We finally finished the retaining wall and Bob and Sheri are gone to Dallas for their son's wedding. It's pretty exciting here with no one but each other with whom to speak fluent English. One of the regulars, Fred, told me last week that he hears a drastic improvement in our accents already and said that we have exceptional accents for Americans. I can hear a lot more of the French as well now even if I don't understand completely the sense of the words. But there was one man at Dîner last night who knew a bit of English and he shared it with us, "No speak Englich."
We have a sizable group of Finnish men here, but only two speak English at all and they are conversant, but not exactly fluent.
On that subject, Finnish is quite an interesting language. It's amazing that any country could make sense of the letters produced from pounding ones fists on the keyboard, but then, they fill in the spaces with sound you'd make while falling down the stairs. For the ignoramuses who don't know (and ignoramus is defined here as anyone who doesn't know something I didn't know 3 days ago), Finnish is an Asiatic language that has no comparison grammatically or phonetically to any European/Romance Language. For that matter, it lies completely outside of the Indo-European parent language progeny. Whereas, in most European languages, if you don't know the word in the language, you can spell your word and it is 75% of the time a cognate word and the other party could figure out what you mean. In Finnish, if you want to say, "Would you like more eggs?" you have to say, "Haluatko kanan munnat?" and then to ask, "Is it good?" "Onko hyvä?"
"Hyvää" is about the only word I've been able to memorize and hear from them. I means, "Good." "Hyväämentä" means, "Good Morning." when I asked one named, Kimmo, if "mentä" meant "morning," he gave me a funny look and responded, "If you say, 'Morning' and I say, 'What "-ning" mean?' what you say to that? ...She is a Chinese Lady and I doesn't know how she got in there!"
Finnish people (at least the ones I've met) have a lot of fun and know how to joke without getting dirty.
I asked if they did any kind of Internet networking like facebook or something and the best English speaker, Sammi, responded, "I have no friends. I lost book, but have still the face."
Another time, we were all about to go to bed and Sammi and Kimmo were having a smoke on the porch of their chalet as Amber and I passed by on the way to ours. It was after 11 pm and BLACK. Sammi pointed to the sky and said, "like Finnish sunrise. Darker at noon."
I communicate with the others by pointing and giving them a thumbs up if I like something such as Tapani's pictures of the moose he killed in Northern Finland and Tapsa's Harley. I asked Tapani if he lived near the Arctic Circle in Northern Finland and he responded that he didn't because that was at least 100 km (62.137 mi) away.
For your enjoyment, I'll also put a video of the celebrated actors of Finland: Pirkka-Pekka Petelius
The Finnish may not speak English the best, but I have had my share of linguistic blunders here as well. The French language is organized in such a way that changing one syllable can change the entire sentence. We were at that traditional dance a couple of weeks ago and I introduced myself after Amber and said, "Je suis sa épouse." instead of the correct "Je suis son épouse" which I changed my intended meaning of "I am her husband." to "I am her wife."
Also, as I mentioned sometimes it works to just use the English word with a French accent and they understand, but other times it can phonetically mean something completely different. For example a man came to Le Colorado where we are and I ask «Avez-vous vos (and I forgot the word «Chambre» here and replaced it with the English equivalent "Room," but with a French accent which sound exactly like the French word «Rhume») room?» but the poor man heard the French word, what being French and all and therefore I asked him, "Do you have a cold?"
The third problem I have with French right now is that I have a built in vocabulary of Cajun French words that are indeed French words, but usually crass and vulgar by today's standard of proper French. For instance, Amber and I were trying to get somewhere in Paris and I had a detailed map that showed me several streams, but I couldn't figure out which one was the one right in front of me. So I asked a passerby, "what is the name of that stream down there?" and tried to make it easier by pointing, but the man responded in a choler, "I don't understand the sense of what you just said!?" "That STREAM down there!?" I repeated and he ran away. Well, it ends up that one of the popular words for a stream in Louisiana sounds amazingly like a terrible word to the French and I was asking him the name of that #@*! down there.
Well, what do you do? I've started to tell people that I'm just going to leave my Cajun words in Louisiana.
In other news, there are edible mushrooms by the dozens growing here and I'm learning how to cook them like a true "Français."
Until next time....
No comments:
Post a Comment