Dead Language

            It may not seem like it, but your entire world, who you think you know, what you think you know, who you are, and what you become can change in a single night.  At least that’s what happened to me.  I’ve been a linguistics major for the last 3 years and have made it my life’s mission to understand languages, from how dialects emerge, to how accents and other attributes of language change.  However, something in the world changed a few nights ago.  I remember everything that led up to it being completely normal.  I was watching videos online and remember dozing off before going to bed.  Something in the sky was being reported about on the news.  It was a mysterious glow over the surface of the Earth.  Most of my online friends dismissed it, saying that it was likely some lights in the sky from a comet and shouldn’t be concerned about it.  Perhaps I should have been concerned about it, because the next morning, nothing made sense. 

            I remember falling asleep the night before with some earbuds in my ears, listening to some music before I woke up sometime in the early morning to what sounded like unintelligible garble.  The song cover of the album that the song was from was the same.  I was listening to one of my favorite rock albums ever, but the sound coming out of it made no sense.  There was little to any structure to the words that were being said and the words sounded disconnected.  I repeated the song just to see if what I was hearing was correct and the song repeated, only this time, the words changed slightly.  Language itself was changing for me.  Worse still was how everything with writing seemed to be changing.  I looked at the poster I had on my wall of my favorite band, only to realize that their name was written completely different.  I frantically got out of my bed and started combing through my textbooks to see if there was something wrong and realized that everything was changing.  My textbooks were no longer legible to me.  The words were completely different.  From cover to cover, each of the pages were written in a language that made no sense to me.  I tried to calm down and got dressed so that I could go outside and get out of the apartment.  I needed to try and take a walk and breathe. 

            I got my dog, Vanny, leashed up for a walk.  I asked Vanny if she was ready for a walk and she gave me a strange look.  She tilted her head to the left, as if she didn’t understand what I was saying.  However, when I jiggled the door knob and her leash, she seemed to understand what I was after and got excited again.  We decided to head out down the street and took some time to walk down to the nearest park.  I had my earbuds in my ears, not to listen to rock music, but to tune my mind out so that I could just focus on Vanny and my walk.  I put on some electronic music that had no words to it so that I wouldn’t keep hearing garbled phrases and words that made no sense.  It seemed to work up until some vocal chops came up in the mix and I heard some sounds that made no sense to me the way that they did before.  I was used to these songs before.  They were dubstep tracks that had multiple vocal layers, but now they sounded completely different.  It was like language itself had changed for me overnight.  Everywhere I looked, signs were written in a completely different language.   The change was almost inescapable and so were some people.

            There were people out and about who were speaking in a different language to me at every turn.  I went to the dog park and tried to avoid as many people as possible while walking my dog through it.  I happened to pass some my friend Dillon while I was walking Vanny and he tried to say hi to me, but I just meekly waved my hand and shuffled faster away from him.  While Dillon tried to grab my attention, I started to panic, as he sounded nothing like he used to.  Yes, his cadence and accent were present, but what he was saying made absolutely no sense to me.  I made a lap around the park and started heading back to my apartment.  While on my way back, though, I saw what looked like a crowd of people that were marching with signs.  They had some symbols on their shirts and were walking around in a circle, chanting some indescribable chant.  I tried to make out what it was that they were saying, but it kept shifting for me.  It was no use trying to listen to them, so I kept moving up until my friend Rachel came up to greet me.  This was where I began to realize that this was far more reaching than I realized. 

            She tried to say something to me, trying to greet me.  The only thing that I recognized was a strange sounding version of my name.  I assumed that she was talking to me about my dog, as she mentioned Vanny after a short amount of time.  I tried to speak to her, but nothing made sense to her when it came out of my mouth.  She gave me a confused look and shook her head.  She tried speaking to me more, but it was clear that we were not going to be able to communicate.  She got frustrated after a few attempted back and forth statements between us, which lead to one of the members from the chanting group eyeing us down. 

