The Bluestocking: To the moon and back gerbil style.

[Boiledbeetle]

Previous thread of chat and general madness below

https://www.mumsnet.com/talk/womens_rights/5506124-the-bluestocking-womens-pub-spring-is-sprunging-and-mns-name-generator-can-do-one

Women: from an orderly queue at the bar or take a seat and grab a passing gerbil.

Men: turn left at the end of the road, keep walking until you find the Staunch Ally.

Bar gerbil a full fat coke please and a packet of Scampi Fries please.

Je’d never pense l’influence de Mallorca et la Lanzarote dans le choix des languages foreign. C’est logique.

I can watch ‘Astrid in Paris’ with the English subtitles on, and follow a lot of the French. I can’t follow TV programmes in German, although in theory I only got to O level in both. Why is that?

On y est déja - we're there already, in a parallel existence😄
Even the gerbils - les gerbilles - are here enjoying une bière with us - santé!

La Bas-Bleu.

Aussi une femme intellectuelle ou littéraire, comme en Anglais.

Gute frage !! Ich bin quel ich bin

We started French in S1 at high school. That was '72. If selected, we were given the choice between Latin and German. I took Latin. In S3 I was able to take Russian but both teachers left when we were part way through S4, so we completed the course and then took our 'O' Grade.

Our school was a Senior High School, but in the process of being transformed into a comprehensive. Some of us were there from S1; others were selected from the three local junior highs and moved up to the senior high school in S3. It was the same all over Fife, I believe, apart from the two Catholic high schools.

(A handful moved to the private schools in Edinburgh.)

I crashed 'O' Grade German alongside my Highers and then took Russian at uni. Jack of all trades, master of none.

All Fife secondary schools are now comprehensives. German has died a death, as has French for the most part. Spanish is king. There's one school in Fife which is apparently holding the banner aloft for Latin and that's Kirkcaldy High.

I've never worked there, but I'm told that one very enthusiastic teacher is keeping it going.

Most of the Fife high schools now have faculties instead of departments and English, ESOL and MFL are often combined under one Principal Teacher. MFL are dying.

I'm curious as to which Russian primer you used, @AsWithGlad . With us, it was the original Penguin Russian Course, which included the immortal "Unfortunately, my uncle is in hospital and my aunt is in prison."

About the only bit of Latin that I can remember is from the first page of "Ecce Romani": In pictura est puella. Puella est Cornelia.

Les Bas Bleu

Ich bin nicht aus England! Ich bin aus Schottland!

Quelq'un m'a appelée? Je suis une véritable bas-bleu!😁

WAW wrote
*Merci. Je pense que tu as le droit. (Pardonnez moi! VOUS avez le raison!)

Sommes-nous pas les bonnes amies? You’re respectant mon âge avancé?
There’s something in my distant learning about tu tu-ing, which means you can address me as “tu”, but I can’t remember it.

J’adore scotland, mais je naime pas le politic

Oops said le again

J'éspère que les toilettes sont meilleures que ces derrière le pub à Meudon. Elles étaient terribles. Le pong!

Tu a une jambe dans chaque camp. Une bas bleu, une blue stocking.

Tu used be reserved for those you know well vous for respectful distance for seniors and those you dont know well.

I studied French from the age of 10, second year of middle school. At high school they gave us a Swedish test to see how competent we were in languages and because I had learned French I was allocated French. My younger brother by a year was allocated Spanish.

My older brother also studied Russian so I know zdravstvuy (hello) and spasiba (thank you).

I studied Latin for curiosity but I've forgotten most of it. And I have an undergraduate certificate in French because I took a second year course with the Open University. I scored a 2:1 equivalent but was disappointed because I assumed anyone studying at university level would be fluent. I'm not fluent but I read and generally understand written French. I used to get by in France but I haven't been for so long and I rarely understood spoken French unless it was spoken very slowly.

Moi aussi, aber wie hatte ein problem mit der parking von der caravan und ein Deutscher laughed at the dumkopf Englanders. Er denkte das wir verstehen nicht.

So, ich sagte "Wir sind nicht aus England. Wir sind aus Schottland!"

Tu and vous are a bloody nightmare for non-native speakers😱
There is an age component, it's pretty straightforward that a child is tu to an adult and an adult outside the family etc circle is vous to a child.

But between adults ... nightmare.
It seems like a good idea to be respectful and err on the side of 'vous' but then you can come across as stand-offish, or [as happened to me] people who would happily have used tu to me never did because, as I later found out, I used vous to them at first and they took their lead from me and I was vous for years🙄

Fortunately some people say 'On peut se dire tu' early on, but otherwise, it's tricky in the extreme. Nightmare...

Bonne nuit!

A demain!

@MyrtleLion I studied for a term in Meudon, but I was on a Russian immersion course, so only got to practise a little bit of French when I went into Paris at the weekends.

I can get by in cafés, but that's about it, I'm afraid.

I was fluent in Russian once upon a time, but I'm hopelessly rusty now. I've managed to hold a conversation with Russian speakers in Fife, would you believe - we seem to have quite a few ethnic Russians who have made their way here from the Baltic republics.

It was one of those weird things - I didn't really get a chance to use my Russian again until the end of my teaching career, mainly translating for parental meetings. (I admit that I used to check out the topic of conversation and look up the subject specific vocab beforehand.)

We did a little bit of French in primary (books featuring Jean and his little brother Alain, papa was a douanier in a kepi.). Then afaik we all did it at secondary for the first two years. In the second year the grammar streams did German but our teacher wasn’t very good and I didn’t get on with it so I dropped it and just continued with French to o-level. I don’t think any other languages living or dead were offered..

Eh bien les amies, il est minuit passé, il est temps de me coucher.
Faites de beaux rêves - chateaux, soleil, vin, lavande en fleur, la voiture avec Gosie, les cheveux au vent..

@MarieDeGournay I always err on the side of Vi/Vy in Slavic languages, rather than Ti/Ty. Things seem to be much more laid back in the Balkans these days, but - for example - I have one elderly aunt (even more elderly than I am) who still expects to be addressed as Vi.

I'd be lying if I said that I knew what the situation is in Russia. In the student hostel, we were all Ty, but the lecturers were all Vy...and then there was the business of using forename and patronymics with lecturers. I have no idea how they manage things now.

I do sometimes see Russian shows on Netflix, and my impression is that things are now much less formal.

Bonne nuit. :)

Yes night all

When we living in Hong Kong my dad came home to a note that basically said 'GONE' one evening after a work.

My mum had arranged shippers for the furniture and belongings, booked flights back to England and then done a flit after he'd left for work one morning!

Unfortunately she took the kids with her, we'd have preferred to stay with him!