The Mezzanine

Had my first language fail today.

I walked into the hotel reception, and informed them that "the plug in the bathroom basin is stuck".

I have a fairly extensive knowledge of American English, and the ways in which it differs from mine. That being the case, in the last three weeks I have modified my vocabulary to fit my audience, as needed. For instance, "she's wrecked" (referring to my sobbing daughter) got quickly changed to "she's exhausted".

I have also changed my accent a couple of times, for greater clarity. (My daughter's name has an A in it - and apparently spelling "A" in Australian sounds like "I" in Canadian. I drawled out an appropriately accented A for the bewildered museum worker.)

In this case, though, I had no idea of what I was doing wrong. It took us several minutes before I realised that the receptionist thought I meant the toilet was clogged, and was able to clarify (with gestures) that the sink's plug was stuck in place.

Okay, snowflake_challenge. Let's do this!

So I have one non-fandom goal: learning Spanish. I already know a fair bit of German, and some Latin and French; Spanish is the next language in line.

Why Spanish? Mainly because American TV has started using Spanish the way Agatha Christie uses French – with random sentences thrown in here and there assuming you'll get the gist – so it's relevant to my life.



And my vaguely-related-to-fandom goal: turn one of these two plotbunnies into an actual narrative.

Kidlet Primus has picked up on the fact that you "hammer" with a hammer, and "mop" with a mop, and so forth.

He keeps picking lemons and asking if we can go to the kitchen and "lemon the lemon" (juice it, in fact). And this morning he told me we should go outside and "frisbee the frisbee".

He's rather adorable.

So, I knew that ASL had a different alphabet to Auslan. (Our alphabet is two-handed; ASL is one-handed.)

What I hadn't realised until today was that they have different numbers as well.

I looked up the ASL alphabet today, and found this:




As an Auslan person, that bottom row looks to me like:
0, 1, 2, 8, 4, 5, 3 ...followed by words I don't know.


No larger point. I just find it interesting that counting can be so different in different countries.

...the really odd sensation of not realising that two things are the same thing.


This has happened to me before, many times. For instance: after decades of hearing Americans talk about Rice Krispies, I saw a box on a tv show, and suddenly realised that they were the same thing as Rice Bubbles. (I'd been picturing something more like Cornflakes, but made from rice.)


And, most recently, I watched an American show with the subtitles on. Which meant that, when "Tamara" came on screen, I could see that people were calling her "Tamara".

I have, apparently, spent years watching tv shows with people called Tamara.

The thing is, though, that in Australia, I'd say "ta-MAR-ah". In America, it seems to be "TAM-ra".

For years and years, I have seen character after character called Tamra, and never ever realised that it was actually just a different pronunciation of Tamara. And now I'm a bit weirded out.

When I say everyone in Germany speaks English, I don't just mean they can pause, think "Okay. Going to change languages now.", and then start having a new conversation in a different language. I mean that they'll drop English into the middle of a German conversation.

This especially comes into play around teenagers. If something here is being marketed to teenagers, it will inevitably be written in English. There's a church near here that has a cafe with "Welcome To The Jesus Zone!" written on the outside - and even if the term "Jesus Zone" didn't give it away, you'd still be able to tell it was aimed at youth just because it's in English.

Ads are also like this. You'll see posters that are mostly written in German, except for a few words proving how awesome our product is, because English slogans are the best, yo.


I was finding this interesting, but didn't really have a concrete example to discuss until today.



(This ad is so cool.)


Now that I'm in Germany, all the pre-video ads are for German products. So they're mostly in German. This one, though, is in English - with German subtitles.

So I watch the groovy Brits do their awesome ad, and I watch the German subtitles doing their German thing... and then, suddenly, it hits 55 seconds... AND THE SUBTITLES ARE IN ENGLISH.

Seriously.

They have German subtitles right up until the last line, which is subtitled as: "Oh yes. It's good to be bad." IN ENGLISH. No, I'm not kidding.