Suddenly, Rachel started to try and lead me away somewhere else.  Seeing how members of the group started walking towards us, I thought that it was a good idea for me to follow.  Turns out, I was right.  We started walking down a couple of alleys before she rounded the block and helped me up to my loft.  I was wondering why she was doing this loop around the neighborhood to try and get back to my house, up until I happened to walk up to my loft and saw that the group had split up to look for me.  One of the members of the group had followed us through the alleyways but appeared to have lost us by the time we got back to my apartment.  They were going to try and attack me and were still out looking.  Rachel came into my apartment with me and turned on my television and flipped through channels until she found the news channel.  On the news was some alert about that same light that I saw in the sky.  Apparently, it had something to do with the language change in my head.  I saw some text show up on the screen that made sense to me.  The news bulletin had something written about the language.  It said something in bold letters. 

“If you can read this, you speak Latin”. 

What was strange to me was how it seemed to be difficult to read.  The text seemed to shift as I read it, with my brain having difficulties processing what I was reading.  I clambered to the tv and tried to say that I could read it.  Rachel seemed to get the message and started calling someone.  The conversation was intelligible to me.  Even though I knew now that I seemed to be thinking and speaking in Latin, it was like all of my knowledge on linguistics no longer was useful.  I couldn’t make sense of what anything said.  It was almost like there was a layer over my brain that altered how I perceived language itself.  I stood there and waited for Rachel to provide me an answer but as soon as she got the news of what it was, she lowered her head and stepped away from me, almost as if she had just learned of something horrible that I’d done.  She finished the call and walked out of the apartment without saying another word.  Worried and confused, I unleashed Vanny and started packing things.  Whatever it was that made Rachel walk away from me didn’t seem good and I didn’t want to stay to find out. 

I grabbed what was important and set out in my car with Vanny back to my parents’ house.  What I noticed on the way back though was some of the strangest and most horrifying things that I think I have ever come across.  In the suburbs, people were out on the streets in protest, chanting things and breaking into buildings.  They were forming a mob.  I saw several people get cornered and attacked as I made my way through traffic to leave Houston and try to head back out to my rural town in south Texas.  The problem was the traffic heading out of the area was at a standstill.  I saw several people attack someone on the streets and were pummeling him at a stoplight.  I rolled down my window to try and get a better view of what was happening.  What I heard then hit me like a ton of bricks.  I could hear the man screaming for help and heard him speak in what sounded to me like English. 

“Help me!  They don’t understand me!  I’m not behind this!” 

They savagely beat and attacked this man until he was unconscious.  I was horrified at the display of brutality towards someone that the mob didn’t understand.  I tried to roll up my window, but was stopped by someone who ran up to the car.  They had a knife in hand and seemed to be asking me a question.  I just shook my head and drove off as the light turned green.  I didn’t want to stick around to try and figure out what was going on.  I made my way through another suburb out towards the highway.  However, as I tried to focus on the drive home, I saw what looked like a tree burning on the side of the road.  There was a person that was stripped of their clothing, save for a pair of boxers who was nailed a tree.  A fire was lit under their limp body as they were starting to burn.  A crowd of people were chanting around the body and had written something on the billboard nearby the tree.  The sign read the same message, both in English and in Latin, “Death to the Devil’s Tongue”.  Whatever it was that had changed my brain was seen as demonic by many people in the country.  I had no choice but to try and head home. 

I made my way to my hometown and tried to greet my parents.  They were confused why I didn’t speak but quickly realized the situation and immediately brought me inside.  They helped bring in my stuff and Vanny and helped me to limit visibility into my room and block out the light inside.  They got out a translator from the internet and wrote for me in Latin what they wanted to say.  “Stay here until we can get help.  Your mind needs help.”  It was a rough translation, but I understood what they meant.  I needed to hide until I could find some help.  While I was stuck here, they made some calls.  They seemed to be trying to get some help, but their faces were growing disheartened by the minute.  I needed to try and share this somewhere.  I don’t know if this is permanent or if it's something that’s temporary, but a few things are clear.  My mind has been altered by whatever incident happened that night over the sky, I am speaking Latin, and I need help.  So, hopefully, I can share this story with someone and maybe receive some help.  I’m writing this down for any doctor, clinician, or mental health professional out there that might be able to help me.  If you can help me, please reach out.  The last thing that I want right now is to end up dead because I’m speaking a dead language.  The sooner, the better.  Thank you.