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The following is excerpted from Bilingual Being: My Life as a Hyphen by Kathleen Saint-Onge.
In French, she’s opaque, tangible, and sensual. And so her song has a place in the treasures of my childhood, a particular place of its own, like my soft cat with the plastic face and chewed-off ear. Or my favourite pink «jaquette en flannalette» [flannel nightie], as the language of home said then. A «jaquette de flanelle,» as the “reformed” language of home says now.
In English, the song’s called “Dear Liza,” but I don’t know it half as well. I have a sense that not so many people sing it in English, but I’m told many do – anglo children. In English, there’s no accompanying music in my head, no memories, no echoes, no presence of this material registering psychically in any way. But I can convert the words easily enough. In English, Liza is, becomes, a translation rather than a person. Transparent, constructed. A projection of Élise. Purely linguistic.
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