Mountains, but not me. I jumped on a plane the day after graduation.

To go where? I went to Korea. Just before graduating, I'd heard that Lotte World in Seoul, the world's largest indoor theme park — it's in the Guinness Book — was holding auditions. I often played in a duo with one of my fellow students. I asked her if she wanted to try out with me. The first thing she said was: "Where's Seoul?" And now she's married to a Korean with two kids!

Did you know where Seoul was? Yes, but I didn't know how much I would love it there, too. Signing on with Lotte World was an easy way to travel to Korea. Everything was taken care of: our transport, visa, housing...

SUPER SCARY: An elephant
in Lotte World

When you got to Lotte World, did you see any elephants? As a matter of fact, I saw one right away in the Jungle Safari. It was huge, with a moving head, and was making some rather scary trumpeting noises.

What was your first impression of Seoul? I felt at home there straight away, which is quite remarkable considering I could speak neither English nor Korean when I first arrived.

And now you speak both? I try to.

How did you learn? I taught myself. Think about it. I couldn't attend a language school for English as you had to know Korean, and the same thing for Korean-language schools: I had to know English. As my English improved, I attended the weekly English classes given by the Mormon Church, which I found very helpful. (We always said a short prayer at the end, but they didn't try and convert me.)

FAMILIAR FOOD: Kimchi
(courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

Why do you think you took to Korean life so quickly? One reason is the weather. The area near the Ural Mountains where I lived with my mother and sister goes down to -40 °C in the winter. Seoul is much milder and has four distinct seasons. And because of my background, I was already familiar with Korean food. There's an ethnic Korean community in Uzbekistan. When they were forcibly relocated to the region from the Soviet Far East under Stalin, they brought their kimchi with them. Russian call it chimcha.

Did the Koreans respond well to your music? That's another reason I adjusted so quickly. We musicians speak with our souls, and the audience responds with its heart. Koreans have big hearts. They love live music and feel it very deeply. Also, because Korean society appreciates music, professional musicians receive fair compensation.

MAJOR MILESTONE: Alex's first CD. Also check out
his new Web site: www.alexacco.com

You've been living in Korea for nearly a decade. Is the grass still greener? My nine years in Seoul have gone by in a flash. For the past seven years, I've been building my career as an independent musician. I've played stadiums, concert halls, dive bars and jim-jill-bangs [Korean bathhouses]. Normally I play solo, but I also have a tango quartet, Coamorous. And sometimes I play in a Russian folk band with balalaikas. I made my first CD, Here & There, a few months ago: it features my own arrangements of world-famous pop songs and some Russian hits. I also teach, mostly to private students. One more regular activity of mine is acting on Korean TV: I'm on a weekly "true or false" show.

Ah, you're what the Japanese call a talento! As you were describing your life in Korea, I was thinking that in addition to your seeing the elephant in terms of new adventures, you've also brought an elephant with you for the Koreans to ogle at, by which I mean your music and your talent. After nine years, has Korea come to appreciate this? I can safely say I've made the accordion more popular in Korea than it was when I first arrived. It helps that I have my own YouTube channel, by my stage name of Alex Acco, with more than 250 videos of my concerts. The Internet has also helped me extend my network throughout Asia. I've been invited to play gigs in Thailand, Japan, Taiwan, China and Indonesia. When I went to Taiwan, I was greeted at the airport by some fans carrying an accordion.

Asians are famously proficient at Western instruments like violin, piano, and flute. But not the accordion. My instrument won't become big in the region until Asian countries decide to support accordion-learning at the level of the state-run music academy.

Are any Asian countries doing that? China is beginning to. A leading music conservatory in Beijing has recruited Russia's top accordion teacher. He reports that the Chinese students have a very good attitude. They follow instructions and are very disciplined.

Will you ever leave Korea? I've been asking myself that question a lot lately. I am 33 years old. I'm not really Russian, but I'm also not Korean. I think that if you live in one place for a while, you should be rewarded with something more than just being able to call the place home. I will always be a foreigner in Korea.

But where would you go, especially as you clearly have no desire to rejoin the Russian herd? I'd prefer an English-speaking country. I've been thinking about Canada but my visa application got turned down twice.

Out of curiosity, what is the accordion scene like in the United States? Actually pretty good. Many people play the piano accordion as well as the squeezebox (the Mexican version). There's an American Accordionists Association (AAA) that organizes annual concerts and events. And my idol in the accordion world is legendary jazz accordionist Art Van Damme. He died a year ago this month, age 89, but was going strong almost to the end.

WHITE RED ELEPHANT: Alex's treasured Hyundai

One more question that I've asked of all of the blog's interviewees. Have you collected any of what I call Treasured White Elephants, which you'll take with you when you eventually leave Korea? Well, I don't regard it as a white elephant since it helps me earn a living, but I do have a precious Hyundai accordion, which will accompany me wherever I go next.

As a traveler myself, I envy you your musical talent. It gives you an entree wherever you go. Music is an international language. It doesn't require translation. Regardless of where I end up, I can be happy as long as I can play my music and have the chance to share it with others. The accordion has given me great joy every day of my life, and when I have the chance to transmit this feeling to an audience, I am in my element. It doesn't get any better than that.

If the Shoe Fits ... An Englishman's Curious Devotion to a Curious Country

QUESTIONS FOR JAMIE STOKES

For this author and indefatigable observer of cultural habits, Poland is one of Europe's more opaque and challenging destinations, at once welcoming visitors while denying it has anything to offer them.

Where are you from originally — which part of England? I was born on the outskirts of London, spent my early childhood in Canada, my teenage years in Kent and then 15 years in North London.

