A repeat of Language Week has been requested and shall be granted. Yes, I know it happened in June last year, but I'm in charge and I say it happens in August this year. Ah, power! So I bring you:

Here be ze rhools:

Blog in a language that you don't usually blog in. You don't have to blog a lot if you don't want to - a few sentences will do, as long as you continue, once a day, through the week (or at least Monday to Friday). What the hell. If you only want to blog in Swedish on Tuesday, go for it. You can blog in one foreign language for five days, you can blog in five different languages or you can find some medium between the two.

It would be nice, but not necessary, to include some kind of translation into your usual language. I usually do mine in <span title="translation"><i>other language</i></span> tags. You might choose to write it all out and translate at the end. You could hide it in the post's extension. Whatever. Be free! Be wild!

You can link back to this post if you want. Or not. If you don't want. There is a new icon this year, or you can use last year's old crappy MS-Paint-produced one if you'd rather.

If you're participating, please leave a comment or a trackback and let me know. This way you can all read each other's and be inspired when you can't think of anything to say* and you can make new blogging friends and we'll all live happily ever after.

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* Because as any multilingual knows, the worst thing to be asked is, "Ooooh, say something in X-language," because you always end up saying something like "Well, I can't think of anything to say, but you asked me to say something in X-language so here I am and I'm speaking to you in X-language and I'm going to stop now."

Jez picked me up at London Stansted airport today and drove me all the way up to his home in North Yorkshire. It wasn't terribly scenic, as we were on the main north-south motorway, so mostly we saw cars and signs. Signs, however, can be considered scenic...

We passed a lot of signs suggesting that there could be traffic-backups ahead.

POSSIBLE QUEUES AHEAD, read the signs.

Ahem. We are a mature human being. We will not think of our blog. We will not giggle and titter.

POSSIBLE QUEUES AHEAD, repeated the signs.

Ahem. Renewed attempts to be mature and culturally sensitive to other ways of expressing common ideas and not giggle.

POSSIBLE QUEUES AHEAD

Hee hee hee, I thought, but did not laugh out loud. And we drove on.

QUEUES LIKELY

Shut up! Are they doing this on purpose?

QUEUES LIKELY

Thanks, G.F. This word is ruined for me for all time. Right. I'm blogging this.

Languagehat linked to ungreek, a site that provides greeked text (gibberish used in designs to fill in space where text is supposed to go later). One of the greeked text options they give is the Esperantists' Manifesto. My eye happened to fall on the line:

Cxiu lingvo liberigas kaj malliberigas siajn anojn donante al ili la povon.

I can almost read it. As far as I can guess, it says "Each language liberates... giving to them the power." I don't know who's being liberated, but I wonder if "malliberigas" is related to "malchicks", which meant young men or people or something in the Anglo-Russian dialect used in A Clockwork Orange. So something along the lines of language liberating its people and giving them power?

I think this is really cool. I'll have to go out and dig up some more Esperanto later to try to read it.

I call that out-of-state crackheads. What the hell kind of game is that?

In Michigan, we say "pop" for sweetened carbonated beverages like Coke, Pepsi, Sprite, root beer, etc.

We also say "Flore-i-da", "cray-ahn", "flurr-ish", and "groshery", pronounce "Mary", "merry" and "marry" the same and pronounce the I in "cauliflower" like the I in "sit". We say "tennis shoes", "roly-poly", "kitty-corner", "oil and vinegar", "by accident", "mow the lawn", "basement", "drinking fountain" and "goose bumps". I am somehow a mutant for my state, though, and say neither "car-ml" nor "carra-mel", but rather "care-a-ml".

[via ASquared Airbeagle]

"What Jerome is ignorant of, no man has ever known."
- St Augustine

Today is the saint's day of St Jerome, patron saint not only of translators, but also of librarians, archivists and libraries.

I am totally naming all of my children Jérôme.

[via languagehat]

Languagehat has a post about my new favorite verse style and word: macaronic.

