Les personnes insensibles m’énervent

[beboots]

(I realize that most of the people who watch this journal will have no idea what I am saying, but sometimes I need to let things out in a language other than English. I don’t want to offend anybody.)

Il y a des temps dont j’ai de la difficulté à comprendre les personnes qui parlent mon lange natal. Je suis anglophone, mais parfois… :(

Peut-être c’

Comments

[anyjen]

The linguistic effects of the Norman conquest fascinate me. :)

We studied them briefly in History of the English Language, and it sure clarified a few things for me... now I can cheerfully blame the Normans every time my students complain of English not being written phonetically. XD

(honestly, Spanish spoils us. except for the letter "h", which is mute, and for "b" and "v" and "c", "s" and "z" being pronounced exactly the same way (in Argentinean Spanish. In Spain there's actually differences), we really do write words the same way we speak them. We even have a very consistent way of stressing words in written form, unlike English, where it's basically guesswork for us. I've been studying English for fifteen years now, and I still can't stress words properly in connected speech. ^^U

Argentinean Spanish has a very clear structure for polite speech. Compare:

Voceo: "Má, me compraste el libro que te pedí?"

Usted: "Madre, me compró el libro que le pedí?"

Both mean "Mum/mother, did you buy me the book I asked you for?" but are in different levels of formality. Of course, nowadays you wouldn't speak that formally to your mother (though two geenrations ago we certainly did) unless you were joking. I tend to do that to my dad. It's a private joke between us because I was a singer in his choir and it somehow seemed wrong to adress him as "pá" ("dad") in fron of the other singers and I couldn't bring myself to call him by his name instead, so I went in an extremely opposite direction and started calling him ridiculously formal things like "mi progenitor", or "amado padre" ("progenitor of mine", "beloved father"), and using "usted" all the time. After I left the choir, I somehow never dropped the habit. XD

I should probably mention that when I said it's hard to teach students not to skip the subject, I meant when teaching them English. I forgot to add that part. In Spanish, it's bad form to add the subject every time.

Thanks for the translation! And you're right, I did get it right most of the time!! The finer points of your prose, though, were lost on me... I particularly liked the way you talked about "thinking the English word that is very similar to the French word for a female deer" bit. As a fellow writer and reader who appreciates word choice and saying things in ingenious ways, this made me grin. XD

And I wonder how many female Argentineans you know...? ;D

(But remember I'm more polite and careful about my grammar than your average Argentinean. Don't be too disappointed if you meet others who are not... we Argentineans have an unfortunate reputation - not entirely unfounded - for being rash, boisterous, rude and self-centered, particularly when out of our own country. I guess it's a defence mechanism? :P)

[beboots]

"and started calling him ridiculously formal things like "mi progenitor", or "amado padre"" I am HIGHLY amused. :3

I remember one high school English teacher telling us that for a whole year, she called her parents her "'rental units", which made them sound like cars. ;)

Ah, I see! That bit about subjects make sense. Yeah, in English, you have to spell it out to people. ;)

Yeah, I thought of that pun when I was thinking - what how DO I say the "b" word in French? And I knew that "biche" was a word in French, but it doesn't have insulting connotations and in fact is rather innocent - compare with the description "doe-eyed" in English.

Oh, I just have female Argentineans popping out of the wordwork, everywhere... ;)

Canadians are stereotypically soft-spoken and polite... and on a whole, we ARE more polite than some people, I would personally say (although we have a bad habit of not meaning it when we say "sorry" - it's really just reflex, so is it even polite at all...?), but some people are in for a rude shock when they meet some Canadians for the first time. ;) We can be just as loud and obnoxious as Americans if the mood strikes us.