He survived his challenges today. Staggeringly our French telling the time trick probably picked up a few marks. To be fair to school son was provided with a scribe for the English exam. No scribe for French. Will have to find out why.

I survived today’s challenges. Made it out in one piece from the bizarro world which was work. Then made it round the 12k run. Once again the view helped lift the soul.

Well clearly the bizarro work world had rubbed off on to me. On the run I was listening to my German language course. It seemed to be the right thing to do as son would be currently sitting his French exam. It was basically going in one ear and straight out of the other one. A passing cyclist then flagged me down and asked if I knew where the nearest cafe was. I suspect he wasn’t expecting the following response.

“Guten Tag. Es ist diese Straße runter. Über 5 Kilometer”

As I noticed the cyclist’s bewildered I just repeated my amateurish German but this time a bit slower and a bit louder. Then it dawned on me. What a wally. All very embarrassing. What was even more embarrassing was that when I finally switched to English I’m not sure the cyclist was any more the wiser. Although we where in Yorkshire he clearly didn’t understand my Yorkshire accent. As we speak the poor man is probably lost somewhere on the moors cursing that useless German in his pink leggings. Still it took my mind off Son’s ongoing French based anxieties.

I will leave the last words to a modern day Philosopher.

“Well Dad I survived. The problem with the French Exam was that it’s basically in French. English is hard enough but French. It might as well have been in a foreign language.”

87 thoughts on “Pink legged German”

  2. Switching between languages (French, Dutch and English in my case — all of which I am very bad at) is always a struggle for me.

    Someone greeted me with a friendly Bonjour the other day — I went into linguistic meltdown and growled at her in response.

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  7. cool….i wish i spoke more languages..at one point i began learning Cherokee..what a difficult language! i took french & spanish in high school so i thought it would come easy..unfortunately, native american languages are in no way based on any other root languages…le sigh!

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      1. the alphabet alone is 86 figures( only have one because of Sequoia) representing ‘sounds’ rather than letters..and thats just for starters…lmao…they only words that even sound similar to ours ar the things added once europeans conquered them…like watches , coffee, and more modern things like cars. The root language also doesn’t contain pronouns or articles like the, a , an, etc.it’s quite a challenge for sure!

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  8. I phoned my optician from here once, to arrange a sight test during a visit home. After saying hi, I probably spoke for 3 or 4 minutes to explain why the dates were so important (or whatever) before I drew breath to let her answer..
    “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand any of that, could you please tell me again..?” At that point it finally dawned on me what my now-Ex-boyfriend had been waving his arms at me for the whole time… Amazingly the secretary hadn’t interrupted at all

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      2. Changing between languages is always hard.. And I find always dependent on what I was doing/speaking most recently.

        When I go home for Christmas (or whatever) it can take a couple of days before I don’t begin conversations in German. If someone asks me something I’m generally ok to answer in their language, but I haven’t figured out realising which one I should start with.. It’s the same when I get back here, just the other way round.

        Similar principle for choosing which side of the car to get into. People are always asking if I was planning on driving (I don’t have a car so I am ALWAYS the passenger)…

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  13. That boy of yours always cracks me up. Wonderful saying and actually damned true.
    Hey fabulous pics btw. Your encounter with the cyclists …oh and the French… reminded me of the time in the wilds of Denmark where we were well and truly lost looking for this farm cottage we had booked. Anyway after birling up and down this road I finally spots this very blond couple and assuming they were Danish, explains in my halting Danish–and all my language elsewhere is halting — we were lost and did they know of this farm. ‘Parlez vous Francais?’ said the guy. I thought f’s sake, is my Danish that bad, cos my French is no much better. But obvi, on reflection afterwards it occurred to me he WAS French. Alas in the meantime I replied, ‘Un petite,’ which I gather means a child, re which the Mr has dined out on for years. So tell your boy no tae worry.

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      1. I did. I am fluent in every language going in that I can swear and order a drink in most hem, but see tests in my time? I failed the lot. Languages/ You just need to know certain things. Same as in life.

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      1. Forget all this, ‘Where is the wild boar hunt?’ and ‘When does the train leave from platform 3?’stuff. Who cares about what platform the naffing train leaves from or goes on wild boar hunts these days?

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      4. Well you know phrase books are full of %$£$ that way. Long as I can say, ‘ Tela ena bookalah retsina parakelo ina ny lingo, we are good for that plan. You need to know the important things in life.

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  15. Ah, young son may not be a master of the French, but he’s aces at the Yogi Berra school of Philosophy!

    I tried to learn German cuz stepdad had worked and lived in Germany many years before he was stepdad. The only thing I remember is “Das ist der bleistift” and it sounds so angry.🤔😂💌

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  18. Love this glimpse at the day in the life – of the ‘pink legged German.’ As for me, I know Spanish and English. I tried Italian, went as far as learning the numbers and then stopped. Not sure why I stopped, but I did. 🥺😂

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