Modern examples cited in the comments include Lady Marmalade, Michelle and some of the work of Leonard Cohen. I would add Côté banjo, côté violon, For me, Formidable and (my favorite) It is not because you are.

What are your favorites?

I've installed a wee translation thingy in the right column. Do you think it's really worth it when it comes out with things like:

The walk of Ye' ll the board, the scurvy of ye continues!

For anniversary S to celebrate Becky ', we went to re-examine pirates of the Caribbean. By observing all the appropriations love a true member of my family, I found my to call: pirate the trainer of dialect. Not a trainer of dialect for pirates in films, naturally, nor the trainer of dialect for the pirates of Pittsburgh. I will sail the seven seas, teacher of the pirates of beginner to the more authentic noise.

Jez and I were IMing about important and useful phrases to learn before travelling abroad. We came up with the following. Don't say I never taught you anything.

Felmelegítené ezt a cuclisüveget?

Kann ich ein Opernglas ausleiben?

Godmorgen, mit navn er - Hvadbehager? - mit navn er - Hvadbehager? - Mit navn er... Slim Shady.

When Robin and I bought crêpes at Art Fair, the fellow making the crêpes had a French accent. I wanted to speak French to him, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Afterwards, I told my mother how I was kicking myself for having said nothing and my mom was disappointed. She thinks that I should use my powers for good whenever I have the chance. I think she fears that if I don't get into the practice of using them for good, I'll turn to evil. No one wants to be Lex Luthor's mom. I myself was disappointed to have passed up an opportunity to practice, out of fear that I'll eventually lose my French altogether.

Robin, on the other hand, didn't think I should have said anything. "When you were in France," she said, "would you have wanted strangers to speak English to you just because they could?" She's right - I usually end up getting insulted when I say something in French and people respond in English.

On the other hand, it might be nice to hear your native language in a polylingual desert like Michigan. Who knows? What do you think?

Thanks to everyone who participated in Language Week, including:

Ain't It Cruel?, annicapannika blog, Beatniksalad, Blethers.com, Jezblog, Ministry of Propaganda, monochromatic girl, So Joyful!, and What You Can Get Away With.

Hope I haven't forgotten anyone - let me know if I have! Perhaps we'll have to try it again next year. I'll let you know then.

(Except posted on Saturday, because we were having Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and a National Holiday on Friday.)

Bon, ben, voilà, je suis trop paresseuse pour écrire en espagnol, même si j'ai inventé cette semaine pour pratiquer cette langue-là. C'est trop difficile sans dictionnaire, et je n'ai pas très envie de chercher chaque mot sur Babelfish.

Je suis très heureuse d'avoir réçu un mél d'Agnès, qui m'a dit que les résultats des examens finaux au lycée ont été affichés et qu'elle me les a envoyés. En travaillant en France, ça m'a choqué que là-bas, les résultats des examens sont affichés, sont annoncés en classe, et sont publiés dans les journaux. Ici, les notes sont privées, à être partagées par les élèves s'ils veulent.

Bon, comme c'est publié dans les journaux, je peux vous dire que presque tous mes chers THOT ont eu leur bac, mais qu'on attend toujours les résultats des S2OL.

Hoy llevo calcetines con monos. No manos, monos. Calcetines con manos no existen. He tenido calcetines con dedos de pie, y no me gustan. No son muy cómodos. No me gusta la sensación de tener algo entre mis dedos de pie.

Bloguo [gracias Jez!] cosas muy importante en español. Bueno... no es mejor en inglés.

No tengo muchas cosas que decir en español, y no tengo más vocabulario en chino, entonces hoy voy a escribir en el idioma francés, lo que conozco bien porque lo he estudiado desde la media de mi vida.

J'aime bien la chanson Mon fils, ma bataille de Daniel Balavoine. C'est une chanson qui parle d'un père divorcé qui risque de perdre son fils, comme dans le film Kramer vs. Kramer. Mais ce qui me gène, c'est le refrain, qui raconte « Je vais tout casser/ si vous touchez/ aux fruits de mes entrailles/ fallait pas qu'elle s'en aille ».

