My Aunt Hester is a five foot tall Filipino immigrant who first learned to speak English from a collection of Steely Dan albums her brother played continually in their small apartment. Her English is flawless today, unless she pretends not to be able to speak or understand it in order to eavesdrop on strangers. She loves to drop a few broken and heavily accented words, then listen to every detail of a conversation not meant for her. She kept a pet dish towel named Rikki for years until my late father accidentally threw it away, but that is another story.
A few weeks ago she told me, “Learning English is very very difficult. It’s not the syntax and grammar--a child can learn that--but it’s the slang that makes it...sneaky.” I’m pretty sure she meant “tricky,” but I knew what she meant. Part of understanding is listening in context.
Hester’s husband is my Uncle Bob, an owlish man who met Hester while serving as a missionary to her village. One warm afternoon on a construction site, Hester noticed Bob’s sleeves rolled up to reveal the portrait of Donald Fagan and Walter Becker inked onto his meaty right arm, and Steely Dan added “matchmaker “ to their repertoire that day.
Their language barrier chaperoned the engagement, and as Bob’s ability to speak Tagalog and Hester’s ability to speak English flourished, so did their feelings for one another. Long before it was ever spoken, their friends and families knew they cared deeply for one another. Hester invited Bob to family meals, and would prepare him special dishes for each occasion. Bob would bring gifts for her and her family, and spent weeks building a carport for her father, though their family had no car. They spent time together and shared with each other, each learning what the other liked, loved, and enjoyed.
It was somewhat of a surprise to Hester when Bob first said it in her language, because he got it completely wrong. Instead of “Mahal na mahal kita,” he used the slang phrase “Lab kita.” Imagine sitting face to face with your significant other while sharing an intimate moment, only to have your mate say “love ya!”, and this was Bob’s first attempt at verbalizing his feelings for her. To this day, “Lab kita” is still the way they sign notes to tell each other they care, and both smile at the memory from over 30 years of shared history.
My neighbor Nick the Greek told me over a glass of ice-cold raki that Americans use the word “LOVE” way too much and for way too many things. “You people say you love hot wings, you love watching reruns of ‘Lost,’ and you love your iPhones. What’s worse it that you say you love your Mother, children, and your wife--and you use the same friggin’ word. In my book, that’s nasty.” When I looked at him with a puzzled expression, he continued.
“There’s four types of the word LOVE that Americans stole from my language,” he continued, “and if you don’t believe me, Scotty, look it up in a Greek Bible. That’ll set you straight.” So I did, and it turns out Nick’s right--we Americans do use it pretty freely. Any time we see the word LOVE in an English New Testament, the writers were using one of four forms of the word--and each has a completely separate meaning.
The first stems from the Greek root ‘philos,’ as in ‘philosophy’ and ‘Philadelphia.’ It’s a fondness for something, or liking it a lot, or a brotherly love. The second is ‘eros,’ and it’s an affection tinged with desire. Eros gets down and funky with that special friend--a Barry White kind of love, and the kind that gets chairs thrown at people on Jerry Springer. ‘Storge’ is the third, commonly known as familial love--the love of a parent to child. The last and largest is ‘agape.’ This is the purest love--sacrificial, selfless, without an agenda or wish list. It is most often the word translated to describe the love which God demonstrates to humanity across time.
So I can safely say that I philos a nice glass of bourbon while strolling in my garden. People date each other and experience sexual tension based on an eros love, then settle down, become good parents, and raise their children based on the storge kind. Only when we’re selfless and free of an agenda can we claim an agape love, but this is the strong word which shapes communities and alters the courses of our lives.
My Uncle Bob is pretty near deaf these days. In 2006, he bought a pair of noise-cancelling Bose headphones--the kind that look like you’re a 1970’s dee-jay spinning the hits--and spent the better part of two summers listening to bootlegged live Steely Dan albums at a disturbingly loud volume. The resulting damage has left him unable to hear anything but the highest volumes, but unfortunately Hester has never been much of a shouter. He wrote me an email last week as we traded health updates, and confided that while he misses hearing his wife of 35 years say the words “lab kita,” he sees her actions speaking in a tone he still clearly understands.
