A Question of Language

ONE GROWS UP, so to speak, with the jargon of the profession: soon there is nothing odd in describing a morning‐and‐evening turn of duty by the phrase, ‘I'm split today’. (‘Horizontally or vertically?’ my family used to inquire.) It needs no highly original thought to deduce that librarians abroad have their shop‐talk too, and no doubt all sensible exchange candidates go primed with the word ‘overdue’ in the language of their choice. It was not so with me. I could count and sing and tell the story of the Three Bears in Norwegian, but I could not, with any hope of being understood, say to a borrower, ‘Sorry, it's out’.