this and that
Fascinating conversation at Lunch today I actually participated in…about native languages versus standard languages. Apparently in Spain there are a lot of languages spoken by very small groups of people in very specific regions…and some of these languages differ from eachother mostly because the speakers of these "languages" say they do. Like they sent delegations to the European Union meetings and they issued official documents in "Catalan" and "Valencia" that differed by a whole three words. The people involved in the conversation where obviously French Teachers, as they were also lamenting the use of certain regionalisms (from Normandy) in their student’s writing, such as "comme même" for "quand même" (even though, still), and confusing "falloir" with "valoir" (cela faut mieux instead of cela vaut mieux, which is weird because falloir is used almost exclusively with "il" and a verb in the infinitive (Il faut danser- it is necessary to dance. Il faut aller à pied- we or one has to go on foot. Il ne faut pas chialer: you/he/she/one shouldn’t blubber) also saying "You would be better to do something" (tu serais mieux de faire qch) instead of "you would do better to do something" (tu ferais mieux de etc.) Apparently they’re concerned about the correctness and standardazation of their writing as well as how these students are going to sound when they apply for jobs. Sounds familiar…I’ve heard this song before…
Got on the bus this afternoon…who should greet me but my friend from the first day? The one who saw me crying and drove me half the rest of the way to school. Apparently he’s Portuguese but has been living in France for twenty years, and has been to Brazil, Mexico City (twice), India, Cuba, and Burma…and who knows where else. And he speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, and a little Italian. He taught me how to count to ten in Portuguese (um does tres quattro sinco seis septe oine nove des, roughly), as well as basic greetings (buon dia, buon tarde, origado (thank you) ) titles (senor and senora, like in Spanish) and days of the week (secundofera, triesefera, quatrofera, quintafera, sesafera, sabado and domingo, I think…very roughly). Portugal isn’t a particularly prosperous country, he tells me, and he makes a lot more money here than he would there. Which makes sense… I remember the R’s maid (don’t think they have one anymore) was Portuguese too.
I just turned on the radio and they’re playing Mary Poppins. Apparently they’re doing a review of American movie musicals. They also played "Old man river," the "Good Morning song" from Singing in the Rain, and "Oh what a beautiful morning." From Oklahoma. They closed with:
Up where the smoke is all billowed and curled
Twixt pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world
Where there’s hardly no day, and hardly no night
And things…half in shadow…and halfway in light
On the rooftops of London…Gaw, what a sight!
Oh, I think we’re back to Opera or Latin or something now… I never know what I’m waking up to in the morning.
Life lessons: A guy who asks just one girl to have a cup of coffee with him rarely has motives that are purely platonic…we need a polite codeword that says "I’m spoken for…" Suggestions?
Got on the bus this afternoon…who should greet me but my friend from the first day? The one who saw me crying and drove me half the rest of the way to school. Apparently he’s Portuguese but has been living in France for twenty years, and has been to Brazil, Mexico City (twice), India, Cuba, and Burma…and who knows where else. And he speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French, and a little Italian. He taught me how to count to ten in Portuguese (um does tres quattro sinco seis septe oine nove des, roughly), as well as basic greetings (buon dia, buon tarde, origado (thank you) ) titles (senor and senora, like in Spanish) and days of the week (secundofera, triesefera, quatrofera, quintafera, sesafera, sabado and domingo, I think…very roughly). Portugal isn’t a particularly prosperous country, he tells me, and he makes a lot more money here than he would there. Which makes sense… I remember the R’s maid (don’t think they have one anymore) was Portuguese too.
I just turned on the radio and they’re playing Mary Poppins. Apparently they’re doing a review of American movie musicals. They also played "Old man river," the "Good Morning song" from Singing in the Rain, and "Oh what a beautiful morning." From Oklahoma. They closed with:
Up where the smoke is all billowed and curled
Twixt pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world
Where there’s hardly no day, and hardly no night
And things…half in shadow…and halfway in light
On the rooftops of London…Gaw, what a sight!
Oh, I think we’re back to Opera or Latin or something now… I never know what I’m waking up to in the morning.
Life lessons: A guy who asks just one girl to have a cup of coffee with him rarely has motives that are purely platonic…we need a polite codeword that says "I’m spoken for…" Suggestions?
posted by Etrangère | 3:08 PM
1 Comments:
I think we can do an entire linguistic study on your spelling of Portuguese alone. You should try googling the languages of Spain to get an idea of their variation. Spain's situation is much like France's before the successful imposition of the Ile-de-France dialect on the rest of the country, which resulted in France's bleached cultural homogeny of today. Each linguistic region represents a partiuclar culure which has unsuccessfully sought independence (think Portugal) for centuries. The idea of speaking properly is the byproduct of the systematic subjugation of regional social and linguistic cultures (google Occitan), something that we as English speakers can relate to when we think of how many languages were once spoken in the British Isles. It's a bit more than the American preoccupation with standard and non-standard forms of English which are almost purely classist and, at worst, racist. As for the rest, /f/alloir and /v/alloir share the same area of artiucation, so could this be part of the confusion of the words? Did you say this was a Norman tendency? Maybe it has something to do with the Germanic roots in the region. How's France by the way?
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