What brought you to Poland originally? Ask any foreigner why they live in Poland and you will hear one of three possible answers: 1) I am married to/dating a Polish woman; 2) I was sent here by my company; or 3) I have Polish roots. I'm in the first category. Notice I say "Polish woman" — in all my time in Poland, I have met just one Western woman married to a Polish man but dozens of Western men married to Polish women, a topic recently covered in the collaborative blog I write for, called Polandian. I have no idea what this says about Polish men, but I do know what it says about Polish women!

How long have you been in Kraków in total? Do you speak Polish? I've lived in Kraków for three years. I speak bits of Polish — it's a big language, and I haven't gotten around to all of it yet. My first trip to Poland was in 1997. I lived in Warsaw for about two years. It was an interesting but ultimately frustrating experience that led me to conclude I was better off back in the UK. With a free choice of 197 countries, I moved to Poland again in 2007 — I am not a smart man.

Where and what did you study before embarking on your Polish adventure? I studied philosophy at King's College London. This in no way prepared me for any experiences, including that of being repeatedly asked who my favorite philosopher is.

What do you do for work? I've been a freelance writer and editor for more than ten years, working mostly on nonfiction books for a wide range of UK and US publishers. I also contribute a monthly "Perspectives on Poland" column to the Kraków Post (Poland's only English-language newspaper) and a weekly column Okiem Angola (Englishman's Eye) to Wirtualna Polska (published in both Polish and English), as well as blogging for Polandian — but those are hobbies more than anything.

A LOT TO ANSWER FOR? Barbara Bach
as KGB agent in The Spy Who Loved Me

What do most people in the UK imagine when they think of Poland? Most Brits, even now, think Poland is somehow in Russia — a fact that makes Poles incandescently and rightly furious. This is a hangover from the Cold War when we were taught to regard the Soviet Bloc as a single, evil place populated by extravagant moustaches and female super spies wearing lingerie under their fur coats.

Haven't quite a few Polish youth emigrated to London in recent years? Perhaps they could correct that impression. There is an enormous number of Poles in the UK. So many in fact that nobody has any idea how many there really are. It could be a million, it could be two million. And they're not just in London. You can find Poles all across the country. It's not unusual to find shops in English villages that carry Polish beer and foods to cater for the migrants.

Are more Brits visiting Poland since it became independent? There was a time when speaking English on the street would draw a crowd of spectators, but that is long gone. Kraków, like many other eastern and central European cities, has become a favorite stag party destination for Brits and Irish, much to the detriment of the reputation of both nations in the minds of Poles. Warsaw is also a draw to some extent. There is quite a large British expat community in Poland, but most Poles don't know it exists. There are thousands of Brits living in the pretty areas of Kraków and Warsaw, but when Poles meet them they assume they are tourists.


EXPAT H(E)AVEN: With rents a quarter of London levels,
what's not to like about Kraków Old Town?
(courtesy Wikimedia Commons)

You say the Brits are living in pretty places. Is that part of the draw, that the grass is somehow greener? (Saying a lot for a Brit, of course...) As I mentioned, Poland's image is irrevocably tied to the Cold War idea of grim communist housing blocks, permanent winter, and tractor factories. In fact, the summers are long and gorgeous, the cities are ancient and beautiful, and the tractor factories were retooled long ago to build Daewoo cars. The grim housing blocks, the scowling old ladies with sharp umbrellas, the absurd bureaucracy — it's all still there, but many of us expats see it as the spice, not the principal ingredient. What's more, you can live reasonably well on a fraction of what it would cost in London or other major European cities.

Have you found it easy to make Polish friends? Poles love foreigners and hate other Poles. Foreigners are assumed to be sophisticated, civilized human beings — other Poles are assumed to be car thieves. It's pretty weird.

What do Poles usually say when they find out you're from the UK? Ten years ago, when I was teaching English in Warsaw, a student asked me: "Why did you come to Poland?" I replied: "Because I was curious." He thought about this for a while and then announced gravely: "One day, I wish to be curious like you." In other words, Polish people find it very hard to understand why a Westerner would choose to live in Poland. The longer I live here, the more I can see why.

Bigos, Poland's national dish,
Courtesy About.com

One of the biggest thrills involved in travel is the chance to try out new foods. But unless I'm mistaken, food is not one of Poland's top attractions. Polish cuisine doesn't have any reputation at all, largely because there is nothing in Polish cuisine that is uniquely Polish. Poles, Russians, Ukrainians, Czechs, Belarusians and a lot of Germans eat pretty much the same stuff with slightly different names. Brits who visit Poland usually thoroughly enjoy the food because it's basically big chunks of meat in fatty, salty sauces — all the stuff they've been weaned off over the past twenty years of cholesterol paranoia.

Hmmm... What would elephants eat? They are vegetarians. Elephants would have a hard time here. Stories of vegetarians being given chicken when they ask for "something without meat" are not entirely apocryphal.

What's the British food you miss the most? Any kind of pie — for some reason pies are completely unknown here. My fantasy food would be Thai green curry pierogi.

Can you tell me any stories that you think help to illustrate key Poland-UK differences? I call these Blind Men's Tales: one man "sees" the elephant's ears and another the trunk, and so on. The collaborative blog, Polandian, which I created with several other English-language bloggers — some foreigners, some Polish — is essentially a giant catalogue of Blind Man's Tales. Our stories, however, are a little different than those you might tell after living in Japan. I spent some time in Tokyo, which is so alien that it's possible to mistake a window for a door. Poland is nothing like that. The differences between Poland and the UK are much more subtle and take time to make themselves known to the visitor. For example, Poles are obsessed with wearing the right shoes for the season — the kind of shoes you are wearing comes up in conversation far more often than I would have believed possible. Other unexpected topics include exhumation and an almost supernatural sensitivity to what anybody anywhere says about the country.