En anglais, déjà, la phrase « fruit of my loins » me dégoute pas mal, mais le français, « fruits de mes entrailles », me semble même pire.

Mais dans tout cela, ce qui me fait le plus peur, c'est qu'Amandine Poulain a le même probleme avec cette expression... et que je n'ai pas très envie de finir comme la mère d'Amélie.

I read a Dutch card-catalogue card out loud to my mother, who told me I sounded like I was speaking French. I realized my mistake and changed my Rs from the voiced uvular fricative to flapped ones (language nerd! language nerd!), and felt like I was speaking Spanish.

I read Spanish with a French accent, Dutch with a Spanish one, and French with a strange one that no one can identify, but definitely sounds foreign. I strive to be a mutant in all languages.

Ni-men hao! Ni-men hao ma? Wo hen hao, xiexie. Wo shi zai tushuguan. Wo shi meiguo xuesheng. Wo xue faguoren. Wo bu he pijiu. Wo yo meimei.

As you can probably tell, my Mandarin Chinese has suffered great losses since I took a semester of it, in the fall of 1999. I, myself, have suffered the great loss of my Chinese textbook (where are all of my language books disappearing to? There is some kind of vortex in my room, sucking them in), so I can't even check to see if what little I remembered is correct.

Quiero comenzar, pero he perdido mi diccionario español-inglés, lo que es un problema, porque no tengo mucho vocabulario y olvido siempre donde van los acentes.

¿Que voy a hacer? Je ne sais pas.

Voy a 'cheat' con Babelfish. No me gusta Babelfish. Mi colega me dijo que es un website que traduce muy bien y que debo tratarlo para ayudarme con mis traducciones. HA!

Bueno. Hoy, no voy a estar cerca de un ordenador, porque voy a trabajar con mis manos, porque soy muy FUERTE! ARRRR! No, no es la verdad. Voy a trabajar con mis manos porque voy a ayudar los que mueven los muebles de la biblioteca. Porque no tengo otra cosa para hacer.

There may already be a Language Week on the calendar somewhere; I don't know. All I know is that my Spanish needs practice. So I'm going to declare next week (June 29 - July 5)... Language Week. This is a departure from my original idea of una semana española, because - surprise of surprises - not everyone speaks Spanish. And I think it would be fun if everyone could participate.

So.

Here are the rules of participation:

You can link back to this post if you want. Or not. If you don't want. I have created a really crappy image in Paint that you may use. Or not. If you don't want. The code is
<a href="http://www.srah.net/weblog/2003_06.html#005173"><img src="http://www.srah.net/weblog/lweek.gif" border=0></a>.

I believe that is all. Have fun. Be multi-lingual.

Okay, so one of the main reasons I took this job again this summer was that I would actually get to use some of my skills by doing some English-French translating. And now I've got a document to translate. And now I'm scared.

I never realized it, and it may not seem like it, but translating is stressful work. You're putting words in someone else's mouth. You may make them say something they didn't mean, or you may make them sound like a five-year-old, or you may make them completely incomprehensible. I fear that I am being trusted where I shouldn't be.

Due to great controversy and confusion over my weight yesterday, I hopped on the scale for the first time in over a year. The verdict: 101 lbs. Perhaps I ought to go to the gym with Robin and Becky, and put on some muscle-weight.

I find it interesting that the British money and the weight are both called "pounds" but are abbreviated £ and lbs., respectively. I don't know where the word "pound" comes from, but I bet the £ and lbs. come from the same source as their French translation, livre, and the zodiacal sign Libra, the scales (for weighing money or other things). This doesn't, however, explain why the French word livre also means "book". Maybe the word comes from records of money exchange and bartering being kept in books. Language is fun to speculate about.

Belgian thee met melk report: level three.

The milk was forgotten by the server, and there were lemon slices on my saucer. This merits a ranking about equal to that of the United States. Of course I am basing it on one experience and I don't know if the results would be any different in Bruxelles or Wallonie.

