Ich habe hier ja großartig angekündigt, fleißig Französisch zu reden. Das hat natürlich bisher nicht wirklich stattgefunden. Imagine you have a horrible accent in French, but you try anyway… in Montréal you will not be given a chance. The person will switch into English (which is still better than yours) because they are Montréalers and they don’t even notice switching back and forth between English and French/Québecois. Or, the person notices your struggle but doesn’t give a s**t and releases a tirade that contains clicks and smacks you never thought existed outside the central African jungle. So, yeah, so far its “English, please” for me here, mostly. But maybe in the new year… THAT would be a resolution, for once. (By the way: If you’re not bilingual (or francophone) your chances of getting the job you want are incomparably worse here)
I surprisingly often speak Deutsch. There are still an astonishing number of people that want to learn this strange language (even if they don’t know exactly were or if anybody is still speaking it). So, I order my sandwich in Deutsch at the place where I usually have lunch, I practice Kendo with a German speaker, I test friends on “Vokabeln 2″…
I also particularly noticed my “Germaness” in my latest History class, when we watched testimonies of people involved in the Holocaust (is there any more neutral way to express it?). In the videos they of course spoke German, and I was the only one in the room who could understand them. That was also when I noticed, that people in North America don’t say “Nazis” when they talk about the people involved in the Holocaust, they say “Germans”. Yup, it’s the same. You see here, how the past is treated differently (and I’m not saying that drawing a straight dividing line between “the Nazis” and “us” is in any way more justified).
I’ll end on this rather stern note.
Passt auf euch auf,
Yannick
P.S.: Antigone nervt hier mittlerweile jeden und wird wahrscheinlich ausgesetzt. (Ich will ja nichts sagen, aber ich hab’s ja gesagt!)
2 Kommentare
November 17, 2007 um 3:25 pm
Finally! Sweet, uncomplicated English! What is this, the best day of my life??
I say Germans instead of Nazis. Is that bad? It’s kind of interchangable in that context. But not now. When you’re talking about Germans today you think socks+sandals.
November 19, 2007 um 2:39 pm
Of course re: Germans/Nazis you can never be sure as to who you’re talking to these days, can you? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlmGknvr_Pg