Could you elaborate a little more on the shoes — how many pairs do you need? When I first came to Poland I had two pairs of shoes: a pair of trainers/sneakers and a pair of Dr Martens slip-on boots. I loved those boots. They were probably the seventh or eighth pair of the same make I had owned. I could wear them year round, in any weather. Three years later I have winter shoes, autumn shoes, summer shoes, sandals, going-to-wedding shoes, visiting-priest shoes, walking shoes, "good" shoes and, of course, slippers. And I am still considered to be woefully shoe-deficient.

It sounds like you're becoming Polish-ized. Definitely not. If anything, I'm more English than I ever was. When you live in a foreign country, your nationality becomes a vital part of your identity in a way it never is in your homeland. It's the first thing anybody says about you: "This is my English friend ... I know this English guy ... Speak slowly, he's English ...," etc.

I should mention that if anyone wants to read more about the Polish shoe fetish and other equally astonishing topics — such as exhumation mania or the necessity of owning a meat tenderizer — they should visit Polandian. Who are your readers, and how many visitors does the blog typically get? An eclectic mix of English-speaking Poles, Poles living in English-speaking countries, Westerners with Polish roots, and foreigners living in Poland. We get about 50,000 page-views per month and have recently passed 1.2 millions views in total.

Last but not least, I'd like to pose a couple of questions that are put to all elephant seekers who agree to be interviewed for this blog. First, have you collected any Treasured White Elephants: something that has captured your fancy that you would probably cart away when you leave? Books by Ryszard Kapuściński. He deserves to be far more widely known that he is. His writings about Africa in particular made me see things in an entirely new way. Kapuściński once said he writes for "people everywhere still young enough to be curious about the world," which ties in nicely what I said to the Warsaw student.

Kraków Zoo elephants, courtesy Andrew Llanwarne

Second, have you seen any elephants in Poland? Yes. Two very confused looking Indian elephants in the Kraków Zoo. I also saw a tiger on television that had escaped from a Warsaw circus about a week after I arrived in that city. It ran around the suburbs for a few hours and eventually got shot, but not before a vet had also been shot by an overenthusiastic policeman. It did make me wonder what I was letting myself in for ...

United by an Uncommon Language / Part 2

Maiyim Baron considers herself a henna gaijin
and runs a site by that name.

Strange — that's the word for the people who, as soon as they set foot in Japan, aspire to become more Japanese than the Japanese. The Japanese themselves call them henna gaijin, which literally means strange foreigner — or, as one contributor to a Web site exploring this concept put it, "a weird white person who wants to learn about swords and stuff."

When I first got to Japan, I said to myself:

Well, I may be strange, but I'm not foolhardy. I've just had a small-island nation experience in England, which was pretty intense. No need to charge head on into another one straight away. Besides, only a glutton for punishment would embark on such a difficult language right after getting out of grad school. I'll learn just enough Japanese to get by, no more.

Famous last words, as it were. When I first went to England, I resolved not to pick up a British accent: thought it would sound even more pretentious on an American than it does on a native. Little did I envision visiting my hometown one day and being asked: "Are you from England? I love your accent!"

In Japan as well, my initial resistance to going native gave way to a preoccupation with absorbing what the 16th-century Jesuit missionary St. Francis Xavier nicknamed the devil's tongue.

In retrospect, I think St. Francis Xavier had it right. Who but the devil could have seduced me into dabbling in Japanese for so many years, knowing full well I would never reach fluency? Not only that, but since leaving Japan, I've been possessed by the need to persuade ALL English speakers to give it a go, for these four reasons:

1) Everybody needs a supreme challenge, and assuming you're not about to climb Mt. Everest, studying Japanese is the next best thing. Once you've embarked on the adventure, it becomes all consuming. You're in pain, you're exhausted, you're under stress, your brain is swelling, you think you're on the verge of getting lung disease (Japan is a smoker's paradise) — and it turns out you've only reached base camp, where you can say a few basic things like "Kore wa pen desu ka? Hai, kore wa pen desu." [Is this a pen? Yes, it's a pen.]

Mt. Everest, courtesy Wikimedia Commons

At this point, you try not to get psyched out, reminding yourself that others have done it before you — never mind the fact that unlike you, they started when they were young, before their language-learning faculties had atrophied. You also try not to think about what the experts have told you: that, to become truly good at Japanese — as in reading and writing as well as speaking — requires seven years of dedicated study. Lethargy is setting in, and you're full of confusion, but you slog on memorizing kanji characters — just another couple of thousand, and you'll be reading the newspaper.

Pretty soon, though, you can't cram anything more into your poor addled brain, and you take a rest. By the time you resume, it's clear you haven't got a prayer of so much as glimpsing the summit. Even then, you refuse to give up, loathe to relinquish the bragging rights it gives you with your expat friends in Europe.

"You think that learning Spanish is hard?" you say to your friend who has been in Madrid for a couple of years. "Try Japanese!" As long as you're learning Japanese, you'll always be the most macho person in the expat room. In fact, you now see your earlier self as a wimp for complaining about learning French in school. At least it's in the same family as English, for pity's sake!

2) Everybody needs a laugh, and the Japanese language has a comical side — quite literally. Kya-ha-ha. No, I'm not talking about Japlish, the "almost-English" that is plastered on tee shirts, adverts, stationery and the like — "I feel Coke" being a notorious example. Given my predilection for the Queen's English (as professed in Part 1 of this post), I have only one thing to say to the perpetrators of such trends: "We are not amused."

