Monday, May 9, 2011

Language confusion

At the moment, I use German mostly when talking to my mother on the phone or on days when I stop by the office and have a chat with the office mate. Work is in English so I use it every day particularly now since I have to write papers . That sometimes results in writing English shopping lists for example ... I fear that some of the geological terms I could not even express in German anymore but that's probably not much of a problem since I do not plan my future in Germany. At the same time of course I am staying in Norway which results in having things such as a Norwegian bank account and sometimes having to fill out some Norwegian forms. Unfortunately, I don't really know many Norwegians I could practise with but at least I can read Norwegian books and I would not want to read a translation of Norwegian authors such as Jo Nesbø anymore.
Sometimes when you book a ticket or make a payment you have these drop-down menus where you have to choose the nationality or country and if I am not careful I am looking at the completely wrong end of the alphabet.
If you are French you would look for France (French), Frankreich (German), France (English) Frankrike (Norwegian and probably similar in Danish and Swedish), Francia (Spanish and Italian) ... I do not intend to list all languages but you get the picture - you look for F. France is a nice simple example of course, there are some countries where you have to look for two letters but being German it turns out like that:
Allemagne (French - ok I don't use this too much)
Deutschland (German)
Germany (English)
Tyskland (Norwegian)
The Spanish and Italians keep at least the A and G with Alemania and Germania but why on earth is German in Italian tedesco?
The other day I was looking for Germany in a Norwegian drop-down menu ... I nearly gave up until I realised ... wrong language :D

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