Rooskee Yazeek

Fio will admit that she screamed "Dummkopf!" at Stephen Colbert last night when he mispronounced the Russian word for "Thank you." She loves her languages, especially Russian with its wonderful "zh's" and "kv's" and "rrrrr's." She hasn't retained very much of it, and she could never have carried on a conversation in it, even in her third year, because translation of a written text was the teaching emphasis back then. Maybe a fourth year would have helped, but the Linguistics Department at UT required two semesters of a non-Indo-European language, which meant Fio had to drop Russian and take up Telegu. Fio grew to love Telegu too, especially because, like with the rooskyy yazeek, she had to learn a new and different script. But again, she has lost most of the language. If you don't use it, you lose it.

And, by the way, "dummkopf" is German (Deutsch), which Fiorella had one glorious semester of.

Co-mingling

Bon jour, mia bella! Como esta usted sevodna? Neenu teluguloo maaTlaaDagalaru. Koennen Sie diese Sprache sprechen? Zdai chen!

Ave atque vale,
Fio, who's messing with you

Computer Scammers

When someone supposedly named "George" or "Eddie" calls and is kind enough to want to fix Fio's computer if she will just turn the controls over to him, she is very wary--with two semester of Hindi and three years of Telegu under her belt, Fiorella knows an Indian accent when she hears one.

"Does your mother know what you are doing?" she has been known to ask.  Other times she has been mean enough to inquire which computer her caller is referring to, an inquiry which results in a phone being slammed down in her ear.  Yesterday, "William" started out by saying her computer was doing fine, but . . . .  The second Fio heard the "b" start to form, she shouted an appreciative Thanks! into the phone and clicked off.

Feel free to use any or all of the above when Bangalore calls.

Leaking Languages

Fiorella awoke with words and phrases popping out of her mouth--words and phrases from languages she studied many years ago, languages she thought had totally fled her brain.  She's been doing that a lot lately, spouting Russian, German, Telugu, Latin, even French, Spanish, and Italian, which she had somehow managed to maneuver through on her own, plus her bits and pieces of Mandarin and an exclamation in Hindi.

It figures.  Remember the four cornerstones of Fio's personal world are music, art, literature, and . . . . languages.

Now to check around Georgetown and see if anyone is running a Russian review class.  Yeah, fat chance.

Multi-Lingual Greetings

Keefik! Hola! Ciao! Chao! Guten Morgen! Preevyet! Ave! Comesta! Nee hau! NuhmuhskaaruhmuhnDee! Nuhmustey. Bon jour! 

Arabic, Spanish, Italian, Vietnamese, German, Russian, Latin, Fillipino, Mandarin, Telugu, Hindi, and French.

As Fiorella has often said, she knows just enough in far too many languages to get her in trouble anywhere she goes. Sigh--if only she knew more.

Telugu, Russian, and Mandarin

Are you ready for the remnants of Fiorella's linguistic erudition?  Native writers, look away, look away, because Fio has probably butchered the scripts.  Translation:  her handwriting used to be more regular and less labored in both Telugu and Russian.

She did have to consult sources to be sure she was correct, which made her wilt, but she quickly revived when she realized the more she worked with the languages, the more she was remembering about them.  In heaven, she will speak in tongues.

In case you're wondering, the Telugu word is the standard greeting and is pronounced nuh-muh-ska-ruh-muh-n-Di.  The "anDi" is a politeness form, and the upper-case D means it is hard.

The Russian entry translates as "Do you speak Russian?" or, as Mrs. Scarjinsky would have said  , "Whether or not do you speak Russian?"  (The operative clue is "li".)

The Mandarin is as it is, but Lord only knows what it would be in combinations.

Um, it took us three hours and a call to Minnesota to get this page on the blog so please get out your magnifying glass to look it over.

Scripts

Fiorella loves learning how to write in languages that use a non-roman script.  Russian was her first experience.  The Cyrillic alphabet is quite similar to the Roman, which English uses, but just different enough to be tricky.  For instance, "c" always has an "s" sound, and "p" is the spelling of the English "r."

The next script she learned--and she used to be pretty good at both reading and writing it--was for Telugu, a Dravidian language.  Like most Indian scripts, its a syllabary, which means each "letter" is a combination of a consonant and a vowel.  Thus, "Fiorella" would be spelled with just four major "letters:"  fi-yo-re-la.

Let's skip the Sanskrit script, a syllabary called devanagari, which Fio has totally forgotten, and move quickly on to Mandarin, a logosyllabic script, of which Fio actually knows about five "characters."  If you want someone to identify "person," "big," "little," "center" or "mouth," she's your girl.

Fio will give you examples tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Uno, zwei, tri, muuDu, quinque, cinq, sei

Hello, one and all, and especially you physical therapists that told Fiorella not to blog about you. What a challenge to hurl at her.

No, this isn't a scandalous tell-all.  Fiorella liked the therapists who worked with her, and she benefited from the treatments--in fact, now that her sessions are over, she's actually doing some of the exercises at home. But Fio does have one suggestion. It would make better use of your clients' time if you turned off the television and suggested they learn to count their reps in various foreign languages. Fiorella herself reviewed Spanish, German, Russian, Telugu, Latin, and French (sort of--not too good at pronouncing French) during her time on the table.  And the PT big dog, Nicole, kindly added Italian to her repertoire.

If those seven languages aren't enough, there's always Mandarin. Fio's already learned 1,2, 3--ee (high), aar (low and rising up), ssun(high to low), although she needs to read up on Mandarin phonemes before she can give you the exact pronunciation of that last one.

Catching up with Fio

Fiorella rewrote yesterday's blog because it didn't flow right when she reviewed it that evening.  She's like that--a serial revisionist.  Anything worth doing is worth doing better.  Stay tuned.  This blog will probably get a revision too.
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Fio's numeral-reviewing project in seven languages got bogged down somewhere along the line so she decided to work on just 1-10 instead of 1-20.  She can rattle off those  numbers in Spanish, German, and Russian again, and is working on Telugu.  Latin and French should be easy enough once it's their turn.  But, now Fio wants to add Mandarin to the list.  After all, she has an appointment with her Chinese dentist next month.
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Husband and Fiorella started putting together an art desk last weekend, but they screwed in the center crossbar upside down and haven't had the time to fix it.  Ah well, there are seventeen more hours left in this weekend.

Cursive and Its Cohorts

Fiorella believes in cursive.  In fact, she believes in every writing form--printing, cursive, backhand, fronthand, Cyrillic, Nagari, Devanagari, the South Indian scripts--just to name the ones she's had experience with.  They're interesting, fun, and artistic.

Maybe it's the artistic aspect that fascinates her.  Maybe it's the grace, the discipline. Whatever, Fiorella has decided to resharpen her own cursive skills--in English, of course.  Then, maybe she'll revisit Cyrillic--and the Telugu script, which she used to used as secret writing on her Christmas list.

Is Fio crazy or what?