An open letter to Camp Borden citizens

(The following article was written by Captain Peeter Tali and appeared in the Borden Citizen on April 16th of this year. We graetefully acknowledge the permission of the Borden Citizen for the right to reprint Capt. Tali’s musings. Capt. Tali is the Chief of Public Relations Service of the Estonian Defence Forces and is a student at the Canadian Forces Language School at CFB Borden. We think that some sly tongue-in cheek digs at English explain the unique style... Re-read it, thinking in Estonian, not English!)
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You have probably seen me in the snowstorm, when I was stubbornly moving up to my knees in the snow in the middle of nowhere between the library and Angus. For sure you thought: who is this eccentric person, or who are those freaks in the parkas with funny green bags. “Why don’t they drive their cars,” you might ask yourself. “Why would they like suffering?”

Honestly, I am not some kind of Greenpeace activist or winter-freak or an ecological life style man. I don’t try to copy an Inuit’s lifestyle. I don’t enjoy slippery roads or swimming on the sidewalks, when Camp Borden was temporarily Lake Borden. I used to use a car, but unfortunately my car is overseas in Europe. I wear the parka or have worn it, because it was cold. I hope that spring has won against winter and I hope to soon take the parka back to the CFLS depot.

Hopefully you will meet me riding on a bicycle, because I have to be able to move around in Base Borden to be able to be studying English at the CFLS.

The silver lining is, that I am not alone; I am in the same boat with 107 officers and civilians from eighteen European and Asian countries. My course mates are from Albania, Bulgaria, Czech, Estonia, Hungary, Korea, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Tajikistan, Thailand and Ukraine and soon to include Uzbekistan.

Most of us have been studying here since 11th January 2003. The Russians and the Tajiks came later. Our final tests will begin on 25th of April.

We have been working on learning English very hard. However, your language is not easy or even logical.

How must I pronounce, for example, a sentence: the soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert. How to pronounce and speak this way, so that I am able to understand what I said or want to say?

Let’s face it: English is an unusual or even unique language. I can even say marvellous language. There is no egg in eggplant or ham in hamburger, neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England or French fries in France.

My Korean classmate wondered about a hot dog, because it is not dog at all or even not made from dog’s meat.

You take English for granted. But if my coursemates and I explore its paradoxes, we find that quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn’t the plural of booth beeth? If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, are humanitarians cannibals?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites? Amazing!

We are learning and becoming familiar with the Canadian style of life. In my point of view Canada is more or less similar to European countries. Especially Ottawa; however you can’t compare Toronto to Detroit because the cities are totally different like day and night. The Canadians are extremely helpful.

We were on our field trips in the capital of Canada Ottawa, in Toronto, in the McMichael Canadian Art Gallery. We stepped into the boots of Canadians and played curling and learned how a Maple Syrup Farm works. We felt the glory and charm of the traditional Mess Dinner. Some of us enjoyed NHL and NBA games in Ottawa and Toronto. Some of us became real fans of the Raptors and Maple Leafs. Unfortunately, as my Polish friend Slawomir said , they are not tremendously successful.

The sad thing is, we have not had an opportunity to present our countries and our cultures like a half-year ago, because international T.G.I.T has been indefinitely postponed. Indefinitely postponed is actually an idiom and it means cancelled, because of legal problems. We can only to describe to you the taste of Korean Kim chi or Estonian kilu.

Now, I have to beg a favour from you. I ask you to speak to us to help improve our listening and speaking skills.

Cultural background forces some of us often to sit in the corner as silent as mountain trolls. We are afraid that our English is not grammatically perfect and our pronunciation is terrible like before. The only light at the other end of the tunnel is speaking and having a conversation with you. Please force us to speak English. Please! And please correct our mistakes, tactfully.

Just for the conversation.

Peeter Tali,
Captain

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