The lady who was serving put the coffee and the muffin on the counter and said, “That will be six-dollars-sixty thanks!”  I said to her, “So, you’re from New Zealand?  How long have you been in Australia”.  She looked at me a little strangely and answered by telling me that it was almost a year ago that she had arrived from the other side of the ditch.  How did I know she was a Kiwi...?  Well, an Aussie doesn’t tell you that your coffee is “sex-dollars-sexty.”  It was her accent that had given her away.

I had another incident some years ago where someone’s language gave them away.  I picked the man up from the airport and he told me he had to collect his port from the luggage carousel.  I said to him, “Well, you just gave yourself away as a Queenslander didn’t you?”  He raised his eyebrows.  I said, “Yes, I’ve lived in all four Eastern States of Australia and it’s only Queenslanders that collect a port from the luggage carousel, all the rest of us pick up a suitcase.

The point is that our language can give us away.  There are certain words we use and ways in which we pronounce them that are a give-away as to who we are.

There’s a more dramatic way in which our language gives us away.  I recall from my late teenage years being smitten by a young lady who entered a café where a friend and I were having some lunch.  We looked at each other and we could read each other’s minds: “Okay, who’s going to be first to ask her for a date?”  But then the young lady opened her mouth and we suddenly lost interest.  Apparently she knew the lass behind the counter and she let fly with a rant about some issue or other.  But her colourful language, loaded with expletives, gave insight into her soul that I found most off-putting.

By the same token I recall that in a previous life, when I was working with 300 men in the factory as an apprentice, I was occasionally asked why I didn’t swear.  Most people around me did.  I usually pointed out that in my opinion swearing showed a poor grasp of language but that, more importantly, I didn’t think it appropriate for a Christian.

The Bible has a lot to say about our language too.  The apostle James, for example, addresses the subject in his letter.  He points out that people who claim to be Christians should show it in their language.  He cautions us to watch our speech and he uses some interesting analogies.  A little spark can start a huge bush fire.  So too the words that come off our tongue can do great damage.

James goes a little further than that.  He talks about people who can talk very nicely about God but who don’t have a good word to say about others.  James says that blessing and cursing sometimes come out of the same mouth.  At that point James uses another analogy: that of a fountain.  A fountain does not produce both fresh water and brackish water from the same opening.  And then he changes the analogy: can a fig tree produce olives or a grape vine produce figs?  The point James is making is that we can know people by their speech.  Your language gives you away.  That’s one of the reasons why I need the Lord Jesus Christ in my life.  He died on the cross of Calvary to renew my life... but He’s also begun to renew my tongue – so that people will know that I am a Christian also from my language.

John Westendorp