I would like to talk a little bit about the Orange language, which I was fortunate enough to start learning a while ago. Just as one would suggest, the Orange language is full of sh-sounds and closed vowels which make it sound exactly as one could imagine a language would sound like if the spokesperson was to munch a juicy orange. That is why I so easily fell in love with the language’s texture. Diving in its world provokes in me an intense childlike happiness. It makes me believe everything is possible.
The Orange song
There’s a common children’s song in Bulgaria known as the Orange song. The country where the Orange language is spoken I have always imagined of orange color and have always believed has served as an inspiration for the author of the Orange song. It was only when I became older that I realized that the orange color of the child’s drawing (the song is about a child who draws her pictures in orange and her uncle who tells her it is wrong to do so) refers to the sunset and its effect on the surface it covers in light. Maybe you will find it strange that I learned about Orange land before conceptualizing the meaning of the last verse of the Orange song, but I guess it was my mother who obsessed me with countries and traveling at a very fragile age. I remember her telling me stories about the world and showing to me the countries on the giant map hanging from the wall in my first room. When I heard the name of Orange land and its bordering country on the same peninsula for the first time, I imagined the two of them as one big orange-yellowish country and I decided I will go live there one day.
The Orange Language and the Language as a Means
Maybe it is already time to proclaim that the Orange language is also known as Portuguese (unless you already figured it out by yourself). I’ve been learning it for the last two weeks now and I am starting to get the hang of the sound structure, which is the main thing I had to get used to since the vocabulary is 90% that of Spanish and the grammar is also very similar to the Spanish and Italian grammar. It is true, the more languages you speak, the easier it becomes to learn a new language. Maybe learn is not the right word here. Perhaps it is better to use acquire, because, as I said, there is not much new to learn when it comes to words and grammar, it is more about getting the hang of the language. Feeling it. Yes, indeed, acquiring a language to me means getting a feeling for it. And this really is the easiest way to wire a new Sprachsystem into your head, especially if your mind is able to integrate previous knowledge from other languages as well during this process. YouTube for sure is one of the keys. First I started watching some videos by Portuguese teachers, who speak in Portuguese, but you know, slower and all, so it’s easier. Then I moved on to some other youtubers, who speak in Portuguese in their videos and discuss topics I am interested in. This way, while watching the videos, I am focused not so much on the language spoken, but on the content. This is important, because language turns from a goal, into means, and that’s the only way to convince your brain that it is important to you to understand the language. After all, when you use your native language for example, you do not think on grammar and vocabulary while speaking, you just speak in order to transmit ideas. Those ideas are your goal, the language itself isn’t.
Portugal, Portukal, Portokal
It’s funny how our minds are affected by language. For me, Portugal has always been orange and when I was little I never even thought about putting this in doubt. Later on I figured it out, I mean it is not so difficult after all. The name of the country sounds like the Bulgarian word for the fruit orange, portokal. And that is how my mind coloured all of Portugal in orange. When imagining the country on a map, for me it was orange. The houses and the people, they were orange too. My friends from there, I am not gonna lie, quickly became my orange friends and as a result of this orange color which always accompanied them in my imagination, they quickly became some of the people I most dearly love. I wonder if I would still love them as much if they weren’t in orange.