Vive le Dash

"Close your dog." "Pardon?" "I said, close your dog." I, with the practiced calm of continuous confusion, look around for a dog.  I don't own a dog, but maybe there is one about I could… close.  Alas, can't even find a cat. "I'm sorry, what?" "Your pants." Well, there you have it, my zipper is wide open.  I close it up and thank the nice old man.  Later I will find that he was actually telling me to "close my chain".  That would be the slag here for zipper (chain and dog sound remarkably similar in French).  I'm not sure if that would have really helped, but I looked up the actual French word for zipper and it turns out to be "fermeture à glissière".  That basically means "sliding closure" and would have left me equally baffled.

Cameroon is a bilingual country.  Supposedly.  Rumor is Paul Biya (the president since forever) added that Cameroonians, themselves, are not bilingual when asked about his own lack of English.  They teach some English pretty much everywhere, though it seems to never get beyond the introductive stuff.  I probably shouldn't talk much since I technically have a degree saying I speak Italian and the only thing left of that is a large amount of profanity.  All the same, I have only ever seem to have one conversation in English: "Good morning." "How are you?" "Fine, thank you." You cannot deviate from the script.  If I just say "morning", I've broken the rule and get to watch poor children's minds snap.  That probably says more about their lack of creativity than poor English skills, but it is painful.  (As to creativity, hand any kid crayons and tell them "Draw whatever you want!" and they ...

Bienvenue à le première post qui est complètement en français!  Vraiment je pense que ça sera le dernière post comme ça aussi, mais qui sais ?  J’ai pensé que ça serais une bonne idée d’essayer à écrire en français ; je ne pratique jamais en fait.    D’abord, un grand « désolé » est en ordre, parce que mon français est un peu différent de tout le type qui existe déjà.  Mon français vient du français camerounais, mais c’est un français qui change beaucoup de place à place.  Et j’ai déjà habité partout.  Il y a une différence en générale comment on parle ici.  Par exemple, on peut dire « on va faire comment ? », mais en France on dit « qu’est-ce que on va faire ? ».  Un exemple semple, mais évident.  Aussi évident, quand je parle le français, je traduis vraiment d’anglais.  Donc ma grammaire est merde et mes phrases sont… aussi merde pour manque de un mot meilleure.  Ça, c’est un ...

The Boss, Tony, posted an interesting link about language the other day.  It was really about defining someone's age and it was something that hadn't crossed my mind.  You should check it out.  I'll wait. Also, he's just a really good writer and makes a hilarious joke about "et cetera": http://tonythev.tumblr.com/post/33042231075/linguistics-lessons It struck me, because it is the same in French.  You "have" an age or number of years as opposed to "being" a certain age.  I am twenty-six (for at least a couple more weeks), but really I'm about to complete my twenty-seventh year.  I knocked off and have been toting around more than twenty-six years with every passing day of the last year.  The Italians do it the same way.  I kinda like that system.  I'll be saying "I have twenty-seven years" when I get back.  Well, by then I'll have finished twenty-eight of them... In Fulfulde, in case you were wondering, they say...