Rather, I refer to the many comical expressions the language contains, which not coincidentally are also the lifeblood of Japanese comics, or manga. Does art imitate life or vice versa? In Japan, one is never quite sure ...

At one point during my stay in Tokyo, I was the only non-Japanese in a Japanese office. Whenever we were facing a tight deadline, my colleagues would use the expression giri giri. Even though no one told me the literal translation, this expression, technically known as an echo word, became imprinted on my brain. It perfectly described my inner state of panic while also providing some light relief. If something is giri giri, it's hard to take it too seriously.

Giri giri is an example of gitaigo, mimetic expressions of states of mind or emotions that do not produce sounds. Japanese also has many onomatopoeia — words that replicate voice or sounds, known as giongo: e.g., guu guu (stomach rumbling), kusu kusu (giggle), pachi pachi (hand clapping), and kin kon (ding dong of a door bell). There is even a word for the sound of breaking big sticks, such as an elephant makes when ambling through the forest: baki baki (see visual). How silly-sweet is that?

Courtesy Think Geek

3) It's the duty of every English speaker to find out what happens to our words when they enter other languages, and Japanese makes a fascinating case study. During Japan's period of national seclusion, lasting more than two centuries, Japanese language borrowed a few Western words, known as Gairaigo or Katakanago, mostly from Portuguese and Dutch: e.g., pan [bread] and biiru [beer]. But with the arrival of Commodore Perry and his Black Ships in 1853, Japan began pursuing modernization, which led to heavy borrowings from German, French, and English. The next major shift occurred after WWII. There was a torrential influx of English into Japanese, which continues to this day.

So, do Japanese people use and pronounce our words the same as we do? You've got to be joking! Typically, they alter our words out of all recognition. For a start, Japanese have shown no hesitation in chopping up our words and recombining them. Sometimes they come up with a brilliant new compound: aircon, for instance. But what if I told you this discussion was ofureco and you can't use your dejikame? Pretty clear, right? (Off the record; digital camera.)

And, while we English speakers have no trouble saying "judo," "sushi," and "anime" (this last is actually a reborrowing), Japanese speakers will modify the pronunciation and/or meaning of our words to suit themselves. Let's try another test. What if I said I was trying to find the mochibeeshon to ridusu? Maybe, just maybe, you'd understand that I'm trying to find the motivation to reduce. But reduce what? As it turns out, ridusu refers only to cutting down on the amount of garbage I create, not my weight.

And that's just the half of it. To make matters worse, many Japanese are offended — the cheek! — by English loanwords. While some people think they sound cool, many more fear their overuse has debased the native tongue and led to no end of communication problems. (The natives, too, frequently get lost in the labyrinth of Katakanago, confusing grin piisu [green peas] for Greenpeace, for instance.)

Woe betide the individual who laces his speech with too many English-derived words. He will be told he has a foreigner's complex (the ultimate put-down being bata kusai: literally, reeking of butter). The nation's sportscasters recently set a good example by developing an alternative lexicon for baseball (another Western import). Now, instead of proclaiming shinguruhitto, they say tanda.

Which brings me to my final point:

4) Believe it or not, English and Japanese have something extraordinary in common. Both languages developed in the shadow of an imperial language: for us it was Latin; for the Japanese, Chinese. (Note: This item relates to Part 1 of this post.)

Kibino Makibi（吉備真備）,
a scholar who traveled to China in 716

A brief history lesson. Beginning in the Yamato-Asuka period (538-710 AD), Japan sent envoys of scholars to China to study the Chinese character-based writing system. Not only did these scholars create Japan's first written language using Chinese characters (known as kanji), but they also introduced the first Sino-Japanese words, or Kango.

Similar to the role of Latin in Medieval Europe, Kanbun (the written form of Kango) became the language of statecraft, scholarly literature, and Buddhism (another Chinese import).

But even while borrowing heavily from the language of Imperial China — over 60 percent of Japanese words are derived from Chinese (similar to the percentage for Latin-derived words in English) — ancient Japanese were at pains not to let these borrowings take over. They still used their native words, known as Wago, for describing uniquely Japanese feelings and beliefs. An example is the Man'yōshū, an 8th-century collection of poetry exploring themes at heart of Shinto (Japan's native religion).

While on this topic, let's give a shout-out to the Japanese women who kept the native lingo alive during the Heian period (794-1185), when an alternative writing system emerged, consisting of two phonetic scripts (hiragana and katakana) for representing Japanese words with no Chinese equivalent. Aristocratic women, who had not been trained in Chinese like their male counterparts, took up the brush for the first time. They went on to produce some of outstanding early works of literature. The most illustrious example is Murasaki Shikibu's Genji Monogatari, or Tale of Genji, reputedly the first novel ever written.

Written text from earliest illustrated handscroll (12th C)
of Tale of Genji, courtesy Gotoh Museum

Meanwhile, the literature produced by male writers of the Heian, written in much more stilted Sino-Japanese, has been forgotten. 

Methinks George Orwell would have approved. And he might have been gratified that English and Japanese, despite having so little in common, are united in the robustness of their native tongues. As a general rule, an English word derived from Latin/French roots corresponds to a Sino-Japanese word in Japanese, whereas a simpler Anglo-Saxon word would best be translated by a Wago equivalent.

---

Question: Have I convinced you to try studying Japanese, or have I merely proved that I have the chops of a henna gaijin, and a demonic one at that?

United by an Uncommon Language / Part 1

The "look up" dictionary on my Amazon Kindle has turned me into a much slower reader. I can't seem to resist clicking out to every single word I'm curious about. But if it now takes me twice as long to read an article or book, I find it twice as engrossing.

