My grandmother, who was born in Cleveland to immigrants from Sicily, spoke Italian at home and English everywhere else. At the age of about 80, she traveled to her parents’ birthplace, and the language came rushing back. When she spoke, younger people laughed and called for their elders to come listen: “She speaks the old Sicilian!”
Language can leave you behind if you don’t keep up. Recent and exponential increases in media consumption have caused this wheel to spin at cyclone speed, and many of the words we use today—when we ping, or ring, or LOL, or IJBOL—are digital in origin or proliferation.
