My style is tolerable. So my great auntie tells me. She was a teacher and looked up my work when she was over to visit. My style is tolerable.
I must learn to write in perfect English. I will practice to write in perfect English. This is the way to write in perfect English.
The standard form is a bit out of my style. I had help whenever I chose to write in the neutral voice and I think I did right by it. But my style is tolerable.
Tolerable is that quaint way to say "you're a bloody fop and I don't know what to do with you." I love my auntie but she is a bit demanding.
If I had to write a contract for an overseas matter I would do better. I practiced writing that way for six months. I can do it. But it's an unpleasant thing because you get the words all jumbly and no one quite sees what you mean. It just slips by.
After visiting Europe I realized there is a serious difference between us and our cousins in the north. They speak strangely. I am sure they say the same about me but I had to squint hard to make out some of the words they tossed around.
And then you bring in the Americans with their flat ears. It's like they are all tone deaf. And they only want to spend their own money. "Do you take Dah-las?" I don't know what I would do with a Dah-la. Is that something from Tibet perhaps?
Perhaps I spend too much time trying to be like people I am not. My grief, dear auntie, may be that I am confused on which style I should tolerate the most. I have to write for a foreign audience and yet I must also make sense to myself.
That is the challenge isn't it? We don't really know our place in the world until we get out in it and see just how awkward and funny we sound to people out there.
I could use R10000 just to travel for a day to another country. Perhaps I could come back enlightened but imagine what I would sound like if I learned the language they speak in Spain.
