“Le-litt Red ding-ri hood”

Do you remember when you decided to speak backwards? I do; you were about to turn 11 years old.

It all started when you were in 4^th grade. Back then, you used to go to a sleepover at least once a month. There was a particular house that you really liked to go to because the girl’s father, a really nice guy, told you stories like the werewolf or some Greek Myths. One time he told you “The Little Red Riding Hood” speaking backwards. I can still see how you told me all about “Le-litt Red ding-ri hood” (In case you don’t remember about it, that’s the way you say it in your “backwards-speaking system”) after I had, as always, picked you up. Of course I didn’t understand what you were talking about and you laughed at me. You were really excited about it. You pulled out a piece of paper and wrote “Little Red Riding Hood,” split the words by syllables and then turned them around. You took the paper with you and hang it on your door.

Even though you found that amazing, you soon forgot about it and the sign on your door was replaced by other posters and stickers. But since we both like music so much, I rented a film I love, Amadeus. You’ve seen it a couple of times, it’s the one about Mozart’s life and how another composer from the time, Salieri, apparently killed him. Anyway, there is this scene, right on the beginning, where Mozart is playing with a girl and he speaks backwards to her. She doesn’t understand him and he says that only really intelligent people can understand and do backwards-speaking. You were absolutely captivated by this idea. So you gave it a try. You developed a whole method to turn most of the words around as fast as possible.

–       It’s very easy.-you said – It’s only phonetic, you don’t really invert the whole word but only its syllables, the way the word sounds. So if you want to say garlic in “glish-en” (that´s the backwards word for English) you don’t say “cilrag” dad, that’s too complicated, you just split the word in “gar” and “lic” and invert their order. You get “Lic-gar.» – You smiled absolutely pleased with yourself.

We were cooking some “pasta pomodoro”, your favorite food, and I asked you how the word tomato would be. I was trying to play you a joke and you understood it immediately.

–       Tomato would be tomato. – We both laughed.

A few days later a couple of kids from you’re class started telling a small fragment of “Le-litt Red ding-ri hood” that they had learned by hard. You noticed a mistake somewhere and you told them so. They challenged you to do it right and you did. So they challenged you again, but this time to tell the whole story. You did that too. And while practicing, you decided that it would be fun to speak backwards and to look at people’s confused faces while listening to you speaking somewhat like English but definitely not English. That’s how Glishen was born.

Me and your mom had to learn some Glishen too, at least enough to understand you.

You started putting only a couple of glishen words in the middle of a sentence but you continued to talk in English most of the time. You would thank people by saying “u-thank” and you would say hello and goodnight “lo-he” and “night-good”. But slowly the quantity of words in English grew smaller and your capacity to turn words over improved immensely.

I once asked you how you did it and I discovered that my ten- year-old daughter had developed a complex method in order to speak her new language. Monosyllables were the same, you explained, although sometimes you turned them around also. I remember how the “Wolf ked-kno (knocked) the door: Konck, Konck, Kocnk” instead of “knock, knock, knock”. Words with 2 syllables were easy too: you just had to start by the ending and end by the beginning. It was “Sea-e”. I found words with three syllables very hard but you said I had to think of the middle sound as the central axis and do with the other two the same as before. I understood your logic, but it was really “zing-ma-a” how fast you could do it. When I asked you how you did with longer words you just answered:

– S’ That ree-ve ted-ca-pli-com. – and smiled. I loved that smile and its shiny brackets.

One day you came to the kitchen right before leaving for school and asked me to make you a sandwich instead of your usual cereal. I just thought you were hungrier today. That night you asked for pancakes; and I made pancakes. It was fine to have pancakes for dinner every once in a while. But you didn’t stopped there, you’re sudden appetite change didn’t changed back and you were now starting do things as homework in the morning or walking the dog in the afternoon instead of in the morning, as you always had. Your mom got a little concerned. I knew it was weird too, but I didn’t get too worried about it; I just kept thinking of it as an innocent game. You started to talk Glishen all the time and it seemed that it was getting hard for you to speak current English; you had already learned all the words in Glishen.

The summer came and your birthday was getting closer. So you’re grandmother asked you what you wanted for your 11^th birthday. I remember exactly how you answered:

–       M’I not ing-go to turn ven-le-e. I am ning-tur nine. M’I ving-ha a wards-back day-birth.-

The poor woman asked if you were taking Arabic at school; she didn’t understand a single word. Unluckily for her, there were not too many monosyllables in that sentence. But I did: You were turning 9 again instead of 11, because you were going backwards.

I thought that it was time for you to return to the forward-going world. So I invented a game. I called it the “reverse-game” but I told you that it was called the “Backwards-game”.

There were three basic rules:

1. Do everything backwards: Breakfast at morning, Dinner in the evening. Say “Thank you” and “Good night”
2. Grow older instead of younger.
3. Never think about it as a game. If you did so, you loose.

It took you a while to learn the game, but you eventually did. You have always been a smart girl. You started putting only a couple of English words in the middle of a sentence and slowly, the quantity of glishen words grew smaller. You also soon forgot that it was a game. However, you could never stop saying Lo-he as hello and you kept having sandwiches for breakfast.

I am telling you this because now that you are away in college and learning German (a language that might take me more than a couple of weeks to learn if necessary), you should be aware of your language-learning-skills and the sometimes odd methods you use for that. I would also like it if you don’t forget English this time. But what I really want you to remember is this: no matter what, I will always be willing to invent a game for you and to speak whatever language you decide to speak in. That’s what your dad (both forwards and backwards) is for. So go ahead and have fun, I will be home waiting for you to pass by and say hi; ready to make pancakes for dinner if you want me to, my Le-litt red ding-ri hood.