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.

Yes, Greek I can at least somewhat transliterate. Chi and Rho get you some of the way even without the stem background of course.

Neither DH nor I ever had to deal with chemistry in any other language than English in our long careers in the industry. DH travelled a lot more than me to non-anglophone countries; he said they’d appreciate his attempts at greeting and suchlike and then switch to English.

He had a funny experience in Japan when he tried to learn a few social niceties by copying. The problem was, the examples were often from receptionists who were women and so he was using women’s words - cue polite giggling. He was also issued with cards with things like where the heck he was trying to get to by train written in English and Japanese to show to porters and taxi drivers - presented to him smilingly with the phrase “Paddington Bear!”

I was brought up bilingual, English and Irish [Gaelic], did French and Spanish to A-level equivalent, was much better at Spanish but then I went to French and that became my 3rd fluent language. My Spanish just faded away, unfortunately.

I learnt the Cyrillic and Greek alphabets just for the heck of it it, to be able to pronounce what looked like 'CCCP', and like AsWith I like the challenge of making out words in Russian when they appear on the telly. When I lived in London, I used to test my Greek by reading the Greek Cypriot shop signs along Green Lane in Haringey.

I'm interested in minority languages, why they died out and why they cling to survival, what they mean to people politically and emotionally etc.

And I love dialects and accents - why? just why??? 😃

I was going to write 'Sorry Ms Beetle, you missed the deadline by 14 minutes, that means all the data on your er...spreadsheet has been reset to zero, and you have to start all over from the beginning'

Then I read your post about being unexpectedly swept up in HK and set down in England as a child and I thought better of it 😕

Computer now says you're doing great, and sure lookit, what's14 minutes entre amies

becomes animated

My Bosnian/Croatian/Montenegrin/Serbian is abysmal, but I actually know how to say 'time machine', thanks to a Serbian café and Croatian subtitles at Netflix.

Wait for it...

Vremeplov.

Vreme is "time".

Plov is "boat".

Although "time" in Croatian is vrijeme. I have no idea why they're using ekavian for "time machine".

The café sold cream cakes. I can't remember what film I was watching.

runs out door for pensiones' keep fit

At our local small state grammar school in Lancashire in the late 50s & early 60s, we all started French in Yr 7 and the top set started Latin in Yr 8. No Russian or Spanish on offer, but German was available in Yr 10 for those who were planning to take O-Level maths at the end of that year and then drop it, after which we would have a very intensive year of German to bring us up to O-Level standard. That suited me down to the ground and I ended up doing French, German and Latin for A-Level and German with subsidiary French for my degree. I still love languages, hence the Italian learning as I approach my 80s. 😁

I think I’ve got enough Norwegian from my Duolingo crash course to be able to read basic signs & be polite, especially on the topics of cats, eggs, cheese & bananas. It hasn’t got round to booking into hotels yet, & of course there’s always the minor issue of understanding the replies.

Thank god you gave the computer a kick, I'm NOT resetting to zero!

I'll admit that decision by my mother changed the entire trajectory of my life. And was a massive shock to the system.

I literally overnight went from a lovely home with modern amenities, gorgeous view of Hong Kong Harbour, lovely weather, lovely food and a nanny to cold wet foggy England living in a house with an outside toilet a tub bath in front of the living fire never any food in the house and having to carry a candle up the stairs at night as the electrics were knackered.

Unspeakably awful for a child to endure and survive that💙

Bloody hell, Beetle.

@ChristmasStars wrote Alternatively tu peut me tutoyer which is a great verb, I think

Yes! That’s the word I couldn’t remember. Tutoyer!

I'm feeling thick as mince here this morning! A level French nearly 40 years ago, fairly fluent as a jeune fille au pair in Switzerland for a few months, then rarely used again.

I went to in person classes for Italian because I wanted to learn it properly, & now the pre-holiday crash course refresher works for me too.

I know I’m unlikely to carry on the Norwegian after September though.

My Latin teacher taught me Ancient Greek in lunch hours & I managed a B at GCSE but that’s all long gone now!

@NotAtMyAge wrote At our local small state grammar school in Lancashire in the late 50s & early 60s, we all started French in Yr 7 and the top set started Latin in Yr 8.

My school was in Lancashire, too. I’d think all this language teaching might have been a local initiative, except my school fell under the town council rather than the county council.

I didn’t post it because I think it was just my primary school but we started French there. It was some local project, which I know because it was accompanied by some photos, which were taken at my school. It was all aural, we never saw anything written down.
“Je suis le phantome de la maison. Je suis né en onze cent onze.”
I remember being completely confused my something my I heard as raydeshausay, which I only made sense of years later when it came up again in secondary school.

Anyone like to guess what it was?

Just listening to some random album and a song came on and I thought of you lot

🎵... and if we sell that new John Deere then we'll work this farm with sweat and tears...

Nobody who can take French at A level can be thick as mince. I might also suggest the same for anyone who can vaguely keep up with The Bluestocking conversation.

It’s a shame the latest series of Astrid: Murder in Paris finished being shown on More4 a few weeks ago. I bet if you watched beaucoup de your French would retour.

DH did a similar thing in his gap-not-quite-a-year, too. He worked in a nursery in French-speaking Switzerland. That reminds me, he did Russian O level, too. His school was near London. I wonder where all these Russian speaking teachers came from. Perhaps they were all spies.

Best not mention the convicted murderer, with 2 convictions for raping children, that she moved in to live with us not long after then.

And people wonder why I'm glad she's dead.

I have the usual 10 O levels, 3 A levels, undergrad and postgraduate degrees but none in subjects ever discussed in the Bluey!

You should start a discussion in one of your subjects and watch us look mystified! Or not - we have a varied skillset here. Not just Sports Direct socks...

It's only a discussion if more than one person is interested!

You'll never know until you try, though!

If there's one thing we do well in the Bluey, it's 'interested'! Honestly - has anyone ever brought up a subject, however obscure, without getting a 'Really? tell us more!'

Go on, try us out!😄

I know what your raydeshausay is, but you've prompted me to look up the etymology - rez-de-chausée?? I'm thinking 'level with the road surface' but I don't even know why I'm thinking that.
I'll report back.

Art, singing, weather forecasting....

I vote for Weather forcasting.

It'll be sunny for a bit and then piss it down.

If its already pissing it down, it will be sunny later.