Cr*english
I was reading likethevodka and thought oh, this is so familiar. When I first got together with Zsa Zsa as my neighbor calls Tatjana, I thought this is deja vu becuase I grew up with my father who sounded like Desi Arnez times 100. “Why not read the sick-lopedia?” he would ask me. Meanwhile, we have survived into our fourth year of not understanding each other 80% of the time, which we chalk up to three things: 1) language, 2) old ears, and 3) almost four years together.
So we were laughing recently about how Tin, who is being raised bilingual, speaks Crenglish, and he jumbles both languages together in weird ways much like my “babeeshoenineohhairstyleface” coming from my father’s, “Vivir cien años” blessing when we sneezed. Tatjana was telling Tin to take off his underwear – in Croatian this sounds like “skinny gotchee tsa” and so the other day, in his new form of whining (that is killing us!) he whined, “I don’t want to skinny gotchee tsa!”
But then driving home last night from having gone to see Tom and Evan play at the Botanical Gardens, we were commenting on the fact that Evan had snuck in a Salt Peanuts riff on the clarinet for Tin who turned to look at us like, “Did I just hear what I thought I heard?” all excited like and so we said to him on the way home, “Wasn’t it cool how Evan played Salt Peanuts!” and both of us went to hooray but Tatjana said, “Yoo pee” and I said “Yippee.”
“Yoo pee?” I asked. Yes,
You say yoo pee and I say yippee. Oo la la, whatyagonnado?
April 5th, 2011 at 5:08 pm
Yoopee vs yippee, hilarious. Sometimes just for kicks my husband and I will compare notes on how Russians make animal sounds vs Americans. The Russians do it ALL WRONG, obviously. Like, we say “ribbit ribbit” for frogs and they make some sound I can’t even transliterate properly, like “crrrrack crrrrrack” — I mean, really. Hmmm. You’ve just inspired a new post, so thanks in advance.
April 5th, 2011 at 5:24 pm
No wait that sound is kerack kerack – because I’m telling my son ribbit and she is saying kerack in the background. She thinks I am pro-English and I’m just baffled because a frog saying kerack? That’s not pro-English for me that is pro-this planet. How can you change the sound a frog makes? You know what I mean?
How about this one – instead of Giddye Up – it’s Gee Ha Gee Ha. Imagine John Wayne saying Gee Ha.