I've been interested in etymology for as long as I can remember. I was an English major in college and proceeded to study literature and politics in the UK. During the latter experience, I took it upon myself to figure out why George Bernard Shaw (among others) had quipped that the U.S. and the UK are separated by a common language. For a word nerd like me, England was the Land of Linguistic Chills, Thrills and Excitement. In particular, I enjoyed:

1) Vocabulary challenges on BBC Radio 4. Who knew word games could be such a hoot? My all-time favorite was Just a Minute, the panel game where players must talk for sixty seconds on a given subject "without repetition, hesitation or deviation." (Hmmm ... sounds a little like blogging!) In my day, Clement Freud (Sigmund's grandson) was a regular competitor. He kept the other panelists on their toes with his virtuoso command of English coupled with a mercurial wit. For instance, when asked to talk for one minute about tripe, he responded:

I think it is proper to say that taramasalata is the biggest sexual stimulant that we have in the western world. A man in Newport Pagnall ate his own weight of this confection of smoked cod's row, lemon juice, sunflower oil, spices, herbs and...

(At this point, he was challenged for hesitation — and for talking tripe!)

2) The Queen's English Society. Actually, I didn't find out about the Queen's English Society until recently. But the QES has made the list because of the pleasure I took in the UK in meeting the sort of people who might belong to the QES: who care passionately about correct and elegant English usage. I'm only sorry I can't be in the UK now for the QES's latest campaign to "protect the language from impurities, bastardisations and the horrors introduced by the text-speak generation," to be spearheaded by an Academy of English. There are those who find this initiative patronizing and pathetic: patronizing because of the belief that England should be in charge of what is now the global lingua franca; pathetic because of the attempt to use language to restore Britain's declining world status. But I don't agree. Maybe it's my long exposure to Japlish, but I'm glad to see someone holding up the side in an age where emoticons, acronyms, and other irritating examples of textese are creeping in willy nilly. And I've found studies to back up this opinion, such as the one showing that SMS messaging, though faster to write, takes more time to read than normal English. LOL !

3) Saxonists. Likewise, England was the first time I encountered the sort of people who pay attention to the proportion of Anglo-Saxon to Latinate words in their sentences. English (as you probably know, if you've gotten this far in the post) is distinguished for having many words with identical meanings that appear in two forms — one derived from Latin and one derived from Anglo-Saxon:

The incendiary device exterminated twenty citizens.
vs.
The bomb killed twenty people.
- - -
I adjourned to the sitting room and perused the morning paper.
vs.
I went into the sitting room and read the morning paper.

In his famous polemic "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell pointed out that we English speakers tend to resort to Latinate words whenever we have an urge to obfuscate or gloss over the truth, dress up simple statements, or avoid expressing an opinion:

Bad writers, and especially scientific, political, and sociological writers, are nearly always haunted by the notion that Latin or Greek words are grander than Saxon ones . . .

A word or two more on this Saxonism business. I subscribe to it myself — using Saxon words as the building blocks for my sentences and tossing in the odd Latinate word for variety. There are times, however, when I find this preference for originally and etymologically English words over words from alien sources a little unsettling. And I'm not the only one to have felt this way. The late, great lexicographer Robert Burchfield once referred to the quest for Saxonisms as "an unrealizable nationalistic dream."

Minted in Italy @ 49 BC

Maybe it's because I've become preoccupied with xenophobia of late, but I ask you: where would we be if the Romans hadn't introduced elephantus into the vocabulary? Hmm ... On second thought, that may be a poor choice of example. It turns out Caesar literally introduced the elephantus when he invaded Britain. As one ancient writer recorded:

Caesar had one large elephant, which was equipped with armor and carried archers and slingers in its tower. When this unknown creature entered the river, the Britons and their horses fled and the Roman army crossed over.

Orwell wrote another famous essay about shooting an elephant, in which the slowly dying elephant serves as an emblem of everything that is wrong with imperialism, suggesting it will ultimately fade and (though it may take a long time) die.

Historical linguists could tell us for sure, but doesn't imperialism linger forever in language? The Romans may have entered British territory with an elephant in tow, but the elephant they left behind — that of the Latin language — has proved far more significant. That particular beast refused to perish, especially after the Normans invaded, bringing in still more Latinate words.

(As a sidebar, I wonder if the early Brits couldn't believe their luck when pompous officials of church and state, not to mention academics, declared their intention to make Latin their special province? As Orwell so clearly demonstrated, the language of Imperial Rome suits the bureaucratic mindset to a T.)

COMING SOON: Part II of this post, in which I report on some of the best (and worst) features of attempting to learn the Japanese language, which not for nothing has earned the epithet of the devil's tongue (this from a Jesuit missionary, who had every incentive to master it!). Until then, I am abandoning the realm of philology post-haste to spend more time with my Kindle ...

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Questions: Do you, too, value England as the keeper of the flame for the English language? And am I being paranoid, or does our Mother Tongue sometimes have a xenophobic flavor?

In Honor of Those Who See the Elephant Untrammeled by Xenophobia

We long-term expats are far from perfect. We're too often the empty chair at the extended-family table; we can come across as arrogant or aloof; and some of us are boozers. But one thing you can say for us, we don't fear the "other." We're not xenophobes. Thus one of the most difficult challenges of repatriation can be witnessing an outbreak of xenophobia in one's native land, as has been happening lately in the United States.

