Garbage Bags For Baby

We got a letter from the town the other day saying hello to N, offering us 20 free garbage bags (as in the official garbage collection ones that you normally have to pay for) and asking what religion she has and what her mother tongue is. Religion was easy enough, but the language question inspired Reto to pop down to the town hall (which is just around the corner, so it was no big deal) and ask. Apparently she isn't allowed to have two native languages, so R chose english. Which is fine with me.

We've decided to go for the one-parent-one-language approach with little N, which is to say, I speak english with her and Reto speaks swiss german. As well as that, R and I are making a sort of half-hearted effort to only speak french between ourselves, partly so that N is exposed to that language as well, partly so that english doesn't become the dominant household language, and partly so it's easier for R to remember to speak german with her. I say half-hearted because we never really remember to speak french, or if it gets too confusing we always swap back to english. I went to a talk a while ago on raising multilingual children, and it seems that consistency is the key, as well as a clear division between each language, so it seems we really should be making a much bigger effort.

Impressing The Relatives

My inexplicable french relative (which is to say, I don't know how to describe my relation to her. She's actually Reto's relative, probably my second cousin once removed or something, although I'm not Victorian enough to know what that actually means) and her two grandchildren turned up at our place fairly unexpectedly yesterday, and so our plans for going to see Los Abrazos Rotos at the completely excellent local outdoor cinema were thwarted for the sake of being tourist guides and having a nice dinner up the road (the fact that there are at least 4 more movies we want to see at the openair cinema in the next few weeks is a bit of a balm.).

Last time I met my inexplicable relative and her grandchildren (which was also the first time I met them, as well as being before I was related to them. R and I weren't even engaged then! Aah, the olden days) was a few years ago in France, at which time my ability to speak french was minimal to the point of entirely absent. We spent our time smiling well-meaningly and forcing Reto to be the interpreter. This time, however, I wowed everyone with my ability to be an adult and carry on a sensible conversation. It's remarkable how heartwarming it can be to have a 9-year-old compliment you on your impressive language skillz (although then his slightly older sister had to tell me what the word for a dam wall is, which detracted a bit from my sense of pride. As did the fact that the 9 year old was almost impossible to understand because he speaks soveryveryfast).

Not A Moron

Today I was mocked in my french class for not knowing what "brushing" was (in the context of going to the hairdressers). "Don't you know the word in english?" the teacher said to me. Well obviously I do, but I suspect it's not the same thing because no one pays to have their hair brushed. And whaddayaknow, it's a blow-dry.

My teacher allegedly speaks english,but I secretly suspect that she doesn't at all.

Pardon?

Today a woman sat next to me on the train. After she sat down she asked me a long, meandering question in french about how the trains work in Switzerland (like with seat reservations and so on, not about the mechanics of trains), I got confused and we muddled through in some french and some english and eventually we answered her question. As it turned out that wasn't her only question, though, and since my french was better than her english, we blathered on for quite a while longer in french with a significant amount of success (and who knew I knew so much about trains?).

When we got to Fribourg I got off the train, and nary two steps onto the platform, some woman accosted me and asked if this was the train to Thun. No, I said, it goes to Berne and Zurich, and then I thought "I think I may have just said something in complete gibberish" but the woman looked satisfied with my answer and so off we both went and a few moments later it occurred to me that she had asked me in german and I had replied in german.

Which is hardly earth-shattering, but I was shocked. In my french classes I am forever agonising over whether what I am saying is french or german (or some sort of half-hearted mongrel non-language). Apparently the solution is to not give it any thought at all.

Back To Primary School Reading

There are practically more french books in our house now than there are english ones.

While that's obviously not actually true at all, it is true that the french section of our bookshelf is slowly oozing sideways, mostly because
a) every time I go to my favourite second hand book shop (very rarely, but still) I always get a french book or two these days, and because
b) the dude who lives upstairs just gave me a gigantic pile of his comics (Asterix, Tintin and some other cartoon duo who I've never heard of). Which was lovely of him, because they are right about my speed at the moment and because I really love Asterix. Tintin I don't know so well and he seems to be more olden-days-style-racist than I prefer, but ... well, it's all good practice. Plus it's handy that he (the neighbour who loaned me the books) lives so close, because I would really have struggled under the weight of them all if I had had to walk more than about 15 steps.

Languages? I Don't Like 'Em.

