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Cristina’s way TAC 2013 TEAM MIR/SPARTA | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes  Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 225 of 248 12 December 2013 at 7:08pm | IP Logged | |||||
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PARIS IN DECEMBER
I have had a very vivid month. A very international month. And an emotionally draining month with lots of drama. Fortunately it was not my drama. The up side? I have had a new friend from a totally new (for me) part of the world, and we are now calling each other sister, and our children call the other "auntie". It all started with me offering my daughter and her friend to go and see "The Hunger Games: Catching fire", which caused a misunderstanding, and the next morning I had a furious, unknown Indian woman almost literally falling screaming into my house due to false information she had been given. After a four hour talk we were friends. My oldest daughter said that I am the only person she knows who could start with a furious person screaming blue murder and end up with a new best friend four hours later. This morning I called her and we agreed that we had been sisters in our previous life. My new friend claims our family used to be very poor. I'll take her word for it :-) As a Hindu she knows a lot more about reincarnation than I do. She is a lovely person and it is fascinating to learn so much about a new culture. This means that I have spoken lots of English lately, and that I have listened to lots of Indian accented English which was new to me. I have also discovered that Spanish/Latin American culture and Asian culture have a lot in common. Whenever something is different from Norwegian culture, I usually recognize it from Spanish culture. Or perhaps it is just that we are the odd ball, and everyone else is similar. :-) We spent a lot of time together that week end, and two weeks later I invited her and her daughter for dinner. When she called to thank me the next day she said that she had cried when she got home. When I asked her why, she told me that it was the first time in the ten years that her daughter had attended school that the two of them had been invited to a Norwegian family. I almost sat down and cried myself. Norwegians are lovely once you get to know them, but they are very shy and reserved and generally not terribly good at taking initiatives. Which is one of the reasons I love being around foreigners :-) I am in Paris at the moment, and have spoken lots of French and Spanish over the last couple of days. At the meeting I managed to make the French chairman so mad at me that he totally lost his marbles and screamed at me, so my day was not totally wasted :-) In the evening we were all invited to a concert which circled around poems written by the Executive Director of the Railway Union. The poems were not bad, but the music was half modern jazz, halfway bossanova. Not the best of combinations. Again something which would be a bit strange in Norway. I cannot imagine my DG making everyone in the company listen to a concert of her songs. I had a lovely time with the Romanians, tough, and received invitations to stay at the homes of both the director general and Irina, the director of international affairs when I came to Romania. I love Romanians :-) The DG told me that his parents had given him tutors in French from the age of four and English from the age of six, and he spoke both of them really, really well. Their philosophy was that it was necessary to play along with the Communist party, but that it was always good to keep their options open towards the West. How I wish that more people had thought like that in the rest of the world when it comes to language learning. Today I managed to introduce myself to the assistant of the Russian Director General without making a total a** of myself. She even complimented me for my Russian, and claimed I spoke it very well. And then she ruined the whole thing by continuing to speak at high speed in Russian, so I had to admit that she had lost me. She was very kind, and continued in perfect English. The Russian DG differed slightly from everyone else, though. He came with a whole court in two black Mercedeses with bullet proof windows, and he obviously did not stay in the same hotels as the rest of us. He is a real big shot, and friend of Putin, but he was an excellent leader of the meeting. Polite, to the point, thorough. I guess you do not become the boss of 1.2 million people unless you are good at what you do. And I was on my very best behavior. It is cold in Siberia now :-) I was also very pleased that he spoke in Russian. I was not quite as pleased over the fact that I understood very little of what he said, but that's life. I went back and forth between listening in English and Russian. English when it was important to get the content, Russian when it was not. I did not have time to see anything of Paris this time, but I'll be back. The good part is that I did not spend any money I should not have. :-) Right now I am in the lounge at the airport musing over the fact that it is still a man's world. We are 60 passengers here of which two are women. I thought we were four until I realized that two of them were staff. And now I am just longing to get back to my kids. I love my job, but I really, really miss my kids when I am out on a business trip. I am watching TV about the situation in Ukraine and hoping for a happy solution. Sometimes I am a little torn between my love for Ukrainians and my love for Russians until I remember that whatever problems there are, are between governments, and not between peoples. So I get to love both :-) 9 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 226 of 248 12 December 2013 at 9:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
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Romanian is such an underrated language. I love that language. If you ever decide to go
for it, let me know. You'll find it easy by the way. 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 227 of 248 12 December 2013 at 11:39pm | IP Logged | |||||
I do not know if I dare go for another Romanic language. But I do find Romanians adorable. I have not yet met a Romanian I did not like, and they all feel so comfortable to be around. The perfect combination of politeness and lack of snobbishness. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| geoffw Triglot Senior Member United States Joined 4686 days ago 1134 posts - 1865 votes Speaks: English*, German, Yiddish Studies: Modern Hebrew, French, Dutch, Italian, Russian | Message 228 of 248 12 December 2013 at 11:45pm | IP Logged | |||||
Your Romance languages aren't in some kind of super-saturated concentration where attempting to add to the mixture could cause them all to fall out of super-solution, are they? 3 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| Solfrid Cristin Heptaglot Winner TAC 2011 & 2012 Senior Member Norway Joined 5332 days ago 4143 posts - 8864 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, Spanish, Swedish, French, English, German, Italian Studies: Russian | Message 229 of 248 13 December 2013 at 1:02am | IP Logged | |||||
I do not know if I dare to see. I have lost my Spanish three times, and if I were to take Portuguese (which I would love to do) or Romanian I risk that my Italian goes into extinction. Edited by Solfrid Cristin on 13 December 2013 at 1:41am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Serpent Octoglot Senior Member Russian Federation serpent-849.livejour Joined 6595 days ago 9753 posts - 15779 votes 4 sounds Speaks: Russian*, English, FinnishC1, Latin, German, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese Studies: Danish, Romanian, Polish, Belarusian, Ukrainian, Croatian, Slovenian, Catalan, Czech, Galician, Dutch, Swedish | Message 230 of 248 13 December 2013 at 3:40am | IP Logged | |||||
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Does your French threaten your Spanish/Italian, though? Romanian is about as different. Go for it! :P
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Ogrim Heptaglot Senior Member France Joined 4637 days ago 991 posts - 1896 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English, Spanish, French, Romansh, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Catalan, Latin, Greek, Romanian | Message 231 of 248 13 December 2013 at 8:55am | IP Logged | |||||
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Hi Cristina, I've been flirting with the idea of taking up Romanian again myself. I did a course at university - ages ago - and it is indeed a fascinating language. Kind of familiar for someone who knows other Romance languages, yet at the same time so different. So if you take the leap, maybe I'll join you...
1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tarvos Super Polyglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member China likeapolyglot.wordpr Joined 4705 days ago 5310 posts - 9399 votes Speaks: Dutch*, English, Swedish, French, Russian, German, Italian, Norwegian, Mandarin, Romanian, Afrikaans Studies: Greek, Modern Hebrew, Spanish, Portuguese, Czech, Korean, Esperanto, Finnish | Message 232 of 248 13 December 2013 at 8:59am | IP Logged | |||||
Romanian is a bit different from the most of them. I don't think interference is a risk. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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