Did you notice that "tea with milk" is one of the few Dutch words/phrases I've picked up? Dank u wel for noticing; yes, I am an addict.

As you may know, Citroën is a maker of French automobiles. What you may not know is that citroen is the Dutch word for lemon.

In other interesting related news, the Dutch word for orange apparently translates as "sinus apple". Yum.

I bet a Dutch person who learned English in Scotland would hae a really interesting accent. If such an animal exists, make yourself known. I am going to marry you.

I prefer the Flemish Brugge to the French Bruges and Antwerpen to Anvers, but the French Ypres and Bruxelles to Ieper and Brussel.

I am constantly convinced that if I concentrate hard enough, I can understand spoken Flemish. I can't, but something about the tones of the language makes it feel like I should.

I do understand some written Flemish, but I invariably translate it into ridiculous pidgin English. Thus "We komen aan in Gent-Sint-Pieters" becomes "We coming on in Ghent-St-Peter's" and "De volgende halte is Gent-Dampoort" becomes "The forthcoming halt is Ghent-Dampoort".

Belgium is a fascinating place. I may have a skewed impression, considering my hosts are Flemish, but it seems that the French-speaking minority forces the Flemish-speaking majority to submit to their language when the conflict comes up, and the multilingual flamands give in. Now I get to represent two overbearing, aggressive languages here in the the Flemish town of Antwerp, when I try to me débrouiller alone in town.

We went out for a beer tonight after I arrived. Thankfully Christianna knows what I like and ordered for me, because I am in The Land of Beer, and I am a stranger in the aforementioned land. The place we went had a selection of one hundred different beers. I will abstain, however, from commenting on their musical atmosphere, as the songs over the course of the evening included "Love Cats".

We went out with Christianna's friends, all of whom speak impeccable English. Damned polyglot Belgians. When they weren't speaking English, they would throw in phrases of Flemish, the Belgian dialect of Dutch. Dutch and German are cousins, but clearly Dutch got all the good genes because it is infinitely more attractive than its relative.

As you may know, I have yet to travel to a country where I don't speak the language. Hearing train announcements in Dutch panics me a bit because I don't understand anything. Not the same I don't understand anything I felt in Chile, where I could at least pick out words and general meanings of sentences, but a complete lack of comprehension. And here I am, going to visit the Flemish Christianna and her nederlandophone friends. What am I getting myself into?

Sophie and I are hoping that the Nice People will get frustrated with their shortcomings in French (the presenters are already making fun of them for misgendering things and saying someone has nice horses instead of hair) and revert to English, a language they have probably all been studying for longer and know better. Not because we are great fans of English or Watching Subtitled TV or anything, but just because all that extra subtitling work would somehow teach TF1 a lesson. Live broadcasts will be interesting, if they find several languages to communicate in. Translators, start your typing!

I wonder if TF1 gave any thought to this in advance. The Belgian speaks five languages, the English girl is half Portuguese, and Swedes can always speak a million languages. Are we sure that French will always come out on top?

The damned Belgian on Nice People speaks five languages. The damned Belgian I'm visiting tomorrow speaks at least six. Why was I not born in Belgium?

Sophie and I are both disappointed that our parents aren't foreign, as this would have given us a fine linguistic head-start. Being Belgian or Luxembourgeois wouldn't have hurt, either.

When I lived in Grenoble, I never stopped being amused by France and the French and Europe in general. I think the difference is that I have accepted and adapted to a lot more this time, rather than being amused and staying on the surface.

I lived with things and was amused by them in Grenoble, but went back to my "normal" life in the USA afterwards. Now it feels like this is the normal life and I will actually have to readjust to my own country. My concern is that I will find it boring and bland and will reject it. I have in front of me a box labelled:

sables ronds pur beurre specialité ecossaise/ zandkoekjes met boter schotse specialiteit/ original schottisches buttergebäck/ biscotti rotondi scozzesi di pasta frollo al burro/ rodajas de torta seca de mantequilla original de Escocia.