Immigrants, Muslims, President Obama: demonizing the "other" is rapidly becoming a blood sport. Never mind that most immigrants come to see an "elephant" (as did many of our own ancestors). Or that most Muslims aren't terrorists. Or that in this age of international travel, President Obama is hardly alone in taking the "x" out xenophobe and putting it into expatriate. In a cover story for this month's Forbes, conservative thinker Dinesh D'Souza asserts that because Obama spent “his formative years — the first 17 years of his life — off the American mainland, in Hawaii, Indonesia and Pakistan, with multiple subsequent journeys to Africa," he is an "other," doesn't think like an "American," and takes actions that benefit foreigners, not natives. (This barb from a man who was born and raised in India!)

As an antidote to these poisonous times, this blog will be issuing occasional Pachrydermophile Prizes in honor of Americans who are carrying on a love affair with the elephant, or "X," in a very public way, untrammeled by xenophobia. In this post, "best of" prizes will be awarded for the following categories:

• Wrinkles and All: For foreign-born or first-generation Americans who continue to embrace their native cultures in the face of vitriolic attacks.
• Grass Really Is Greener: For Americans who admire certain things about the "other" and aren't afraid to broadcast that fact.
• Feed Time: For Americans who, having fallen hard for another culture's food, try hard to get the rest of us to fall as well.
• Why Do Elephants Paint Their Toes Yellow? For Americans who express a love of other cultures through clothing.

And the winners are . . .

BEST "WRINKLES AND ALL"

Porochista Khakpour, an Iranian-American novelist, for facing down the American "elephant" since 9/11. Khakpour's debut novel, Sons and Other Flammable Objects, told of the travails of an Iranian-American family in New York post-9/11. But little did Khakpour anticipate, when she published the book in 2007, the "boiling hot summer of anti-Islamic assault" the nation has just experienced. As she wrote in an op-ed for the New York Times, published on September 11, 2010:

. . . it would take almost a full decade for the proverbial 9/11 fallout to fall out, for anti-Muslim xenophobia to emerge, fully formed and fever-pitched, ostensibly over plans to build an interfaith cultural center near ground zero.

Khakpour's family fled Tehran at the advent of the Iran-Iraq war in 1980, when she was only three years old. They hustled from country to country, ultimately settling in Southern California. At that time, Khakpour spoke only Farsi; now she is a professor of literature Santa Fe University of Art and Design as well as an accomplished novelist. She did not embrace Islam and has become an American citizen. That said, she still considers herself to be a Middle Easterner culturally — an identity that sometimes clashes with her values, those of a political liberal. For instance, she cannot fully accept Western stereotypes of Muslim women:

. . . I used to experience so many mixed emotions when I’d see women in full burqa in Brooklyn: alarm at the spectacle (no matter how many times I’d seen it), followed by a certain feminist irk, and finally discomfiture at our cultural kinship. And then it would all turn into one strong emotion — protective rage — when I’d see a group of teenagers laughing and pointing at them.

BEST "GRASS REALLY IS GREENER"

Elisabeth Rosenthal, a medical-doctor-turned-foreign-correspondent, for combining an anthropologist's ability to immerse herself in other cultures with a journalist's ability to report back on her discoveries. As the health and environment reporter for the International Herald Tribune, Rosenthal has embarked on a quest to find out what makes Europe greener than the United States. She likes to tell an anecdote at her own expense: about how she struggled to get used to not having a clothes dryer or air conditioner in her apartment in Rome. All's well that ends well, she says: "I now enjoy the ritual of putting laundry on the line, expect to sweat in summer, and look forward to the cool of autumn." She is also of the conviction that if she can do it, others can. The average American produces three times the amount of CO2 emissions as a person in France. So if we are serious about lowering our carbon footprints, then it's time to forgo some of our energy-wasting appliances.

Before Europe, Rosenthal reported on health-related issues for the New York Times' Beijing bureau. She recently drew on that experience when contributing a front-page story to the Times's Week in Review addressing the debate now raging in American educational communities about the importance of testing. She tells the story of how well her children adapted to their international school in Beijing, which combined a Western curriculum with an Asian emphasis on discipline and frequent testing. She says that her kids mostly didn't understand they were being tested as the "tests felt like so many puzzles; not so much a judgment on your being, but an interesting challenge." What's more, they came to "like the feedback of testing." American educators would do well to heed Rosenthal's advice and learn from the Chinese example. Notably, her observations dovetail with some new U.S. research showing that not giving tests may be bad educational practice.

BEST "FEED TIME"

Ratha Chau and Ben Daitz, two members of the New York City restaurant scene, for founding the city's first Cambodian-American sandwich shop. Daitz and Chau were buddies at Clark University in 1992. Their paths crossed again some years later when both were working in the food industry in New York City. Daitz helped Chau open Kampuchea (New York's first Cambodian restaurant, now closed) on the Lower East Side. Daitz still remembers the first time he visited that restaurant, and Chau made him a sandwich using his Cambodian mother's recipe. He took one bite and felt he'd seen the "elephant." Eventually, the two friends joined forces to open up a tiny sandwich shop in the East Village called Num Pang, showcasing traditional Cambodian ingredients — fermented fish, shrimp paste, fermented shrimp, and lots of herbs — in a style (gourmet sandwiches) they hoped would appeal to Americans.

In a recent "At Lunch With" column in the New York Times, the actor Oliver Platt dragged film critic Leah Rozen to Num Pang and proceeded to order his favorite skirt steak sandwich topped with mayonnaise flavored with fresh cilantro [coriander]. Platt's father was a diplomat specializing in Asia, so the family (which also includes food critic Adam Platt) lived in Hong Kong, China, Taiwan, and Japan. There are many Americans who think that cilantro tastes like soap, but for Platt, cilantro is the equivalent of what the madeleine was to Proust: the flavor that recalls his time abroad more than any other. No wonder he's a Num Pang regular. At the same time, Platt appreciates how well Daitz and Chau have made their Southeast Asian food concept work in a New York City's ultra-urban environment. "You’ve got all of New York in microcosm right here," he told Rozen. ". . . I can smell the exhaust, and that’s part of the whole palate.”

