Language Difficulties

When I logged into Facebook recently, it asked me, in big and bold letters right at the top of the page:

Hello Nika, do you speak English (UK)?

Haha, Facebook, that really depends on who you ask. The reason it wants to know is because it wants help translating it into other languages. Perhaps it will begin asking for Favourite Colours?

Meanwhile, Nick is having his own difficulties adjusting to American life. While he is not exactly linguistically gifted, there is one crucial thing that he seems to know how to ask for in every language of the world. The three sentences of French that he knows are:

Je m'appelle Nick. Je suis Anglais. Je voudrais une bière.

However, he talks quietly and his normal English speech is often quite hard for me (and many, many other Americans) to understand. When he attempts to order a beaaahhhh in America, it usually takes a number of tries before I interject and explain it to the server. This has prompted him to exclaim, "This is the one country in the world that I simply cannot order a beah in!"

Finally, I have noticed that my frequent climbing around the Quebeçois at Rumney has created automatic associations with a French accent in my brain. First of all, my brain seems to think that everyone who speaks with a French accent climbs. Last night at dinner with the other HLS kids, one of them brought along her French boyfriend. When they asked me where, exactly, in France I had been recently, and I had found out that the boyfriend lived about an hour south of Paris, I told him I had been to Fontainebleau for climbing, and he said "Ahh, yes, in zee forest, right?" My initial reaction was then to have a whole conversation with him about climbing there, and I had to remind myself that just because he had heard of it and had a French accent didn't mean that he had ever climbed.

Second, my brain also seems to think that not only does everyone who speaks French accent climbs, but that everyone who speaks with a French accent climbs well. This is presumably because the Quebeçois who are willing to make long drives down to Rumney are often top climbers with few local challenges. So, it was quite strange for me to be in Orpierre where many times the French were the biggest bumblies at the crag. I knew, intellectually, that better French climbers would be at Verdon or Ceüse, which are both about an hour (?) away from Orpierre, but it was still strange to see the gumbies epicing up well-bolted Rumney-style 5.7s and 5.8s in perfect French.

Sidenote: The computer is getting more and more sorted out, so I promise blog posts about our actual French vacation (complete with photos, hopefully) will be coming soon.