I know it sounds stupid, but I could probably have a nervous breakdown based on the fact that these cookies would only be labelled as "pure butter shortbread rounds" in the US. I am mentally delicate at the moment. Be kind.

The English and French equivalents of to suave up/suaver were invented on the way home from Thiers. They are, respectively, to englarm/englarmer and to fratouille/fratouiller. Use them at your discretion.

I'm not quite sure that I understand how this is supposed to work, but I will answer the damned question. In German.

Welchen Beruf wollten Sie ausüben als Sie ein Kind waren ? Üben Sie ihn jetzt aus ? Wieso nicht ?

At one point, I'm sure I wanted to be a princess. I am not a princess because I was not born one and because I have not yet ensnared a prince. I remember wanting to be a scientist, because it sounded smart. Later, I worked on my elementary school newspaper (The Mitchell Talks News... envisioned but not named by yours truly) and decided I wanted to be a journalist. Then I worked at the public library and decided I wanted to be a librarian. Then I worked in the Albion College archives and decided I never wanted to work in a library again. Then I worked in some more libraries, and now I want to make web pages and be paid for it. The End.

Thanks to Alex and the continued efforts of the assistantes amérivichyssoises to mangle and reinvent the English language, a new expression has been born: to suave someone up. Suaving someone up consists of speaking Spanish in an effort to seduce them.

We have also invented the equivalent French verb suaver, which we repeat loudly and often in front of the other assistants, who never ask us what we're talking about because they have learned to ignore us.

We are now in search of a word that would mean "speaking French in an effort to seduce someone". We decided that fuaver sounded too much like fava beans. Any suggestions?

Why do both English and French have the same word for the fruit and the color orange? Why don't we call that color "carrot", something orange that probably would have been more familiar to the French and English back when colors were being named?

Maybe the fruit was named after the color, which I think would be super-dumb. We don't call lemons "yellows", now do we? And why wouldn't you be able to come up with a better name? Even "orangefruit" would be better.

I'm still reading Contact. In the book, an alien civilization has been receiving our television signals and sends a message to the Earth. It occurs to me that if an alien civilization only had one language on their whole planet, they might think we were much more complicated than we are. If they had no concept of foreign languages, would it even occur to them to try to understand the languages in our broadcasts, or would they just think it was gibberish? And if they did try to translate, would it occur to them that our planet manages to survive with a host of different languages, or would they think we just had one language that was extremely rich in synonyms?

It is always an adventure to bring together a bunch of people with varied language skills. We went to lunch at my host family's house in Grenoble today and brought together during the course of the afternoon my parents and grandmother, who speak no French, Jean-Pierre and his mother, who speak no English, and varying levels of biligualism from Bon Papa, Gaëlle, Denis, Françoise, Sophie and me. Bon Papa - to my surprise - knows enough English to as where my family was from and to sortir d'autres phrases throughout the day as needed. Gaëlle prefers Spanish to English. Denis prefers making fun of his mother's English to speaking it himself. Françoise se debrouille très bien en anglais, which is a good thing because the two heavyweights - who should have been translating for the benefit of all the others - were wandering off and having their own conversations in French. Shame!

I had forgotten about Lost in Translation, which transforms the quote from yesterday into

"I bark that she lives in England, because in all the diverse part that disowned and disowned is. The only language, that one that I speak, I am English: They had fallen of the French in the school and I made the examinación of the jump with the sport of the square in the place. Also hour, during the buttock of the years, my reaction instinktive to the French of hearing a piedino in the sky is due to unload and to fit in the action according to the low walls of the garden. But it would not appreciate this, all the same east thought that you did not appreciate external. The external ways the adventure and the food she danger and she koestliche of the possibility, but come external on the other hand, to totally obtain the confusion to itself tired and and of the country of extrangeiro, of that the legend you to that the series is opened, if is not. "

If you translate my blog from French to English, you will discover that

Jennifer always has good drunk stop stories. Weird things happen to her At the drunk stop.

