Thursday, October 22, 2009

How Many Languages Can I Butcher in One Sentence?

I know enough Nepali to be able to construct simple sentences, but not enough to have a vocabulary that enables me to always communicate precisely what I want to say. When this happens, my brain reaches for the only non-English word it can think of. This is usually a Romanian word (although German occasionally pops up, too). So these days it's not uncommon for me to throw together Nepali, English and Romanian into a single sentence. While this is likely entertaining for my instructors, I don't think it will impress the testers when the time comes to evaluate my progress.

It reminds me of a time when I was traveling through Europe a couple years ago. The man at the airport check-in counter asked me a simple question to which I responded "Da, I mean yes, I mean ja, I mean si, I mean... where am I?" It's a very cosmopolitan life I lead.

4 comments:

Lee said...

I like a girl who can say yes at least four ways...

Heather said...

Lee, that does not surprise me at all.

Mom said...

This is a very disturbing conversation.

IguanaTom said...

While in France, I was voted "Most likely to reply in Spanish." I had just returned from LaPaz and my brain pretty much has either English and Other as my language options.