Aagh. What with having been on holidays from french classes for the last 2 weeks, and with having spent a significant amount of time in german-speaking areas lately, I've suddenly becomed trapped in some sort of moronic language limbo where I'm permanently confused and confusing. People speak to me and I'm too busy wondering where I am and what language they are speaking to actually listen to them. Whenever someone looks at me as though they are going to speak, I have a small moment of panic where I wonder how I should say hello. I start to speak in french and half way through the sentence turns kinda german. I'm spending my time crippled with confusion.

Not that I'm setting anything on fire with my awesome non-english-speaking skills at the best of times, but at the moment I really feel like I am floundering more than usual. I'm presuming it will all be less arduous next week when I get back into french lesson mode, but I think as an added precaution I might avoid german-speakers as much as possible for the next little while.

What Do I Read?

The other day in french we were talking about the fact that I read a lot, and the teacher asked me what sort of books I read. "Urrrmmmmm..." I said (only in french, obviously), and I wondered what the answer might be. "Fiction", I eventually said (only in french, obviously. Actually, in english because I didn't know how to say "fiction" in french. I do now), and he said "what sort of fiction?" and I said "urrrrmmmm..." again and he suggested crime, and I said no. Then he suggested romance and I said no. He suggested mystery and I said no. He suggested science fiction and I said no. Someone else who apparently hadn't been listening suggested non-fiction and I said no.

What do I read? I don't really know how to classify it in english, let alone any other language. The last five fiction books I read were The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen, Lady Oracle by Margaret Atwood, The Wave (I don't know who that one was by, although obviously I do now that I have googled it and put in a link. I found it on Reto's bookshelf in his childhood home. Apparently he read it in high school, and it really did hit you over the head with its message in a patronising kind of way as though you were some sort of teenaged moron. Apparently blindly following a leader and oppressing people who don't agree with you is bad, kids), White Teeth by Zadie Smith and A Short History of Tractors in Ukrainian by Marina Lewycka. What would you call this lot?

I gave it some thought on my own and didn't come up with much. A quick zip over to the Dymocks website suggests to me that "popular fiction" is the answer, Angus and Robertson tells me to go with "general fiction", and Waterstones in the UK says "modern fiction", or possibly "general and literary fiction".

I doubt very much whether I would actually use any of these terms to explain what I usually read. They all sound a bit forced and vague. Does anyone have any better ideas, though?

Bless Me! Grr!

People don't acknowledge me when I sneeze.

I don't think I ever mixed in "bless you" circles until a few years ago, but at a former job in Australia, all my colleagues were obsessive about saying it whenever anyone sneezed. Anyone but me. At first people relentlessly ignored my sneezing, then, as we all got to know each other a bit better, they sort of looked at me questioningly, then later they laughed a bit and asked me what that noise was, and then later they told me that I have the most ridiculous sneeze ever and that I sound like a bird. I think everyone always thought I was desperately trying to smother my sneezes so that no one would realise I was alive or had a pulmonary system, but personally I have never been able to hear any particular difference in how I sneeze and how everyone else does.

Now here I am in a shiny new place where no one knows me and where I don't really share a language with most of the people I spend most of my time with (apart from Reto, obviously), and again it's the stony silence when I sneeze. Everyone else gets a "bless you" equivalent, and I'm just waiting until the day someone feels comfortable enough to snicker.

Holidays!

I'm on holidays! From learning French*! For two days (plus the weekend)! I get to sleep in**! And not think! And tomorrow we're having a mini film-festival at our place (because it's some sort of public holiday. Something religious, I think, but I'm not really sure, and it means we will both be home and at a loose end)! Well, not really films, but we've borrowed a bunch of the first series of The Sopranos from the local library, so it's more like a TV festival! With gin and tonic and some generic snacky items and these weirdly named biscuits*** that Reto insisted on buying! And we're going to go and gawk at bike riders in some sort of cycling competition thingie that will be in Fribourg tomorrow (possibly from the vantage point of a bar down the road if it's open, which it may well not be but fingers crossed)! And I'm going to read a book that's too big to fit into my bag that I take to my french lessons****! Hurrah!




* which is a full time gig at the moment, in case I haven't mentioned that
** apart from the faux-insomnia, of course. I've decided to experiment with ditching the doona from my doona and using wintery pyjamas and a blanket instead (because I think my doona might be too warm)
*** they're called "nippon". They seen to involve rice bubbles coated with crap chocolate. I haven't tried one yet, but I am not holding my breath
**** White Teeth. I have four stupid textbooks for French, and what with all the umbrellas and sunnies (because I have no power of anticipating what the weather will be like in this stupid country, and so whenever I take only an umbrella it's always sunny, and whenever I take only sunnies it always rains, so now I always take both and it's always cloudy and non-rainy) and mug (for the vast quantities of green tea I drink while learning French. It's really not the same out of a plastic cup) and assorted other junk that I need every day, I am really limited to books of 150 pages or less on my hour and a half of train travel each day. At least the view out the window is pretty.

