If you made it to this post and were not turned off by the indecipherability of the title, you’re probably wondering what the heck it is. A neologism is what it is; which is to say, I coined it meself. Here’s a couple things on my mind as I tried to come up with a smashing title:
1. Maybe it’s in my genes, maybe it’s because I’m a New Yorker, maybe it’s the fear of being labeled an outsider and thus convenient target for pickpocketing: I’m scared of looking like a tourist.
2. As I was walking back to the place I’m staying after a long day of exploring the neighborhood, an American couple stopped me on the street to ask for directions. So I feel like I’m winning. Okay maybe I’m only duping the other tourists but it’s day 2 so baby steps.
3. I like neologisms because I like language, and I’ve been thinking about language a lot lately because I’m surrounded by so many different ones. In the last 48 or so hours since I left my apartment in NYC, I’ve been in three different airports and some tourist-attractiony-type locations (if I had a pence for every selfie stick I saw outside Buckingham Palace I could cover the next two month’s trips to the pay-to-pee public restrooms–an absurdity I’ll probably rant about in a later post). I’ve found that the part of my brain that listens to spoken English is different from the part that listens to any other language: the former looks for whole groupings of sounds to figure out what words are being signified, and the latter looks for distinct vowels and consonants to figure out what language it is. I’ve found that I’m using the what-are-they-speaking part rather than the what-are-they-saying part all the time even though this is England and most people speak, well, English. This means that when a person starts talking to me I stare at them blankly for a second musing over the sounds coming out of their mouth before I realize I get what’s going on and should probably answer before I look rude.
4. Similtouristphobia is about not wanting to be seen as an outsider, because often outsiders can be treated as less than. These next two months I’m spending time with theater companies that create spaces where neurodivergent people (those with cognitive differences)–in a world that is built to make them feel like outsiders–are able to feel at home.
So there’s some rhyme and reason to my linguistic party. More anecdotes about life as a trying-not-to-be-a-tourist to come soon!