“Love IS a strong word, Scotty,” he wrote. “It’s just that it’s not necessary to say it in order to show it’s there.”
You can watch Steely Dan performing live in Manassas at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KDVz3jzyjQ
A few weeks ago she told me, “Learning English is very very difficult. It’s not the syntax and grammar--a child can learn that--but it’s the slang that makes it...sneaky.” I’m pretty sure she meant “tricky,” but I knew what she meant. Part of understanding is listening in context.
Hester’s husband is my Uncle Bob, an owlish man who met Hester while serving as a missionary to her village. One warm afternoon on a construction site, Hester noticed Bob’s sleeves rolled up to reveal the portrait of Donald Fagan and Walter Becker inked onto his meaty right arm, and Steely Dan added “matchmaker “ to their repertoire that day.
Their language barrier chaperoned the engagement, and as Bob’s ability to speak Tagalog and Hester’s ability to speak English flourished, so did their feelings for one another. Long before it was ever spoken, their friends and families knew they cared deeply for one another. Hester invited Bob to family meals, and would prepare him special dishes for each occasion. Bob would bring gifts for her and her family, and spent weeks building a carport for her father, though their family had no car. They spent time together and shared with each other, each learning what the other liked, loved, and enjoyed.
It was somewhat of a surprise to Hester when Bob first said it in her language, because he got it completely wrong. Instead of “Mahal na mahal kita,” he used the slang phrase “Lab kita.” Imagine sitting face to face with your significant other while sharing an intimate moment, only to have your mate say “love ya!”, and this was Bob’s first attempt at verbalizing his feelings for her. To this day, “Lab kita” is still the way they sign notes to tell each other they care, and both smile at the memory from over 30 years of shared history.
My neighbor Nick the Greek told me over a glass of ice-cold raki that Americans use the word “LOVE” way too much and for way too many things. “You people say you love hot wings, you love watching reruns of ‘Lost,’ and you love your iPhones. What’s worse it that you say you love your Mother, children, and your wife--and you use the same friggin’ word. In my book, that’s nasty.” When I looked at him with a puzzled expression, he continued.
“There’s four types of the word LOVE that Americans stole from my language,” he continued, “and if you don’t believe me, Scotty, look it up in a Greek Bible. That’ll set you straight.” So I did, and it turns out Nick’s right--we Americans do use it pretty freely. Any time we see the word LOVE in an English New Testament, the writers were using one of four forms of the word--and each has a completely separate meaning.
The first stems from the Greek root ‘philos,’ as in ‘philosophy’ and ‘Philadelphia.’ It’s a fondness for something, or liking it a lot, or a brotherly love. The second is ‘eros,’ and it’s an affection tinged with desire. Eros gets down and funky with that special friend--a Barry White kind of love, and the kind that gets chairs thrown at people on Jerry Springer. ‘Storge’ is the third, commonly known as familial love--the love of a parent to child. The last and largest is ‘agape.’ This is the purest love--sacrificial, selfless, without an agenda or wish list. It is most often the word translated to describe the love which God demonstrates to humanity across time.
So I can safely say that I philos a nice glass of bourbon while strolling in my garden. People date each other and experience sexual tension based on an eros love, then settle down, become good parents, and raise their children based on the storge kind. Only when we’re selfless and free of an agenda can we claim an agape love, but this is the strong word which shapes communities and alters the courses of our lives.
My Uncle Bob is pretty near deaf these days. In 2006, he bought a pair of noise-cancelling Bose headphones--the kind that look like you’re a 1970’s dee-jay spinning the hits--and spent the better part of two summers listening to bootlegged live Steely Dan albums at a disturbingly loud volume. The resulting damage has left him unable to hear anything but the highest volumes, but unfortunately Hester has never been much of a shouter. He wrote me an email last week as we traded health updates, and confided that while he misses hearing his wife of 35 years say the words “lab kita,” he sees her actions speaking in a tone he still clearly understands.
“Love IS a strong word, Scotty,” he wrote. “It’s just that it’s not necessary to say it in order to show it’s there.”
You can watch Steely Dan performing live in Manassas at the following link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KDVz3jzyjQ
