I often tell people, in all seriousness, that the culture shock I experienced when I moved to Halstad (pop. 700) for my first newspaper job was worse than the culture shock I experienced in Tokyo as a student there.

And it really isn’t an exaggeration.  Part of that is you expect a certain amount of culture shock when you move to a foreign country, especially an Asian one.  But you don’t expect to move less than 300 miles from where you grew up and find yourself in a land of strange folkways – and language.

It was a little distressing to find out that I actually had to learn some new ways to talk when I moved to this part of the country.  And it wasn’t the Marge-Gunderson-from-“Fargo” accents that were the problem.  It was the actual words themselves.

Exhibit A is the noon meal.  I grew up calling it “lunch.”  In this part of the country, it’s “dinner.”  I think it only took me one missed lunch appointment to discover the difference.  I had, of course, shown up for “dinner” at 6 p.m., the normal time I would eat that meal in my country.  I found out later that what I’d actually shown up for was “supper.”  I had missed “dinner” by a good quarter of a day.

My ex-wife (who grew up here) and I have, for years, had a running debate over that particular terminology.  I have to admit, she has one argument that I haven’t been able to refute.  “Hey, the painting isn’t called ‘The Last Dinner,’ is it?” she once asked me.  The only counterargument I have to that is I don’t see a clock anywhere in the painting, so you don’t know what time they’re all together, but that’s kind of a weak response.  Besides, I have it on very good authority – okay, I’m making this up – that Leonardo originally called the painting “The Last Brunch.”

Regional speech isn’t just a problem here.  When I moved to Wisconsin for college, I discovered that people in that state, aside from being totally obnoxious about the Packers, also speak a language all their own.

The very first day I was in Eau Claire, somebody walked into the dorm and asked me, “Is there a bubbler in here?”  My response was, “I don’t know. What’s a bubbler?”  I asked around and discovered “bubbler” is Wisconsinese for “drinking fountain.”  Apparently, the Wisconsin name derives from the old-fashioned drinking fountains where the water literally bubbled up.

Sometimes, one’s language difficulties simply stem from what one is used to.  A friend of mine and I currently have a running debate over ring bologna, or as she calls it, Polska kielbasa.

I have had a ring bologna jones ever since I was a kid.  During our yearly trips to Michigan, I’d always go with my dad to a butcher shop owned by Tom Pepernik, my aunt’s brother.  Tom the butcher always gave me ring bologna.  So to this day, as far as I’m concerned, if it’s meat and comes in a tube that’s bent into an oval, that’s what it is.

My friend, who’s a very precise person, thinks I’m an idiot.  She points out that often as not, right on the wrapper it says “Polska kielbasa.”  But you know, being a writer, I have respect for poetic license.  I think of ring bologna not just as an object, but as a concept.  Furthermore, it’s not my fault if the stuff’s manufacturer doesn’t know the right name for it.  It’s in a tube, it’s oval and it’s meat; thus, it has to be ring bologna.  And if you’re going to argue that, take it up with Tom Pepernik (who, being dead, is probably hard to reach).  He’s the one who told me what it’s called.  Probably.

Of course, the biggest problems I ever had with language were in Japan.  I had to take Japanese language when I studied there, but they taught it to us from a cultural perspective, rather than giving us conversational Japanese, so I never really learned to speak it very well.  One of the first things they taught us to say was “Is that your red handkerchief?”  Needless to say, that isn’t a phrase that comes up much in conversation.  And the word for “handkerchief” actually referred to a specific kind, which is used for only two things, wrapping wedding presents and wrapping ashes after Buddhist funerals.

All of us foreigners there had at least one or two good stories about how we’d messed up the language.  A friend of mine once exited a taxicab and thanked the driver for the meal she’d just eaten.

Fortunately, a good number of Japanese people speak English, so between pidgin Japanese and sign language, I managed to get by.  But members of the younger crowd would often try to use English colloquialisms and didn’t always use them correctly, which could provide some amusing moments.

One day, while I was traveling, I hooked up with a Japanese guy in a youth hostel and we decided to spend the day sightseeing together.  As we were preparing to leave, I asked him what time it was.

“It’s high time,” he replied.

I stopped short, not having seen any illegal substances in the room.  “What?????????” I asked.

“It’s high time we should be going,” he said.

It was a teachable moment.  I gently explained to him the difference between the phrase as it was actually used and how he’d used it.

I guess that considering I grew up to be a writer, the occasional language hiccup is a good thing.  Words are my tools and it’s always useful to ponder their use – and misuse – once in a while.

Besides, it helps me work up an appetite.  I think I’ll have some ring bologna for lunch.