Cake Aux Poires Et Au Gingembre

I just cooked a cake in french. As in, the recipe was in french (I got it from one of the crappy train magazines, which seems a funny place to be getting recipes from, but the picture looked nice). It's still in the oven, so I have yet to see if it was disastrous or not (actually, it seemed a bit dry when it went into the oven, but there's no way I can have misinterpreted "60mL de lait" so I am assuming that's just the way the recipe is), but how hard can cooking a cake really be? Not very hard, I say, and that's even accounting for the fact that we don't really have a cake tin.

And speaking of things that we haven't yet bought but that would probably be handy when baking cakes in french, I don't actually have a french dictionary. Yes, yes, much like I could go out and buy a toaster instead of whining about it for a year and a half, I suppose I could go out and buy a french-english dictionary. Reto has a french-german one, though, and I have a german-english one, and so that does me quite well for the time being. Much like I can make toast under the griller. Except that our griller in this flat seems to be broken. Maybe I should get one of those little kitchen blow-torch things. Then I could make toast and creme brulee.

UPDATE: The cake was super! I meant to take a pic of it when it came out of the oven, but then I forgot and we ate half of it. So here's the rest. Oh, and it looks nothing like it did in the picture. There it was all dark and gingerbready-looking. Hmm.

Grammar Poll!

Is "caucus" a verb? I would be inclined to say no, but consulting with assorted dictionaries around the place does sadly not back me up 100%. About 2 weeks ago I read a quote from someone in an English newspaper saying "I don't even know who I'm going to caucus for yet" (about the US presidential nominees) and I thought that was odd. Then yesterday I read in another paper (Australian) a similar use of the word and I still thought it was odd.

Whaddayathink? Have you ever used it as a verb? Or would you?

Freezing In Fribourg

Reto and I spent yesterday complaining bitterly in Fribourg. Complaining firstly because it took us two long hours to get there (which I admit is not a long time at all. We had to change trains 5 times, though, which was extremely annoying), then complaining because it was so cold (-6 according to a thermometer we saw, and that was at lunch time), and then complaining because the ground was so icy and slippery (why make pedestrian crossings out of stuff that is treacherous at the first sign of anything inclement?), and then complaining because we ate too much cheese at lunchtime (we had a fondue aux herbes, which was sort of delicious and sort of oppressively herby, and all together too cheesy. We didn't even eat all of it, so we didn't get to really appreciate the yummy burnt bit on the bottom!) and then complaining because it was cold again.

Otherwise, it was actually a really great day. We met up with my friend Olivia, who is always wacky and fun and full of unexpected stories about the strange things she does. We went and looked at flats we might want to live in next year (and, totally unexpectedly, we actually found one that would be sort of perfect! It's big but not too big, cheap but not too cheap, it's got lots of nice big windows, it's in a building with a reasonable laundry system (just do it whenever there's a free machine, none of this relentless signing up for things and being yelled at for the terrible crime of washing outside your allocated time), the kitchen looks functional (and the fridge is only moderately tiny instead of tiny tiny), the view is entertainingly excellent (although we only saw the entertaining part, because the allegedly excellent bit (mountains) was hidden by fog and clouds), and the building is close to everything), we ate lots of cheese and drank lots of coffee and broke it all up with short periods spent walking around in the freezing.

I like Fribourg. I am really looking forward to moving there next year, and although the language thing is a bit on the annoying side (having spent quite some time learning german, it's not really ideal to have to start again from scratch in french) it will at least be good to live in a place where the language I learn is the language they speak (none of this swiss german gobbledegook). Not that learning french really solves many of my problems, since we don't plan on staying in Fribourg (or in french-speaking areas in general, I think) for more than a few years at most, and since none of Reto's rellies speak french at all, but I still think it's a positive move. There's nothing more annoying than every single Swiss person you ever meet saying "No one ever learns swiss german. You'll never learn it, ever. Ever" to make a girl not feel at home. Good riddance miserable germans, I say.

How Do You Pronounce "Philistine"?

