In true UOPTA fashion, I am going to dedicate this post to the glory of language. Foreign language to be exact. Like any good California high school student, I took my obligatory 3 years of high school Spanish, avoiding a fourth year because the AP Spanish teacher was one perra loca. Anyway, my three years of high school Spanish did not render me nearly as proficient as mi hermano, but I learned enough to get by in Spanish-speaking countries, which is really all I wanted. After my freshman year college, I visited France for the first time and became obsessed with the idea of learning French, so I took a year’s worth at UCSB. Finally, after graduation, I spent a year in Germany, where I also picked up decent amount of Deustch. I am nowhere near fluent in any of these languages, but have learned enough of each to be able to notice some fun things about the way our and other languages work and am going to share those things with you.
One of the first things you are taught when learning almost any new language are the days of the week. In Spanish all the days of the work week end in “es.” In French, every day but dimanche, Sunday, ends is “di.” German is similar to English in that all of its days of the week (except for Wednesday) end in “tag,” the German word for “day.” Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch, Donnerstag, Freitag, Samstag, Sonntag. One of these things just doesn’t belong here. What the hell did Wednesday do to anybody? As I’m sure you noticed, a lot of the German days of the week are very similar to English, in fact, “Sonn tag” literally translated is Sun day. It makes sense to me that the weekends or just Sunday might be different from the others. They’re special. If you’re religious, those are the days you set aside to worship your diety of choice. If you’re not, those are the days you sleep late and make waffles. But Wednesday? Wednesday hasn’t meant anything to me since “Dawson’s Creek” went off the air. Crazy Germans.
Living in a foreign country often results in funny misunderstandings regarding language. During my first three months in Deutschland, I took regular German classes so I could at least function in my new country without resorting to excessive pointing. I thought I was catching on pretty quickly and was feeling very confident about my language-learning abilities when our teacher, Herr Linder, gave us a passage to read silently. It was about a little girl who got a “puppe” for her birthday. Because so many German and English words look and sound very similar, I assumed that “puppe” meant “puppy.” The story continued that she loved her new puppe, she would brush her puppe’s hair and take her puppe with her wherever she went. It all made sense to me; I would do the same if I had a puppy. Then it talked about how she dressed the puppe up in a hat and a dress and put it in a baby carriage to take the store, which seemed kind of weird, but I remember trying to lay a towel on my dog’s back and ride him like a pony, so I was really in no place to judge. Had he been smaller, I probably would have tried to stick him in a stroller. Then it talked about how she grew too old for her puppe and put it in a box under her bed. It was at this point that I figured that “puppe” must not mean what I thought it meant, unless Herr Linder was having his beginning German students read a cautionary tale about cruelty to animals.
“Entschuldigung, Herr Linder? Ich habe eine Frage. Wie Sie Puppe auf Englisch sagen?”
“Hmmm…puppe, auf Englisch...” He hemmed and hawed for a second and then mimed like he was rocking a baby. “Puppe ist “toy baby?”
“Oh, okay! I know, I mean, ich weiss!”
“Was ist die wort?”
“Doll.”
“Ja, doll, genau!”
Almost every foreign language class will warn you to beware “false friends,” words that look like English words but have entirely different meanings. Another great example is the Spanish word “embarazado.” It looks, and sounds, like it means “embarrassed,” but it actually means pregnant. You can just imagine the funny misunderstandings that could result from that one.
Speaking of misunderstandings and pregnancy (sort of), I will conclude with my favorite story about language misunderstandings. This one is about the context in which a person learns a word in a foreign language. I was watching the German version of MTV with my host sister, who was 15 at the time. The VJ was talking about Katie Holmes’ recent engagement to Tom Cruise, and added in a bratty, incredulous tone that Ms. Holmes was purportedly a “Jungfrau.” Now “Jung frau” translated into English is just “young woman,” so I couldn’t imagine that the VJ would be snottily declaring that a 26 year old female “claims to be a young woman,” because that’s not really a stretch. So I asked my host sister what “Jungfrau” meant. She looked a little embarrassed (not embarazado).
“Oh, um, I don’t know the English word, but it means a girl who has never had sex before.”
That explained the VJ’s skepticism. Chris Klein isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but he and Joey Potter dated for like 4 years. In the words of my cousin Scott, “nobody’s that interesting.”
“Oh okay, that makes sense. And the English word is 'virgin'.”
Now it was her time to look confused. “I thought 'virgin' meant no alcohol in your drink.”