Another good one is

Andrés: (in Spanish) You' D better watch it, but I' ll cuts to find has new girlfriend.
Srah: Ahhhh! That should not be said! You will begin rumours!

Never mind, I'm amusing myself anyway.

Would you be interested in translating my blog into really bad French?

Just for your information,

Je suis Sarah, connu sous le nom de srah. Je suis le Michigan, Etats-Unis, mais je travaille en tant qu'aide anglais dans Vichy, France cette année, et dépends fortement de parler (et de blogging) dans les franglais . Si vous ne comprenez pas un mot ou une expression, l'essai mousing-au-dessus de, et la traduction en anglais devraient sauter vers le haut.

and also

Soy Sarah, conocido como srah. Soy de Michigan, los E.E.U.U., pero estoy trabajando como ayudante inglesa en Vichy, Francia este año, y estoy dependiendo pesadamente del discurso (y de blogging) en franglais . Si usted no entiende una palabra o una frase, el intento mousing-sobre, y la traducción inglesa deben hacer estallar para arriba.

One of the things I love about Europe is that it's so polyglottal polyglottic polyglotty polyglottious. Anyway, there are a buttload of languages here. Because the countries have so much inter-European trade, packaging is usually in at least three languages.

Usually it's enough for me to read one of the languages, but sometimes I find myself perusing several for my own amusement, and I begin wondering if someone's out to get me. It's always interesting to find that the Spanish and French packaging includes a direction or safety warning that is missing from the English translation.

I found the same sort of thing on our boat ride on the Seine - the Bateaux Mouches' commentary for the Louvre says one thing in French, Italian, Spanish, and (I assume) Russian, and something quite different in English. It was correct English, but it was not a translation from the French - it was an entirely different story.

For this reason, I prefer important information and communication in French, and I take care to listen to all of the languages I understand in Eurostar announcements to see what they're telling the French passengers, but keeping from the English ones.

Actually, there are probably some that are a lot worse. "Maybe she'll wake up if we give her an electric shock" comes to mind. But these are the phrases I would rather not hear again during my séjour in France:

"Oh? You both speak English? You should speak English to each other."

"You speak language x? Say something in language x."

I need more direction than that, thank you. I am not a parrot. Forced conversations or forced language-speaking is, by nature, forced and therefore not natural. And when I hear one of these phrases, all logical normal speech flies out of my mind and all I can say is:

"duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

or, in the case of "Say something in Chinese,":

"Duibuqi, Xiaomu bu shi zai tushuguan."

because it's one of the few things I still remember how to say.

I'm not quite sure what my goal was in checking out this Pocket Auvergnat phrasebook, but it dos have some interesting information on the region. For example, Mentre tres annadas terriblas, la "Bèstia" devoriguèt dròlles e dròllas dins lo caire de Saug means, for all you Pacte des loups fans, "For three terrible years, the Gévaudan Beast devoured boys and girls in the area of Saugue."

I have also learned that lai a mai de vint vialas d'aigas en Auvèrnhe and the ever useful Podria 'nar gitar las vachas ame vosautres?

These are all lovely phrases, but I'm not sure that I'd find anyone to use them on, even if I could handle the prononciation. Vichy, although now in the Auvergne political region, is far enough north that it was originally inside the former region of Bourbonnais rather than the traditional Auvergne boundary. It may be possible to scrape up an old guy playing pétanque in southern Auvergne who can still spak a bit and there's an immersion school in Aurillac, I believe, but a vichyssois on the street would probably run away if I asked them Parlatz auvernhat?

At the library today, I borrowed a book-and-tape set for continued Spanish study, a book-free Russian tape set, a book on conversational Italian, and L'Auvergnat de poche, a recently published book of words and phrases from the native language of Auvergne. If I tried to learn them all, I would get terribly confused and my head would explode, but it's mostly just to stick my toe in a few new languages and to learn some rules for each one.

The tapes are rather old and stretched, so I may have to pick another language where they have CDs, which would be clearer and easier to understand. It's hard enough to learn Russian with nothing written down, but garbly tapes certainly aren'tt going to make it any easier.

