The new AirPods – which can also translate speech into writing – only exacerbate language complacency. — Unsplash
Years ago, after graduating from culinary school, I lived for a while with relatives in Switzerland, often cooking them dinner and asking my aunt, who spoke limited English, how it tasted. Every night she would pat me on the shoulder and say, "It’s fine.” I spoke none of the multiple languages she was fluent in, but one time I could have sworn she described a meal to my uncle as "gross”. I became a journalist instead.
It was only years later that I learned one translation for gross, or groß, in Swiss German is… great. And fein means something closer to elegant, delicate, even delicious. If I had a tool to accelerate my understanding, I might have made different life choices.
