Glad it’s you and not me, although I do envy you the experience of being in Europe, and also of being ABLE to understand ANY of what you are hearing!

BTW…I just got this….

“My favorite talked about some singer who was coming on the show to perform favorite songs from his musical bum.

(Move the space a couple of characters to the left.)”

Awesome. :)

d

That’s interesting about French speakers. I find it’s a little harder for me to follow a French Canadian person speaking English, but I just put it down to not having had enough practice. I feel like I’m trying to dance but whenever I find the beat, it changes.

Dave

Fernando, by the way, is terrific. In addition to Spanish, he speaks fluent English, French, and German. This is a man who can understand the national languages in roughly 2/3rds of the world, if not more.

He also taught me to understand English when spoken with a Spanish accent. I went back to Latina (the ugliest town in Italy, in my opinion) in October, and we had a Spanish instructor for three hours. I was well into the second hour before I realized that I was one of the few people in the class who understood him. He was perfectly clear to me–probably because his accent wasn’t quite as pronounced as Fernando’s–but people all around me were balancing their checkbooks, throwing up their hands in supplication, and dozing off. It is a learned skill, understanding Spanish.

On the other hand, I think you have to be born French to understand English spoken by most Frenchmen. I have a couple of French friends who speak very good and very clear English, but they are the exception that prove the rule. We had a briefing, an important one, yesterday about a probable threat in certain areas, and the briefing was delivered by a Frenchman. It was indecipherable.

And I understand more French than I do of any other foreign language, too. That’s the weird part. (OK…my Turkish abilities are coming along, even when I don’t study.)

d

See, that’s the problem with literacy - just because you can read doesn’t mean you can pronounce it correctly. Even if you know the standard pronunciation rules for the language in question, chances are the natives don’t. (Cities in Ohio: Bellefontaine ("bellfountain") and Chauncey ("chancy").

You really got me with the drums reference. At first I thought you were asking to use drums as backup communications because obviously the tin cans and string weren’t working. Then I thought of the joke about how it’s very bad when the drums in the jungle stop. (Because that’s when the bass solo starts.) Then I linked it to Fernando.

Very well done, my friend.

Dave

I have trouble with telephones, as I believe I’ve rambled about before, but multiply the problem with grainy connections and an unpredictable blend of accents, and you start getting a feel for the stress that was my daily existence. In one particular call, my officemate in Izmir, of all people, was trying to explain the status of a certain project to me. It had to do with one of our bases in Italy, I think. He said something about how the MOD (Ministry of Defense–I had that one) was waiting for certification so the seerkweet could then be accredited, or something along those lines. He went on, but my brain was stuck on seerkweet. I kept trying to put it in context, you know. About the third time he used the word, I said, “Fernando. Can you hear the drums?”

Kidding. I said, “Fernando, wait wait wait wait.” When he wound down, I said, “We’re waiting for the certification for the what?”

HIM: The seerkweet.

ME: The what?!

HIM, louder and slower: Seer-KWEET.

ME: “What’s a seerkweet?

HIM: You know, the, the seerkweet. The line connecting the bases.

ME: Oh. CIRCUIT.

HIM: The what?

d

Diana,

Not that I recall.

I know what you mean about the Scottish accent. I’m the same way for some Irish variants. I need to mind my Ps and Qs when I’m working with people in our Belfast office. If one of the ladies start talking I might miss what they’re actually saying. (Usually it’s something like “We can’t finish until Dave fixes that bug in the binary protocol driver.")

Dave

My officemate is Spanish.

I told y’all about the sear-kweet, right?

It was a turning point.

d