I am reading American Rigolos, which Agnès lent me. It's the French translation of a British book about America, written by an American. Bill Bryson worked in England for twenty years before going back to the US and bringing his British family with him. So, while he sounds American and all, he has trouble adjusting to the culture he knew a long time ago. He wrote this series of articles for a newspaper back in England, and they were published as Notes from a Big Country (in the UK) and I'm A Stranger Here Myself (in the US).

The strange thing about reading it translated into French is that, like in dubbed American movies, I find myself getting distracted from the actual content by concentrating on the translation and wondering how things were originally phrased in English. We are such a language nerd.

I can tell already that I'm going to miss speaking French when I go back home in April. It will be frustrating and painful. I know this because it happened when I left Grenoble, too.

What I get used to here is that when I speak to Americans (or other English-speakers), they all speak French too. I get comfortable speaking to people who speak my language but don't mind if I start babbling at them in French. It's that easy, comfortable bilangualism that I miss, falling in and out of the two languages with people who speak both.

Sophie has just informed me that Sarah means "belly-button" in Arabic. Delightful.

With 22 years of English, 10 years of French, 1 year of Spanish, and 1 semester of Mandarin Chinese, my mind is a big linguistic muddle sometimes. I was showing my Chile pictures to Françoise last night and would switch to Spanish whenever I said a Spanish place-name, although I pronounced the Spanish place-name à la française. When I was talking to the other Srah and other Morins would enter the room, I would try to speak to them in English. When I took Chinese and didn't know the Chinese word, it would come out in English. When I'm on the phone in one language and surrounded by the other, no one understands what's going on.

What I find most interesting in this post by Meg is that my brain seems to have the same distinction between two language areas that hers does: English and "foreign". Just read it. It's funny and very true, if you've ever studied another language or travelled abroad.

This page is accessible in China. Is yours?

Went to Albion to hear James Earl Jones last night. It was like he was Dr. Guenin-Lelle with a much deeper voice, because he seemed to be teaching my Freshman Seminar. His topic was Culture.

PT opened up by saying that James Earl Jones sounded more like he imagined the voice of God than anyone he'd ever heard. I'm sure it's a common belief, but it scared me because it sounded like Uncle Pete had been reading my blog. Albion gave him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters before his speech. "When do I get my honorary doctorate?" I asked Alex. "When you are James Earl Jones," he replied. It'll be a long wait.

Dr. Jones started with a story about when he was in a theater production of a play that took place during the French Revolution. The reviewer made an impression on him when she said that they didn't need to put on French accents or look French to be authentic, but they had to do research and know about the culture of Revolutionary France. "Yes," I said, trance-like, "God told me to learn about French culture. Either that or Darth Vader. Either way, I think I had better learn about French culture."

When he started talking about language as a medium for transmitting culture, I decided I was going to marry him. So did Alex. We had planned to race to him, with threats of violence against each other, as soon as he finished speaking, but he was whisked away at the end. Poo.

He talked about cultural norms and misunderstandings between cultures, including linguistic ones. He told a story about missionaries trying to convert the Inuit people and trying to translate religious concepts into their language. Salvation was translated as "to pull someone from a hole in the ice". They couldn't see what this had to do with religion. The 23rd Psalm ("The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...") was translated as "The Lord is my keeper, he does not want me. He shoots me down on the beach and pushes me into the water..." Heh heh. Bet Christianity caught on fast there.

I didn't agree with everything he said, but I thought it was a good speech because it made people think and discuss. That's always good.

He answered questions afterwards. I was shocked that some people asked him where he lived and other personal questions. There was, of course, one Star Wars question. He claimed not to remember any of the Darth Vader dialogue and said that to him, David Prowse was Vader and he himself was just a special effect, like a steam machine making the steam rising off a pile of manure.

How poetic.

Do you speak more than one language? Actually, I suppose this could affect anyone.

This morning, I listened to music in Bulgarian, Japanese and Flemish. I found myself picking up familiar sounds and making French, Spanish, or English words out of them so that I could try to understand the song. What's up with that?

