Luck, tour de world and festivals

Random conversation today. Though I think this conversation started with the subject of my company, then we change it to "pregnancy" and just before this thing below - mobile phones.

<cloudi> you know what
<cloudi> I checked Tae's profile
<cloudi> for fun
<cloudi> and I was reading some entries for fun
<cloudi> and gosh
<cloudi> I understand those! O_O
<kubuś> that's terrible :D
<cloudi> no shit! :3
<kubuś> chill
<kubuś> soon it will turn out that I'm parler-ing French better than English
<kubuś> and you're hablar-ing Spanish better than inglés
<cloudi> unfortunately no, my dear watson
<cloudi> my English is still better than Spanish
<cloudi> yet!
<kubuś> just for now! :D
<cloudi> methinks that Spanish is getting closer to my Norwegian XD
<kubuś> oh get your self some friends from Norge and not only from the land of miners and earthquakes
<cloudi> chill
<cloudi> when I will get to the stage
<cloudi> where I'm speaking with people from there who don't understand English
<cloudi> then we will start worrying ;]
<kubuś> :D
<cloudi> but hell...
<cloudi> with my luck
<cloudi> I will land some day in Chile
<kubuś> permanently!
<kubuś> :D
<cloudi> and there's gonna be an earthquake
<kubuś> 9,5 :D
<cloudi> I tell you!
<kubuś> no problem, I will go for a rescue then!
<cloudi> with my luck?
<kubuś> unless there's gonna be Open'er*
<cloudi> aww :3
<kubuś> or Coke*
<cloudi> sure
<kubuś> or Selector*
<kubuś> :D
<cloudi> there are priorities
<kubuś> yup.

I will never have normal friends.

*If you ever thought you knew definition of "fanaticism," you probably never heard Kubuś speaking about Alter Art's festivals.

La la la la

I was supposed to write about some nice Norwegian ska concert I have been to. Trying to be smart and witty I wanted to put lyrics from one of the Scandinavian anthems. And I ended watching those.

You know what... I know flags that are prettier than Polish. Countries who have more magnificent history than we do. But we fracking beat everyone when it comes to anthems.

Encantada!

I like learning languages. It's useful, fun, looks nice in CV, but most of all - you don't have to watch films with subtitles. My newest goal is to know Spanish, one of the reasons being those few Chileans spamming my twitter or facebook. And I don't like not understanding things that pop up in my face.

I'm a lazy person and since I lately had to do an audiobook advert, I tried this form of learning. My first victim is Pimsleur course which I got from my friend.

Europe - I love you so very much!

I fall in love with this place more and more with every single day. Each country is weird (some even very much), crazy and charming in its own way.

And I just can't stop smiling when I see this:



Ukraine in 5:05!

And check this out! This girl makes the best comics I've ever seen.

Kids, you should learn foreign languages

This totally made my day. Today and yesterday in fact.

I was asked to write birthday wishes in Norwegian. I did something simple ("Happy birthday! I wish you everything what you can dream of and lots of more. Have a f**king good day."), gave it to my friend so she could forward it to the b-day man. Later my friend called him and delivered wishes again. The guy was totally shocked that she wrote the first ones in Norwegian. Knowing my friend's knowledge of his mother tongue he suspected his wife to be the collaborator.

"No, she didn't help me."
"Then how? What dictionary or translator you used?"
"None. I asked someone to write it for me."
"And there are Norwegian letters in it too!"
"Magic of copy-paste."
"Then tell her she knows Norwegian really good."

Believe me, this is a huge morale boost (seriously). After 2 years of learning this language I'm good enough to write 3 simple sentences and I know how to curse (yet understanding that article about swearing in Norwegian was a real pain)!

However the best part of the story happened today. Apparently sister of that Norwegian saw those wishes as those were posted on Facebook. As soon as she did, with a big "wtf" she called him asking if my friend started to learn their language. Because you see... my friend is known for being able to repeat one word in Norwegian and from what I've heard she's very reluctant to learn more ;)

And I must say - it's nice to cause a small stir like that :)

Fàilte gu Alba - part 1

Over a month ago I had the pleasure of visiting UK again in the last 4 months. This time it was Scoooootland!

Saturday, 14th of November

I had to wake up at 4AM. Jesus... I'm not sure if anyone is up at this hour. Apart from kids on PCP who are coming back from the clubs. As I mentioned few times I'm a lucky bastard who is loved by her friends enough to ask (and receive) a lift to the airport at such time of day.

Because people speak not only in English

Learning foreign languages is kind of fun. For those who of course have right amount of masochism flowing in their veins, to remember tons of grammar rules, vocabulary or punctuation. So let's start from the end. Punctuation. A pain in the... even in my mother tongue. But when I had my small encounter with Spanish and Norwegian, I understood that it isn't that bad here and other nations are more creative.