That resulted in conversation about how virgin just implies untouched and almost resulted in a conversation about how I hope she never feels pressured to do anything she doesn’t want to do and a boy who really likes her won’t make her do anything she isn’t ready for, but she is a very smart girl and apparently saw it coming and nipped it in the bud with, “Don’t worry, I don’t have alcohol in my drink yet.”
Bon Mittwoch to you good people, I will see you all mañana.
One of the first things you are taught when learning almost any new language are the days of the week. In Spanish all the days of the work week end in “es.” In French, every day but dimanche, Sunday, ends is “di.” German is similar to English in that all of its days of the week (except for Wednesday) end in “tag,” the German word for “day.” Montag, Dienstag, Mittwoch, Donnerstag, Freitag, Samstag, Sonntag. One of these things just doesn’t belong here. What the hell did Wednesday do to anybody? As I’m sure you noticed, a lot of the German days of the week are very similar to English, in fact, “Sonn tag” literally translated is Sun day. It makes sense to me that the weekends or just Sunday might be different from the others. They’re special. If you’re religious, those are the days you set aside to worship your diety of choice. If you’re not, those are the days you sleep late and make waffles. But Wednesday? Wednesday hasn’t meant anything to me since “Dawson’s Creek” went off the air. Crazy Germans.
Living in a foreign country often results in funny misunderstandings regarding language. During my first three months in Deutschland, I took regular German classes so I could at least function in my new country without resorting to excessive pointing. I thought I was catching on pretty quickly and was feeling very confident about my language-learning abilities when our teacher, Herr Linder, gave us a passage to read silently. It was about a little girl who got a “puppe” for her birthday. Because so many German and English words look and sound very similar, I assumed that “puppe” meant “puppy.” The story continued that she loved her new puppe, she would brush her puppe’s hair and take her puppe with her wherever she went. It all made sense to me; I would do the same if I had a puppy. Then it talked about how she dressed the puppe up in a hat and a dress and put it in a baby carriage to take the store, which seemed kind of weird, but I remember trying to lay a towel on my dog’s back and ride him like a pony, so I was really in no place to judge. Had he been smaller, I probably would have tried to stick him in a stroller. Then it talked about how she grew too old for her puppe and put it in a box under her bed. It was at this point that I figured that “puppe” must not mean what I thought it meant, unless Herr Linder was having his beginning German students read a cautionary tale about cruelty to animals.
“Entschuldigung, Herr Linder? Ich habe eine Frage. Wie Sie Puppe auf Englisch sagen?”
“Hmmm…puppe, auf Englisch...” He hemmed and hawed for a second and then mimed like he was rocking a baby. “Puppe ist “toy baby?”
“Oh, okay! I know, I mean, ich weiss!”
“Was ist die wort?”
“Doll.”
“Ja, doll, genau!”
Almost every foreign language class will warn you to beware “false friends,” words that look like English words but have entirely different meanings. Another great example is the Spanish word “embarazado.” It looks, and sounds, like it means “embarrassed,” but it actually means pregnant. You can just imagine the funny misunderstandings that could result from that one.
Speaking of misunderstandings and pregnancy (sort of), I will conclude with my favorite story about language misunderstandings. This one is about the context in which a person learns a word in a foreign language. I was watching the German version of MTV with my host sister, who was 15 at the time. The VJ was talking about Katie Holmes’ recent engagement to Tom Cruise, and added in a bratty, incredulous tone that Ms. Holmes was purportedly a “Jungfrau.” Now “Jung frau” translated into English is just “young woman,” so I couldn’t imagine that the VJ would be snottily declaring that a 26 year old female “claims to be a young woman,” because that’s not really a stretch. So I asked my host sister what “Jungfrau” meant. She looked a little embarrassed (not embarazado).
“Oh, um, I don’t know the English word, but it means a girl who has never had sex before.”
That explained the VJ’s skepticism. Chris Klein isn’t exactly my cup of tea, but he and Joey Potter dated for like 4 years. In the words of my cousin Scott, “nobody’s that interesting.”
“Oh okay, that makes sense. And the English word is 'virgin'.”
Now it was her time to look confused. “I thought 'virgin' meant no alcohol in your drink.”
That resulted in conversation about how virgin just implies untouched and almost resulted in a conversation about how I hope she never feels pressured to do anything she doesn’t want to do and a boy who really likes her won’t make her do anything she isn’t ready for, but she is a very smart girl and apparently saw it coming and nipped it in the bud with, “Don’t worry, I don’t have alcohol in my drink yet.”
Bon Mittwoch to you good people, I will see you all mañana.
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