Because we want our slogan to be cool. So it's got to be in English, because that's cool. So our subtitles need to be in English, because otherwise, they'll think the cool English slogan could be said in German, and that just wouldn't be cool.


I think I now understand what it was like to be French a couple of centuries ago.

Am currently experiencing a bout of nausea. Every time that I go to say that I feel nauseous, Josie Gellar frowns at me and says "Nauseated. You feel nauseated." and I hastily amend my grammar.

Was enjoying my Latin, and feeling very accomplished about how far I'd gotten.

Now, I'm up to basic Latin poetry, and am feeling rather like setting myself on fire.


Seriously, this stuff is horrifying.

Like this one, from Martial:

aethera contingit nova nostri principis aula;
clarius in toto sol videt orbe nihil.
haec, Auguste, tamen, quae vertice sidera pulsat,
par domus est caelo sed minor est domino.

You see, the Latin poets, being interested in fun languagey things; and being aware that their mother tongue could be put in a blender, reassembled at random, and still technically make sense; proceeded to do just that.

No, Latin word order is not like our word order. But yes, it usually actually has something that could, technically, be called "order". This, though?

Let's put the poem in English, and see what happens.

Heaven touches new our prince's palace;
more splendid in whole sun sees earth nothing.
This, Augustus, though, which the peak of the stars hits,
equal house is to sky but lesser is than master.

The main culprits being these ones:

Heaven touches new our prince's palace;
more splendid in whole sun sees earth nothing.
This, Augustus, though, which the peak of the stars hits,
equal house is to sky but lesser is than master.

Make those word-pairs actually sit together, rather than at opposite ends of the sentence, and it'd be fine. But no, that wouldn't be fancy and poetical, would it? Much better to drive Mez to despair by being untranslateable...


BRB. Ripping Latin books to shreds while sobbing.

Have taken a break from Latin, to look at Old English.

It's wonderful. And so Englishy. Half the words sound like I'm just talking in a funny accent - and then you add "ish" and "ness" to the ends of everything.

Look at this, for instance:

"Eala ge cild, hu licaþ eow þeos spræc?"
"Wel heo us licaþ; ac þearle deoplice þu spricst and ofer ure mæþ. Ac sprec wiþ us æfter urum andgiete, þat we mægen understandan þa þing þe þu spricst."
"Ic ascige eow, 'For hwy leornige ge swa geornlice?'"
"For-þæm we nyllaþ beon swa-swa stunt nietenu, þe nan þing nyton buton gærs and wæter."
"Hwæt wille ge þonne beon?"
"We willaþ wise beon."

Incomprehensible, no?
But if I write it like this...

"Eala ye child, how likath you these sprech?"
"Well heo us likath; ac thearle deeplish thou spricst and over our math. Ac sprech with us after ourum andgiete, that we mayen understandan tha thing thet thou spricst."
"Ich askey you, 'For why learny ye so yearnlish?'"
"For-them we nillath being so-so stunt nietenu, thet no thing nyton but gars and water."
"What wille ye thonne being?"
"We willath wise being."

It's sort of like a weird mix between English, German, and weird sing-songy gibberish.


So, anyway, my new program for teaching hypothetical students lots of languages goes like this:
- English (which they should know anyway, because my hypothetical students are native speakers)
- Auslan (because sign language is awesome and gets them into a mindset of language being very weird and adaptable)
- Old English (to get a good grasp of our origins, and to learn the whole nominative-accusative-genitive-dative thing)
- ...from Old English they can then branch off into Germanic languages - as for example German
- Latin (to get a good grasp of the rest of our origins, and to add in all the extra cases like ablative)
- ...from Latin they can then branch off into Romance languages, like French

Hurrah!

---

For those interested, a full translation would go something like this:
"So, you children, how do you like this language?"
"We do like it a lot; but you're speaking very deeply and beyond our understanding. But speak with us at our level, that we may understand the things you're saying."
"I ask you, why are you so eager to learn?"
"So we won't be stupid like animals, that know nothing but grass and water."
"What will you be then?"
"We will be wise."