So let's start with Spanish:

—¡Qué tiempos, Señor! —refunfuñó el corregidor—. ¡Qué asquerosos tiempos!
Hace sólo veinte años, ¿a quién se le iba a ocurrir, ni siquiera borracho, que pudiera
haber tales profesiones? ¡Brujos! ¡Trashumantes cazadores de basiliscos! ¡Asesinos
ambulantes de dragones y utopes! ¿Geralt? ¿En tu gremio se os permite beber?

El último deseo, La saga de Geralt de Rivia
Andrzej Sapkowski

As you can see above Spanish people are very expressive. They have to use a lot of exclamation, question marks. And as a bow (of respect) towards Spanish-speaking countries that are situated in South America they also turn those upside down. What else you can see are dashes above some letters. They are not different from those without those tiny thingies ó is still o and é is e (in my tongue o and ó are not read in the same way; ó should be pronounced in the same way as u), you just have to accent them.

But my favourite thing are sentences like:

"Sí, ¿cómo lo sabes?, ¿tú eres español?"

4 question marks and it is still one sentence.

So why they complicate their lives so much? Because they were lazy in the beginning and they haven't thought about such simple thing as inversion when creating questions or adding pronouns in the begining of those. So "Eres español." (you are Spanish) is written in the same way as "¿Eres español?" (are you Spanish?).

Another official reason is that it's to show where sentences are divided, because it's not obvious where the question starts. Again calling the example for above: "¿Cómo lo sabes?, ¿tú eres español?" (How do you know? Are you Spanish?). Apparently the reader could get lost and not know that question about that knowledge is a different one from the question about nationality. Understandable... I also don't give much credit to my interlocutors.

Summing up. Spanish were not only lazy, but are also hasty (with that lovely Spanish r sounding like engine of a little bike; hey, I really like that sound) and think it's better to squeeze as much information in one sentence as possible.

Believe me, it's not :p

However Spanish is nothing when it comes to how in Norwegian dialogues are written. At first I thought I would have to cheat a little bit here, because I was afraid that the author of that short novel we read during our Norwegian classes was creative (and oblivious of the grammar rules). Yet, I checked Agatha Christie's book and it turns out that it is the way Norwegians write. But to the point.

Evelyn setter seg bak skrivebordet. Hun tar opp en sigarett.
- Er det i orden? spør hun og ser på Vikan.
Han har lys til å svare nei, men han nikker. Han likker ikke røyk.
- Mitt forhold til Karl, begynner Evelyn etter at hun har tent sigaretten.
- Ja, ditt forhold til Karl, gjentar Vikan og tar fram notatblokka.

Ny i Norge
Gölin Kaurin Nilsen

As Spanish use dash to "open" dialogue they also do the same to separate spoken text from descriptions like "he said", "she added". Norwegian think that it's more intuitive to do so with a coma. It may work with a question, it may work with simple sentence, but I kind of see an epic fail with "Ja, ditt forhold til Karl, gjentar Vikan og tar fram notatblokka" (Yes, your relationship with Karl - repeats Vikan and takes out a notepad). Before I found out it's the way it works I had few problems with understanding who says and does what.

Of course Norwegians couldn't live without playing tricks with oblivious foreigner, who try to read aloud in their mother tounge. If you think that restaurant (same in English and Norwegian) is read simply as that - you're wrong. It should be "restaurang" with small French accent. Sometimes you also have to forget that there is a letter in a word. Forskjellige (different) should be pronounced as "forsheliye". While g is mostly forgotten to be said, nd changes into double n.

Except for this I can't really cavil. Norwegian is lovely and pretty easy language.

Last, but not least - English (speakers, who laugh they always have to be different). Whole world uses kilograms, meters and they have to stick with yards and pounds. So why it should be different in matters of language?

"Leto said something to disturb you," Ghanima said.
Jessica found herself shocked at the necessity to suppress anger. "Yes... he did."
"You don't like the fact that he knows our father as our mother knew him, and knows our mother as our father knew her," Ghanima said. "You don't like what that implies - what we may know about you."

Children of Dune
Frank Herbert

First thing noticed? There are no dashes for dialogues, only quotation marks. This gives opportunity to put part of dialogue (not a quote, which would be totally understandable) in almost any part of a longer paragraph.

Second thing is placement of comas and dots within quotes. Normal people put those outside. Let me compare it to boxes. First we have big pink box, inside of which we have slightly smaller blue and green. Let's say that the pink is a sentence, as a whole, while green and blue are parts of it (that within the quote and description for it). Coma is something that separates those two within a sentence. I would say it's a space in the pink box. Ending dot is cover of the biggest box. So why mix two different things and try to put pink cover onto smaller green box, right?

I could also make some quips about different spellings or vocabulary, depending near which ocean one is in a English speaking country, but then again... Spanish also developed many versions depending in which part of the world it settled. Why they can't see how easy it is in Europe? Every country has its own language. Almost every. Simple and economic ;)