“I was learning a lot of times what people said was not at all what they meant….It was hard to learn all the languages spoken in our house. There was the loose limber American language that we all spoke, and then there was the riverine sinuous Irish language that the old people spoke when they were angry, and there was the chittery sparrowish female language that my mother and grandmother and aunts and neighborhood women spoke, and then there was the raffish chaffing language that other dads spoke to my dad when the came over for cocktail parties, and then there was the high slow language we all spoke when priests were in the house, and there were the dialects spoken by only one person–for example, my sister, who spoke the haughty languorous language of her many cats, or my youngest brother, Tommy who spoke Tommy, which only  he and my sister could understand. She would often translate for him, apparently he talked mostly about cheese and crayons.”

Brian Doyle, My Devils, The Sun Magzine