BEST "WHY DO ELEPHANTS PAINT THEIR TOES YELLOW?"

Lisa Mayock and Sophie Buhai, a team of up-and-coming fashion designers, for melding designs from far-flung corners of the globe with an American retro aesthetic. Mayock and Buhai met when they were graduate students at Parsons School of Design (home of Project Runway). Each was elated to discover a fellow Californian who was attempting to dress an East Coast "elephant." (In Mayock's view, West Coast style is much less defined than what's found in the East.) Upon graduating from Parsons, the pair collaborated on their own label, Vena Cava, which is distinguished for its hip prints and dresses with a worldly feel — clothes that, in New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn's phrase, "hint of Americana with a dash of another country."

Vena Cava's cultural references have included Egyptian history, japonismo, Wiener Werkstatte, and African textiles. Lately, Buhai and Mayock seem to have turned to the Tuscan region of Italy or France for inspiration. (Are they suggesting we'd all like to escape?!) Their Spring 2011 collection, shown at New York Fashion Week, "felt very Mad Men by way of Capri," according to Huffington Post contributor Nicole Berrie. "An Eat, Pray, Love of the 1960s if you will." (Sounds heavenly, in my current mood ...)

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Question: Long live the American pachydermophile spirit! Are there any other exemplars you think should be honored?

Melbourne Girl Gives London a Burl, Comes Up a Doozey

QUESTIONS FOR KYM HAMER

This Australian sales and marketing expert, now a London expat, says that while the UK has its drawbacks — it doesn't offer the outdoor life and many of the natives are whingers — there are attractions a plenty, including, strangely enough, the weather.

Where are you from Down Under? I was born in Brisbane, then moved to Cairns when I was 9. Eighteen months later, Mum, my sister and I moved to Melbourne — so I consider myself a Melbourne girl.

What brought a Melbourne girl to London originally? A fling! Long story — really crap on arrival ... but hey, it got me here!

How long have you been in the UK at this point? Six-and-a-half years. 

As a kid, did you think you would ever leave Australia and make your home in another country? Dreamed about it but not as anything I ever actually thought I'd do.

Really? I was under the impression that many antipodeans emigrate to the UK. They see it as some kind of rite of passage. I didn't think about it like that. When I first got to London, I picked up a book called Australian Expats: Stories from Abroad, which charts 33 Australian expat journeys. The Foreword opens with a quote from Auden: "... To be free is often to be lonely." The editors point out that despite the loneliness of being an outsider, "to be free is also to be enriched, humbled, exhilarated, enchanted, challenged..." The desire to be free really was — and still is — a powerful motivator for me.

I'm in awe of your Auden (no pun intended) quoting ability. Where did you do your education?  Australia. I actually did two degrees at the same time. I applied to one of the first two-degree curricula offered at Monash University in Melbourne. I earned a business degree (Marketing) and an arts degree (Psychology).

It's refreshing to see a truly Renaissance person making her way up the corporate ladder, something that's also in evidence on your very entertaining blog, Gidday from the UK. What is your day job nowadays? I'm on contract for Associated News Limited, part of Daily Mail General Trust, a business that is privately owned by Lord Rothermere. I'm the sales coordinator for www.localpeople.co.uk, a network of community-based Web sites. I've been there nine months.

Have you always worked for English companies, or is this something new?  I've worked for three companies before this and, come to think of it, all are of English heritage but were bought up relatively recently by overseas interests: Tetley Tea, now owned by the Tata Group, which is headquartered in Mumbai; Interpet, bought by the U.S. company Central Garden & Pet just before I joined; and Alpha Group, bought by the Italian-based Autogrill while I was there.

The U.S. and the U.K. are said to be separated by a common language. Is the same true of Australia and Britain? The problem for Australians in Britain is that we presume to speak the same language and have a similar culture — after all, Australia is still part of the Commonwealth. So when the inevitable miscommunications happen, they are more of a shock than if you were learning a completely different language and culture. Australians have a tendency to say what they think, and that can get you into some sticky situations.  It's been one of the biggest challenges for me, particularly in managing staff.

The United States may have broken away from Britain and become a republic, but I sense that my experience of London overlaps yours in some crucial ways. I would wager, for instance, that you are over-scrutinized by the natives on your use of the Queen's English. I'm sure you can relate to the trouble I've had with the word "pants." English people say "pants" to mean underpants, but for us Australians and you Americans, "pants" means trousers. You know you're an Australian living in London when you mention your "pants are wet" — because you stepped in a puddle — and everyone gives you weird looks.

Plus Oz has its own patois. I once told someone at work I had been for a fossick on their desk, and they looked horrified until I told them that it meant rummage around!

We haven't even broached the issue of Australian pronunciation. Another minefield. My boyfriend is English. Some time ago, I mentioned to him I was going to Sainsbury's to buy charcoal chicken (I think you call it rotisserie chicken in the U.S.). He thought I'd said "chuckle" chicken. We still have a good chuckle, as it were, about that. Australians tend to put equal emphasis on their syllables, whereas the English put the emphasis on the first syllable and then let the rest of the word fade a bit: e.g., South-Wark versus Suth-ock. (I'm referring, by the way, to Southwark, a borough in South London that is home to the famed Borough Market.)

But at least you don't have the constant ear-bashing, as I did, about the misguided policies of the government back home. Actually, do people in England even know that Australia now has its first woman PM? Ha! Not until I tell them. And given she's just announced a General Election, it may not be for long!

