You would think, that if you all spoke the same language, there wouldn't be a problem...

WRONG.... äääääh!

I was over at Peter's this morning, and there was a repeat of the second half of the brilliant Michael Mittermeier's program, Safari. He covers God and the world in it, and is scathingly funny. He is a Kabarettist, or better said, in English, a stand-up comedian. Imagine a twelve year old mind caught in a forty year old body on a chocolate overdose. You got it. Hyper.

One tiny bit of it was aimed at us Austrians. He maintains we speak 'Porno'. Seems the first time he was in Austria, he went to a café, and this voluptuous waitress comes up and asks, 'Möchten Sie einen Verlängerten?' I know, I know, that doesn't translate. It means, do you want -not an espresso--but a stretched version, a bit weakened. But he gets all revved up, and takes 'stretched' for totally something else. He had me nearly fall off the chair laughing.

So yeah, we talk Porno even if we don't know it. But it gets worse. We can't communicate from one region to another, that is how fucked up our language is. Really.

When Peter first left Graz, he went to Hamburg. And was in a bakery, wanted some breakfast. Ok, in English, bread roll is a bread roll, right? In Austria, the name is Semmel. So he asked for two. And she said, 'WHAA? What the hell do you want?' So he pointed. 'Oh, you want Brötchen.' Uh-huh.

But it gets worse. It is inter-regional. I was in a bakery in Vienna, and I have a brain fart about what I asked for, but the lady was completely off the charts. 'What? What do you want?' (It was a Styrian word, as I remember....) So I had to point and say, 'THAT thing, right there!' Oh.

Languages can lead to much unwanted hilarity in your life, I guess. Even if you are supposedly speaking the same language, or believe you are.

It is sort of like Torpedoes, or submarine sandwiches, or heros, and such. Depending on where you are.

Language... can be a bitch. But am glad we talk Porno....

Update: I just got feedback from my father. He gleefully told me about a fellow serviceman in WWII and they were in Australia. And the guy asked for a 'napkin'. Harmless, right? The waitress was insulted. For her, he had asked for a tampon. And he nudged him and said, 'What you want is a 'serviette'. See what I mean? Language.... It isn't always what it seems....