There's a pub in Sydney called the Löwenbräu Keller. Everyone pronounces the name "low-en-brow" (I don't know about phonetic spelling, but that's low as in the opposite of high and brow as in eyebrow), even people who should know better (such as the Austrian person I didn't go there with once, and the dude from my german class who managed the place for 7 years, and even Reto these days). Frankly, it's called the "low-en-brau" and if anyone tried to pronounce it properly no one would know where they were talking about*.

I was reading something the other day about german words in english, and how english speakers are abysmal at pronouncing a lot of them. Apparently we are quite good at saying "poltergeist", "gesundheit" and "kindergarten", but we fall down all over the place with "Porsche", "neandertal" and "Fahrvergnügen" (which apparently featured in a VW ad years ago, although possibly only in the USA. I don't know, but I do know that I have never heard anyone try to say it, correctly or otherwise).

I am willing to accept that we generally don't say "Porsche" properly. It's a business, or more importantly a proper noun, and as such, in my opinion, we should pronounce the "e" and try to say its name as it was originally intended (even though we then do run the risk of being misunderstood or thought of as wankers) . Obviously that is the complete opposite of what I apparently so heartily approved of in the first paragraph (that the Löwenbräu is the low-en-brow), but I am willing to admit that I am not only occasionally wrong but also occasionally inconsistent, and to not apologise for that at all.

The "neandertal" thing, however, is another matter entirely. The point in the thing I read was that "neandertal" is a german word and although we use the word in english (albeit possibly spelt slightly differently, ie. with an h. Apparently both spellings are acceptable in english, incidentally, but I have never seen it without an "h" before) but we don't pronounce it properly like the german-speakers do. Umm, that would be because it is not a german word any more, I say. I mean, obviously it is a german word, but it is also an english word now as well, and once a word has been adopted into a new language, I really think that the new language people should be able to pronounce it as the general rules of their language dictate. And that means with a "th" sound, in my opinion. Although apparently, according to that article I read, that means that I am not one of the "informed people", who all prefer the germanic-type pronunciation.

Any opinion?





* Possibly a slight exaggeration, but you get my point.

Bern Report

I had a really nice time in Bern with Olivia yesterday. I forced her to go and see the bears with me*, she forced me to go to Starbucks with her**, and basically everyone I spoke german to failed to understand me in some way (the worst being a waiter who misheard me and then made fun of me based on what he thought I said. Bastard).

It was lovely though. We wandered around and drank a bunch of coffee and complained about all the same things, and it was fun. I like people I know. Especially people who are all fish-out-of-watery over here.






* Olivia had seen them before and thought it was horrible, which it is, but I thought that the bears couldn't be sadder this time that they were when I saw them last time (which was in the dead of winter and it was all bleak and freezing and cold), and so I made her see them with me so I could have less grim memories. And my memories from this time are far less grim (the bear pit was all leafy and watery and one bear leapt playfully into the bear swimming pool in a cute belly flop type fashion reminiscent of Knut) but it was still kind of sad. Apparently the bears are soon moving from their grim bear pit to a far more cheerful sounding bear park, though, so that's nice.

** Starbucks, my god. I thought she was joking at first,but apparently not. The couches were nice though, and I feel like we got our (overpriced coffee) money's worth by staying there chatting for about 8 years.

Whingy Absenteeism

As it turns out I am likely to be hopeless at blogposting for the next little while while I get back into the swing of having actual things to do for which I have to be punctual and presentable and bring at least some of my brain. By the time I have coped with the stress of these *&^$#ing german lessons and done all my homework and finished with all the commuting and complaining and generic housework (which I am forcing Reto to be far more involved in lately, a plan which I think is coming along quite nicely. Today when I got home the flat was practically sparkling. This could just be because he is fed up with all the studying too and is desperate for an alternative, but that's a gift horse I'm not even going to glance sideways at so we'd best stop discussing it right now), I don't have much enthusiasm left for looking at the computer even more.

Plus of course I am too much of a social butterfly this week to spare the time. It seems I am in a relentless whirl of tripping across the country to visit my fellow countrymen(women)*, across the canton to visit people I hardly know and to eat delicious Indian food**, across the town to watch grown men wearing scratchy nappies and fight over a cow***, and across the room to go to sleep****.






* Olivia in Bern tomorrow! Yay!
** Badenfahrt again on Saturday, with other people and more food
*** SchwingFest on Sunday, with my shiny new mock-Swiss (ie. they live here but they're not) friends
**** Self explanatory. Zzz

Things I Don't Like

I don't like learning german in german.

