Humour VII

Heh. That reminds me of the time I asked my German teacher how to say "eleven eggs with it"."Elf Eier damit!" she said."Dear me," I said, "such shocking language to use in front of us children."She laughed, she was a nice old soul.

Have you seen the "language differencies" memes?

Hitler.
Stalin.
Margeret Sanger.One of these is not like the others.
In more ways than gender...........

Years ago, I read an anecdote in Readers Digest about a woman's trip to Switzerland. French and German were the dominant languages and English was also prevalent because of the tourists.She noticed a sign in those three languages. In English, it was a straightforward, "Please don't pick the flowers." In German, it was a more authoritarian, "It is VERBOTEN to pick the flowers!" In French, there was an added explanation, "People who enjoy the flowers leave them for others to enjoy too."(Anybody who lives in Canada, whether they speak French or not, can confirm that French signs are always twice as long as the English equivalent. I tell people it's because the second half of every French word is silent.)

Those wacky germans We have two customers in Canada and I've been up there a few times. I rented a car in Montreal once... once. I travel a bit and have gotten pretty good at getting around in new places. But trying to find a road that's got a name with 50 letters in it while you going down the highway was fucking impossible. Especially when there's other 50-letter road names and their names only differ by a handful of letters in the middle of the name. I had to turn around three times between the airport and the hotel.Then when I went to have some fun down by the water, I had trouble trying to find a parking spot. There's frech all over the place and I can't tell what's what, but I do no that sign with a P with a red line through meaning no parking. So I drive around for a while trying to do the right thing and find a legal spot to park, and finally see a spot and go have my fun. Bam, parking ticket. That spot is reserved for residents only. There was no way I would have ever figured that out. WTF!I've been back to Montreal since (fun fact folks: Montreal is named after Mount Royal and sounds just like it), but I opted out of renting a car and took a cab instead.It was funny to me how ever man had one beer at every lunch every time. We have a "no drinking while working" policy here, but you know, when in Rome. Too, when you're sitting in a circle with customers and there going around the table for drink orders.... I'll have a Molsen, Molsen here, Molson for me too, Molsen... you can't just bust out the ICED TEA at the end of that. And what's up with the lack of tea in Canada? Nobody's got it and if they do, it ain't brewed its that shitting fountain soda tea. FFS!

In his "The Awful German Language", Mark Twain told of having found that familiar friend, "damit", and taken great comfort in it, until he discovered that it meant something altogether different (ie, "therewith", "with it"). If you haven't read that essay yet, here's a link to a broshure from the USA embassy in German which also includes letters from Twain to a German office that's a mixture of English and broken German: http://usa.usembassy.de/...%20Twain%20Awful%20Broschuere.pdfI had a similar experience to that gringo in my joke in Message 495, albeit in German. My first summer in Germany, I had already studied the language in school for about 4 years and was fairly proficient. One day, I needed to buy a pen so I went into a stationary store and, not seeing what I wanted, asked a clerk for a Feder, which literally means "feather", but like in French and Spanish and formerly in English, "feather"/"quill" is/was the word for "pen". Now, in all my years learning German, "Feder" is the word we were always taught, but the clerks had no idea what I was talking about. Finally, I had to give and started to leave, when I saw one and held it up. "Ach! Sie wollen einen Kugelschreiber!", literally a "ball writer". Which demonstrates that what you learn in language class is not necessarily how the language currently works.

A false stereotype. A language only sounds as ugly as the speaker makes it sound; eg, English as spoken by many Americans, mainly the archetypical tourist.For example, one day in college when I was a language major (human languages, before I moved on to computer languages), I was in the Student Union conversing with a girl who was also taking a language class. She was complaining how awful German sounded, so I started speaking to her in German. "Oh, that sounds beautiful! What is it?" "German." It all depends on the speaker. I have heard French that sounded very ugly *.In German linguistics class, an early lecture briefly covered some of linguistics' ideas of how human language had originated. When the professor mentioned the one that it started with modified animal sounds, one student quickly suggested that Dutch offers strong support for that idea; even before he said that, he know full well that he was sitting right behind three Dutch girls in our class.So then Dutch would have been a far better candidate for that joke, not German.

---

* FOOTNOTE: For example, a scene in the French movie, Le grand blond avec une chaussure noire ("The Tall Blond Man with One Black Shoe" -- http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068655/, remade with Tom Hanks as "The Man with One Red Shoe"). A spy is trying to seduce the protagonist of the title, a musician who has unwittingly been drawn into a spy game as a decoy, and is surprised when instead of a sexual move he starts playing his modern composition for her. Her drawn-out cry of "Quoiiiiiii!?!?" was one of the ugliest human sounds I had ever heard uttered.

Edited by rueh, : No reason given.

I've been on some business trips to McMaster University in Hamilton Ontario, and worked with a couple of facilities guys while I was there. Lunches were a trip. They were laughing at me for perusing the menu to decide what to order before the second round was even brought to the table. What's my big hurry, anyways?Can't remember the brand; could have been Molsen.Off topic: the University had this whole system of underground tunnels (not unusual in cold climates, I guess), and that's where most of my equipment was installed. I had to go down there a number of times to troubleshoot an issue. Then one day they discovered mold in the tunnels that made them require anyone to use some pretty serious respirator equipment before entering them. I needed to get back in there to fix the problem they were seeing, but they kept telling me that they wouldn't allow me in there until the mold was all killed off. Eventually they told me "Eh, we're never going to get that stuff cleaned up; we'll live with the equipment problem". Laid back guys.

Where we go canoeing in Quetico Provincial Park, there is a place to park at then end of a 10 mile dirt road with a short portage to the lake. The problem is that only vehicles with Canadian license plates are allowed to park overnight. We either have to park 15 miles farther down the lake than we want to be or pay an outfitter to drive us in and out. 15 miles is a long paddle.They sure make us a feel welcome.

Weldon's Gifts
Drove by there last week. This is a friends Uncles store, so I get to tell people my friends uncle has the biggest cock in Two Harbors.No, I am not 14 but it is still funny.

I did a 9 day trip in Quetico in the late '90s and it was awesome. The 22 hour busride up there kinda sucked. Ever hear 'em talk about how great Canada is compared to that sucky USA?

I wont complain about the 5 hour trip again. Haven't been there in about 5 years. Should be able to start going back every year again. Life is going to get majorly better next year, so should be able to get in two 4-5day trips to Quetico or BWCA every year.