First off, I just have to admit that I found this short story rather difficult to understand fully. The main reason behind this is that they keep putting in random non-English words that I don't understand, mainly because I don't speak that language. However, I was able to understand most of it after reading it half a dozen times, so here's my analysis.
"What Language is That?" is a story about two best friends from different religious groups living in Ethiopia that find their friendship to be in jeopardy after their parents ban them from seeing each other again. This is quite sad because the whole story tells us about how close the two friends are (they're so close that the protagonist keeps calling her best friend "Best Friend") and how much they struggled to follow their parents' orders (they ultimately disobeyed their parents and started to communicate across the street using random gestures that the two friends deemed a new "language").
From what I understand of the story, the story focuses on how even the biggest differences cannot keep the best of friends apart. For most of the story, it seems as if the two families are rather close, the evidence being the protagonist's dad saying "That's why I like him...open-minded...nice man" about "Best Friend's" dad, but after an apparent quarrel between the two fathers about religious differences the two families go their separate ways.
In the story, there was a mentioning of a remote control that the protagonist broke while in a rage about her being banned from seeing Selam. I think this represents the breaking of a friendship. However, at the end of the story the dad says that he'll buy a new remote. I think this represents the idea that the friendship can still go on.
So for those of you who bothered to read this blog entry, thank you. I hope you enjoyed my insight on the short story.
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