Because I have been entirely hopeless during the year to date, I am back in german classes, and it's reminded me why I really wish I had been a more diligent student back in my Sydney german-learning days. In Sydney I had the luxury of english-speaking classmates and english-speaking teachers who could and would explain things in english. Hence I never had to learn german grammar in german. Here, though, we can be talking about stuff I already know, but I have no idea what's going on because I don't know how to say "past imperfect" (or whatever) in german. It's relentlessly frustrating.

On a lighter note, I had a dream the other night in which I was at a pub with one of my former classmates from german and Bob Hawke, the well-known former PM. As it turns out (according to my subconscious, anyway), Bob is really quite fun to have a beer or two with. He even laughed along good-spiritedly when Vlad made some crack about Australian children living in poverty. Ah, Bob.

Crikey

A woman says "fair dinkum" on a plane and causes a minor brouhaha (it seems there must be a bit more to it than that, but that's all the smh.com.au is giving me).

Reto is carrying on the Nevil Shute-athon that has swept our flat lately by reading On The Beach (which I got for him for his birthday. Being a cheapskate I tried first to find it in the local second hand bookshop but to no avail, and then to my surprise I found it at the english-language Orell Füssli (bookshop) in Zürich, and to my further surprise it only cost 13.80. Which seems cheap to me. So then I was looking around at the price of other things, and I found Shantaram (and by the way did you know it's being made into a movie starring the hot-or-not Johnny Depp?) for about 20 francs, as compared to the Dymocks price of $35. Hmm) and he (Reto, not Johnny Depp, in case all that parenthetical stuff was too long and distracting) occasionally asks me to translate things from Strine to normal english for him. Yesterday he asked me what "dinkum" means, which I suppose is possibly confusing (not having "fair" attached to it), but as it turns out he didn't really know about "fair dinkum" either.

Sadly now it is probably not long until he incorporates it into everyday language. He has started saying "fair cow" at least a few times a day. Which is funny, because he is hopelessly bad at using german slang (apparently).

Zzz

Reto and I went and saw Two Days In Paris at the movies last night (nothing to do with Paris Hilton, before you ask). I was vaguely hesitant because it is partly in english and partly in french, and I was concerned that I would have to try to understand the french bits by reading the german subtitles, which frankly is not ideal. And so I stumbled through the first 20 minutes or so, furiously occupied with reading the german subtitles whenever they spoke in french (which was a goodly proportion of the time, really) and not necessarily knowing what was going on anyway. It was only after I had sort of given up on it (because it all just involved too much thinking) that I realised the french bits were also being subtitled into english! Yay! Which was annoying because I had already missed lots of stuff, but obviously a good thing in general.

As it turned out it wasn't really that enjoyable a movie anyway. Neither of the main characters were particularly likeable, and they were a bit much into navel-gazing and talking at great length about nothing. I'm starting to think I have become far too critical of movies lately.

Ich Verstehe Sie Nicht

Being a bit of a non-speaker is quite handy at times

Today I was accosted by some sort of Proselytising Christian. I was out for my morning walk when I saw a man walking towards me. He was dressed in a dorky sort of fashion, with brown pants, an apricot coloured shirt and a red tie that was far shorter than a tie should be. I think it might have been the tie that gave him away, because I started thinking about door-to-door religious salesmen, and all those mormons who you see travelling in packs with their name tags and their short sleeved shirts (possibly they don't always wear short sleeved shirts. Possibly this is just something they do in the temperate climes of Sydney. I think the short tie made me think of short sleeved shirts, though, and that led easily enough to being pestered about my religious beliefs or lack thereof). Anyway, as we got closer to each other he started trying to catch my eye. I thought he might just want to ask directions or something, so I slowed down and the next thing I knew he was forcing some aging magazine (it looked as though it might have been printed in the 70s) with a picture of a mid-crucifixion Jesus on it at me. "I don't speak much german" I said, and he asked what language I do speak. English, I told him, and he said "aaah, english". I thought for a worrying moment tht he might also have a sales pitch in english, but happily no, he told me he doesn't speak english and off we all went.

As it turns out, this is a really convenient excuse every time someone wants to pester you to find a new god, get a new phone provider, join greenpeace, whatever. Who would have thought that having the language skills of a small child would be a good thing?

Maybe I'll Just Grow It Instead

I really need a haircut. Happily, Aarau is the town for this, because with a population of something like 15 000, it has a grand total of 52 (!) hairdressing salons! So really the only thing standing in my way is how to say "yeah, just kind of shorter and less messy, but not too short, and really low maintenance so I don't have to do anything much to it, and ... oh, whatever" in german.