What would you say is the key difference on how Aussies look at life compared to Brits? Australians are MUCH more outdoorsy. They may not be necessarily sporty but we have this whole thing about fresh air. I love to go outdoors even in the dead of winter. English people have this annoying habit in winter of turning the indoor heating up to tropical levels and then walking around in tee shirts. I feel like saying, "Put a bl**dy jumper on, you twit ... saves money and the environment!"

Interesting. I feel the same way about Americans in New York City — they seem much more wasteful of energy than citizens of other developed countries. So can you trace your roots back to Britain — is that something Aussies like to do? My stepmum's from Ramsgate and still has various relations there. Mum's dad was Irish and descended from Bernadette Devlin, who was the first woman in Irish parliament. I should also mention that Dad is Dutch, so I enjoy popping over to Amsterdam and exploring the restaurant scene in hopes of finding the "home cooking" my Oma used to make. Bit of a mixed breed I am, as are most Australians.

After six years, would you say you've become anglicized? I don't know whether I'm anglicized, but my life is very different over here. In Melbourne I was always out and about with friends at the ballet/theatre/dinner/parties and never really considered myself a "home person." But here in London, I treasure my weekends at home. Maybe it's a combination of living here and reaching this age and stage of life.

How did you come to settling in Kingston-upon-Thames? I went flat hunting about a year after I arrived. I had been in a group share and really craved my own space. I knew when the letting agent was driving me up the hill in Kingston that I wanted to move in, even if the flat was  a hovel. The flat is quite small, but for me it is a haven, not a hovel. Kingston is also where I met my boyfriend, Jeremy. We chatted on each other's doorsteps for about three months before becoming a couple.

Besides Jeremy, have you gotten to know other British people well? Until I started working, my friends were mainly Australian and to this day my two closest (one of whom I met a week after I got here) are Aussies. But I have a mix of friends.

Has your relationship with Jeremy brought you any closer to English people and culture? Having an English partner (he has two teenage kids) has definitely increased my exposure to English ideas and attitudes. I don't always think about it, but then someone comes to visit from Australia and I notice how much my perspectives have shifted. Jeremy, by the way, is no stranger to Australia. His aunt and uncle emigrated there about 40 years ago, so he has Australian cousins. I would also say that despite his English roots, that man o' mine does a mean BBQ!

When did you start up your blog and for what purpose? I started Gidday from the UK almost exactly two years ago. I saw it as a way for family and friends to get to know the everyday stuff in my life as opposed to the "highlights package" I would deliver in sporadic phone calls. I usually post twice a week: there's an auto-email that goes to 10 of my family and close Aussie friends (who find "following" a significant challenge!). When I started, I found it cathartic and realized that I hadn't written anything that wasn't for business since I'd left school to go to uni. I loved writing in school, and didn't realize how much I missed it.

Do you still keep in close touch with friends in Australia? Not all of them. Distance is difficult, though I think if friendships are strong, they can be sustained. Mum and her partner have just been over to visit. We did some touristy things: Brighton, London Eye, Harrods. We also just hung out. For my mum, hanging out in my life and seeing what I love (and don't love) is the best way of coping with my being so far away. It helps her "see me," she says.

After a while, it can become harder to share things with folks back home. There's this e-mail I got from an Aussie friend: You Know You Are an Australian Living in London When… The answers range from "You catch yourself complaining, then cut yourself off, afraid you’re becoming 'one of them,'" to "You can walk into your kitchen, bedroom and bathroom by pivoting on one foot." That is absolutely so true. It really sums it up. Only those who've done it — i.e., moved to another country, what you have called seeing the elephant — "get" the challenges and the upsets that make up the expat experience.

Could you ever go back to Australia to live, now that you've made this kind of leap? I can't imagine living anywhere other than London, and I never thought I'd say that of anywhere. I love the cultural and political diversity, the history everywhere one looks, and having four proper seasons each year. That it has snowed seriously in the last couple of years thrills me, although autumn remains my favorite time of year. And nothing can beat the sense of celebration on a glorious English summer's day, as I'm sure you remember. I also think public transport over here is fab — you can get yourself absolutely anywhere with a bit of creativity. In Australia if you don't live close to "town," you really need a car.

Wait, doesn't Melbourne have four seasons? No snow though!

How does the food in London compare? Besides being more expensive... I don't eat red meat so traditional English food is a bit lost on me. I miss good Chinese food and I do think Australia has a real edge on lighter cuisines like Thai, Vietnamese and seafood. That said, Indian food in London has been a real joy to explore. I have also liked trying Caribbean and Moroccan food here, which we don't get at all in Australia. You are right about the £££. For that reason, I've taught myself to cook and even to make things from scratch. My latest triumph was taking a glut of onions (I get an organic veggies box delivered every week) and turning it into this amazing relish ... yummo!

So I have to ask: have you seen any elephants? There was an elephant parade in London recently, to raise money for saving the Asian elephant, which is on the brink of extinction. There were these huge, brightly painted elephant sculptures in Trafalgar Square, outside the Victoria and Albert Museum, in Green Park, and near the Tower of London, where I took my mum (that's where this photo is from). I've also driven through Elephant and Castle on the way to Islington to visit friends a few years back — but  I don't suppose that counts?

It does, it does! I take it that your various elephant sightings, metaphorical and otherwise, have more than made up for the trials, tribulations and hardships you've experienced on your journey. Yes, life has a richness for me now. To use yet another adage: "You know you're an Australian living in London when..." — wait for it! — "you used to think the grass is greener back home but now realize the grass is greener wherever you are now."