h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Ah, I see you're back on form, B.

Bea said:

'we can even get lemon pepper now here in UK'

Really where?

While I would swear that Dutch and German are mutually intelligible, I was once caught in the middle of a discussion between my German friends and the Dutch lady who ran the pension we were staying at. Using an American as an interpreter is a desperate measure. (They made me talk to the garage guy in Luxembourg, too.)

Once, in Antwerp, I was registering at a pension near the train station. The co-owner happened by, saw my passport, and chided his partner for (rudely, he thought) speaking Flemish to me. The partner replied, 'But he speaks Flemish.'

The other guy looked at me as if I'd come from the zoo next door.

'Why>' he demanded. I shrugged apologetically.

Swedish. English. Very little German. French only to survive, and can't carry a conversation. Can read Dutch. Slowly. A handful of words in Japanese. Understand Danish, and can pretend-speak enough to make myself understand. Understand Norwegian. Maybe five words in Finnish, learned from shampoo bottles and food packaging (Hampurilais Kastike, Ei saa päite, Hammaslanka, Makkara, and such nonsense)

Dhimitri- what is a pension? I thought it was a thing you go from the government when you retired.

If you drink the local booze and speak Low German you can communicate fairly well with people in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg (genever, corenwijn, quetsch etc.)

Benjamin, a pension in some countries is a bed & breakfast, or small hotel.

Oh, hey, Elektra found this reason to be polyglot, from an article called 'Why I’ve Learned Many Languages' by Aravind Adiga:

'A friend tells me of the time he was on holiday in Nainital, a lake city in India’s north. He was about to take a walk around the lake when an article in a Hindi newspaper reported that a man-eating leopard was on the loose. The English dailies had not reported this. He now buys the Hindi paper whenever he visits Nainital. '

unless people start putting stuff in Latin and Ancient Greek, then i can't count as polyglot

I used to joke that I could effectively "make up" Italian - I used the French word, added an "o" at the end and waved my hands around a lot.

I did hire a villa in Tuscany one year, from a farmer who spoke neither English nor French, so my theory was well tested! My children still laugh at me trying to explain that the heating wasn't working, which went something like:

"Del agua no fonctionare il radiatori"

especially when they found out that "radiatori" means "wheels"

Z, Lemon Pepper, made by Schwartz, must've been either Tesco or Sainsburys. I know, I was thrilled to bits! Can get you some if they dont have it in Embra.

My italian stretches to names of food and don't worry, which means they don't have to worry about quality of food

Am I the only one who laughs childishly at the name of that producer, Mr Broccoli?

I can talk Rubbish. Does that count?

Rubbish is great!

We Germans are used to people having weird, food related names.

'Weird, food-related names...'

I can speak Ulster-Scots.....

I can speak Ulster-Deutsch. It's usually greeted by Germans with a glazed expression and a response in English.

Romanian is similar, Bea, but you ad "ul" to the end of nouns and "escu" to the end of people's names

Oh, maybe the flight hostess (her name was Kerry) spoke Ulster Deutsch then? I didn't understand her, but they claimed she spoke German.

I can understand a bit of romanic languages, those derived from Latin.

I did French at school, but it has evaporated almost completely. However I keep the pronunciation. I´m good at imitating sounds (and people too)
I love to sing in (fake) German, Japanesse... any language really. That happens to me since I was a child. It´s all gibberish but I love it.

and... I try to not kick too much the English language with my Latinizations or made-ups of words.

Speaking of Ulster German...

A fella I knew when I was studying in Bonn came from Scotland. We'd make him speak German because we couldn't understand his English.

One day, a delegation came to see me from the local Baptist church (back behind the museum with the Neanderthal skull in). They were worried, they said, about Jimmy's family set-up. They wanted to 'pray intelligently' about this problem. Could I enlighten them as to why the young man had more than one mother?

Er, no. He just pronounced 'Mutter' with an umlaut on...think Scots, think German plurals...

I reassured them that polygamy was not being practiced among Glaswegian Baptists, as far as I knew...