E
Etaoin Shrdlu
Guest
One advantage of learning Latin is that your fumbling attempts to use it as a medium of communication aren't going to be humiliated by the perfect grammar and accent of a six-year-old. But if you've travelled to furrin, you may well have increased the general hilarity of the populace by attempting to speak the language, so talk about it here. Confession is good for the soul.
I should go first, I suppose, and I've got a wealth of ammunition, but I can't resist starting with one from someone who was doing classics at university. He was spending his summer on a dig in Italy where the volunteers were a mix of locals and foreigners, and wanted to get to know a young Italian woman better. He didn't know Italian as such, but one of his companions who did assured him he could get by with a few basic phrases, supplemented by Latin when the vocab ran out.
So at the end of the day, wanting to ask her if she was tired before seeing whether she'd be up for going for a drink, he asked, 'Sei tu fessa?' She looked quite offended, answered 'Non!' and stalked off.
At this point, others might have felt rejected, or at least rushed off to a dictionary. But he wasn't so easily discouraged, and repeated the attempt. Twice, with the same result.
It was only when he noticed his companion pissing himself with laughter that he found out that 'fessa' doesn't mean 'tired', but 'stupid'...
I should go first, I suppose, and I've got a wealth of ammunition, but I can't resist starting with one from someone who was doing classics at university. He was spending his summer on a dig in Italy where the volunteers were a mix of locals and foreigners, and wanted to get to know a young Italian woman better. He didn't know Italian as such, but one of his companions who did assured him he could get by with a few basic phrases, supplemented by Latin when the vocab ran out.
So at the end of the day, wanting to ask her if she was tired before seeing whether she'd be up for going for a drink, he asked, 'Sei tu fessa?' She looked quite offended, answered 'Non!' and stalked off.
At this point, others might have felt rejected, or at least rushed off to a dictionary. But he wasn't so easily discouraged, and repeated the attempt. Twice, with the same result.
It was only when he noticed his companion pissing himself with laughter that he found out that 'fessa' doesn't mean 'tired', but 'stupid'...