Sometimes it would be nice to be able to éteindre parts of your brain. Like, for example, the part that just now could not come up with the English phrase "turn off".

In French (feuilles) and Spanish (hojas), a piece of paper is a "leaf". In English (in the U.S. at least), we have loose-leaf paper, but for the most part, we call individual pieces of paper "sheets". Which is the same word we use for bed-coverings. We're funny like that. I wonder why we don't call them leaves.

Did you know the German word for whipped cream is schlag? How much more fun is it to order something mit schlag instead of with whipped cream? Go ahead, exclaim it right now. SCHLAG!

After writing that, I have looked it up on Babelfish. According to them, SCHLAG! means impact, which is almost (but not quite) as fun to exclaim. I dunno, my mommy told me it meant whipped cream and I trust my mommy.

Any German speakers out there know the real poop?

A Chinese researcher who doesn't speak much English has just arrived at the library (yes, around 4:30 on a Friday...) and I spent about fifteen minutes helping him fill out his registration card. He came over to me for help with it, rather than to the reference desk. I think he likes me because I speak slowly to him. I wish I remembered more than tushuguan (library) from my semester of Chinese - I think he already knew where he was, so tushuguan wasn't doing me much good.

I get the impression, after learning a bit about Chinese and talking to him, that it's tough for those who aren't fluent in English to grasp when a question is being asked. In many Western languages, we often just go up at the end of a sentence to make it into a question. In Chinese, words go up and down and up-down and change meaning because of it.

When we were done filling out the card, had his picture taken with me with his digital camera, because I helped him. So my face gets to go to China, as I'm sure it has many times before. We always have Chinese archivists visiting here and snapping photographs. Sometimes I wonder, when I'm in a touristy spot, if I'm getting into strangers' pictures and they're taking me home with them. Interesting thought, that. Communication is fun. What job can I get where I help foreigners all day?

Here's a Babelfish translation of a story originally from Yahoo! Rhône-Alpes:

That's right. Srah blah blah: your source for badly translated French dog-raping stories.

English is "cheese". German is "käse". Spanish is "queso". Portuguese is "queijo". All very similar words.

So where the heck does "fromage" come from?

While my dad and I were driving to my grandparents' house yesterday, we were talking about things that are pronounced funny and we realized something that I thought was sort of cool.

You would never think that the names Beecham and Campbell were related, would you? But Beecham is an Anglicization of the French Beauchamp, meaning beautiful field. And Campbell comes from the Italian Campobello, which means the same thing!

I thought that was neat. Humo(u)r me.

Why grammar is the first casualty of war - lovely, Terry J. Thank you.

[via BenHammersley.com]

I got many lovely presents, including The Sims Hot Date, which will ensure that I never have to venture into the real world again, and a European phrase book, which will enable me to say děkuji, tak, dank u wel, kiitos, merci, danke, ευχαριστώ, köszönöm, grazie, takk, dziękuję, obrigada, gracias and tack instead of "thank you".

I tried to say numbers in French today but they tried to come out in Spanish. Things are all confused in my head.

I think I'm aging backwards and my attention span is getting shorter as I get older. Maybe i's just early-onset senility.

I don't think it's a good sign that the one class I'm taking in my major this semester is the one class where I watch the clock from beginning to end and whimper in my head about how painfully bored I am. I hate literature classes.

"Now and again he spoke to those that served him and thanked them in their own language. They smiled at him and said laughing: 'Here is a jewel among hobbits!'"
- J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring, Chapter III

Just goes to show... a little linguistic effort will go a long way to impressing the people you meet. And not just with elves. Give it a try!

The French word ignorer means "to be unaware of" something. This seems to be more closely related to the word "ignorant" than is the English verb "to ignore".

Isn't it a good thing that John F. Kennedy went to Berlin instead of Vienna, Austria? Then he would have announced "Ich bin ein Wiener." "Ha ha ha ha ha ha," she laughed maturely.