Barbados, BarBAAAYdos

Undoubtedly, there are advantages to growing up in a tri-lingual environment. I am not going to tell you otherwise. But it doesn’t come without it’s embarrassing moments - it isn’t all ‘I’m-cool-with-my-mix-of-germanic-languages’ sailing!
As it happens, I seem to have heard or read a lot of words in German first, and first impressions last - or so they say. And this has had blush-inducing consequences for me, especially lately, during my weather bulletins for France 24...

As a weatherhead, I have come home to have The Boyfriend point out: ”In English, we don’t say ‘moss cow’"
But the Americans do! So, I'll just be American when I announce Moscow's weather. I have also been caught out saying INclement weather. Now I know it’s inCLEment weather and I write it out phonetically in my bulletins, lest I get confused at the recording stage.

Suddenly, thanks to French, I am also having trouble with Montreal... and often have to re-record the name for my bulletins. Is it “MOhreAhl” or MoNTreeawwl’ or “MoNTreeeAhl”?? I’m still not sure.

Then there was the recent incident when I was telling a friend that The Boyfriend was in the Caribbean and flew via ‘AntiGUa’. My friend was too kind to correct me, so I went around telling everyone about AntiGUa. I blushed a hot pink 24 hours later when The Boyfriend returned from ‘AntEEga’ and I went:” What, so it’s not pronounce AntiGUa?” What is up with the darn island names??

Take Barbados as another example....lovely island - I don’t doubt it - but it’s been the bane of my linguistic existence for....oh, roughly 9 years now. That was how long ago I was playing Trivial Pursuit with some friends in South Africa. As it was the answer to my team’s question, I hollered Bar-baa-DOSSSS! Greeted with noisy, grunting laughter, I obviously didn’t get the joke until someone gave me a pointed lesson in Bar-BAAAY-dos pronunciation. My protests, that I was merely pronouncing it the German way, fell on deaf ears - people who are ROLFL* don’t hear so well. And they have NEVER let me forget it.

PS Luckily for China, the French and Germans call the capital Peking, so at least my pronunciation of Beijing will remain unpolluted!

ROTFL* = rolling on the floor laughing (lest you be not enough of a geek to know)

thanx god...you what?

Ahhhh...the joys of bearing witness to germanic youth and their obsession with a language they master with great difficulty. Why is it that English is rated as being so cool in German-speaking culture? People who do not speak English, randomly lob English words into their speech like handgrenades. Lethally unintelligible for native English speakers, due to being both unexpected and mangled by an attractive(NOT!)accent.

Didn't I look like an eedjit the time the sound 'patch' made it's way into a perfectly normal German sentence and I had to ask 3 times what that was, while my language-lobe did backflips, trying to find the meaning of 'patch' as a German word. Fortunately, a fellow English-speaker was on hand to ungarble that sound as the English word 'BADGE'. Well, who knew?

Or that time a friend offered to make me some 'hammen tex' . She does not speak a word of English so again I was at a loss to link this sound to a German word I recognised. Eventually, completely exasperated by my lack of comprehension she yelled out: 'I thought English was your mother tongue?!' Oh, you were speaking ENGLISH?? In that case, I would love some Ham And Eggs, thank you.

My favorite, for now, was a black tank top I saw on a punky-looking nose-, eyebrow- and earring infested bloke on the Vienna U-bahn . Proudly displayed across his chest in bold, silver lettering were the words: THANX GOD I'M A VIP!

[PS German speakers pronounce it vvhipp, one word. Kuhl, huh?]

How to speak English in America - Part VIII

This week's edition contains my personal favorite of
the moment. I 'totally' despised it when I first heard
it, but am now apt to use it myself. No thanks to its
grammatical correctness, however, but just because
when you hear a mistake often enough you sometimes get
fond of it and learn to love it. Besides, if you don't
make the mistake along with everyone else, you're
likely to be misunderstood. (I speak from experience,
really)

So, here it is, when you need to know WHERE someone is
in time, space or even on an emotional level, it is
not enough to simply say: "Where are you?" That lacks
a certain charm and, more importantly, according to
Californians (I can't speak for other States - not my
area of expertise) it also lacks a preposition: at.
Forget everything you ever learned about never ending
a sentence with a preposition -"where are you AT?" is
so much more satisfying! Another benefit is that it
covers all your bases because it refers to your moral
and mental state as well as your physical whereabouts.


On the topic of speech peppered with extra
prepositions, here's another one. Unfortunately, this
one has not grown on me at all. It's awful. "Off of".
What? "Off OF" as in "get off OF my car", "take Exit 5
off OF the freeway" and you get what I mean. Oddly,
when it comes to spelling, American English is quick
to retrench and retire letters. 'Spelling - lite',
where night = nite, colour = color, travelled =
traveled, but when it comes to prepositions they keep
adding more for free! I'm going off of my head with
that.

How to speak English in America - Part VI

"Hey Cracker, flip a bitch and let's get out of this skanky neighbourhood!"

To "flip a bitch" is to make a U-turn. Something that is perfectly legal to do at most intersections (- except if there is a no-bitch-flippin' sign). And "skanky" is a delightful word (usually applied to women) meaning slutty/dirty/gross/cheap - you get the idea. For example, "Christina Aguilera is real skanky in her latest music video..."