On other excursions out of the States, I have been vaguely aware of a condition I call “language fatigue.”

It comes from struggling to understand another language. One you don’t speak. Hearing it, reading it, trying to make sense of it. At least the basics.

Often, I didn’t really notice it until I got on the plane, for the ride back to American … and I would be overwhelmed by suddenly finding myself immersed in a pool of English-speakers. And the sense of relief that came over me was almost palpable. Almost moving, emotionally.

I’ve been in Hong Kong for almost two months and I don’t think I’m suffering from language fatigue. I’m thinking about why that should be.

Actually, I hadn’t even thought about this until yesterday, when I went to get a haircut. I walked along Caine Road, here in Mid-Levels, where English is spoken a bit more than in other parts of the city. Sometimes by expats.

Anyway, the third barber/hair place I came to … had no wait, so I went in. It’s called “Happy Hair Salon.”

So, a 30-ish Chinese guy with a ponytail whose card identified him as “Louis” … got to work, and as I sat there, every conversation around me was in Cantonese, and the radio was tuned to some Cantonese talk show … and it struck me how that didn’t bother me. That’s what got me thinking about language fatigue.

To be in HK, aside from a few bars, and maybe a bank or two, is to be immersed in Cantonese.

But it isn’t a strain on me. And why not?

Because I don’t even bother to try. Consciously or unconsciously.

In Italy, France, Germany, Mexico … anywhere with a Romance or Germanic language … I’m going to try to puzzle out reading matter, signs and conversations. I know a little, and can figure out more.

So, I’m striving all the time. Even when I don’t realize it. “I saw that word, but where? Does it mean what I think it means?” And like that.

It becomes a mental burden without me noticing it. Translating things all the time. Or trying.

Here, in Hong Kong, with Cantonese speakers all around me … it’s more like I’ve gone deaf. And become illiterate.

I have no hope of reading anything in pinyan. I have even less hope of understanding a sentence of Cantonese. So the “translate” part of my brain has just shut off. (And it helps that a significant number of, say, road signs are also in English.)

If you have zero expectation of being able to figure out what someone is saying, it’s no work at all.

If and when I get on a plane to go back to the USA, and English comes at me in paragraphs over the PA, I won’t have some surge of relief.

Because my brain hasn’t been working overtime — and without my realizing it — at trying to understand all the words and writing around me. In Hong Kong, Cantonese is just background noise.

Inside my head, at least.