As I go through my days here, I find so much humor in the language ( or sometimes the lack of it) What first comes to mind is that the Romanian language has so many borrowed words... for example... blue jeans in Romanian is bluj.... What is the name for a car??? Machine-ah. The size of towns here is measured in the number of hills it covers... I guess our town is about 1 and 1/2 hills. (It has less than 5,000 people. ) the words for punctual and fantasy and khaki are the same only with a romanian accent. When you take a shower it is a douche! Poftim is the word which seems to universal meaning. It can mean thank you and you're welcome and excuse me and enjoy your meal and here it is and I didn't hear you. When I first arrived my most widely used phrase was foarte bine!! Now it seems to be mai tirziu ( pronounced my teer- zoo) which is driving my "mom" crazy because it means later!!! "Yeah, I'll drop myself in a little bitty bucket and call it a shower - LATER!" "Yeah I'll bring my clothes outside and rub them in freezing cold water until my knuckles are raw -LATER!" "I'll get to that Romanian Language Homework - LATER!" You get the picture. I know if my real Mom is reading this she will more than relate to the frustrations of Rodica my Moldovan mama. She wants me up and out of bed so that I can first enjoy the morning air on my way to the outhouse and then in to wash up with a cup of cold water and have breakfast and sit for a half hour before school drinking cafea. Anyone who knows me well knows that aint gonna happen, here there or anywhere! So I am usually flying out of the house slurping my coffee on the way out the door. I just tell her it's the American way!
Feel free to leave comments and/or write me at binksink@gmail.com
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