Calimac's language lessons

[calimac]

I've spent more than minimal time in three countries where English is not the default language. In each country I found it especially useful to know one particular word in the native language.

Netherlands: gesloten. Means "closed." A really useful word to know the meaning of when you see it on a sign in the front door of a public building or museum just as you are about to climb a long flight of stairs to get there.

Germany: Bahnhof. Not much of a cognate for "train station." A really useful word to look for on little city maps when you're traveling around Germany by train.

Italy: basta. Means "enough." A really useful word to say politely to Italian street market vendors who are selling you groceries by weight. An even more useful word to say more sharply to people who without being asked grab your bags on trains and hoist them into the overheads and then expect 20 Euros tip when you're trying to offer them 5.

Of course, even in the United States one may find words that one doesn't encounter at home.

Hawaii: Aloha. Means ... just about anything, actually. Just say it a lot.

(Actually, Aloha was the answer to a riddle I learned when I first moved to Seattle. The riddle was: "How do people who live on Mercer Island say 'Merry Christmas'?")

Here's one that genuinely puzzled me when I first encountered it:

North Carolina: bah. Means "purchase." "Do you wanna bah that?" uttered by a store clerk required a couple reiterations before I could figure out what he was saying.

Comments

[kalimac.livejournal.com]

basta is one of a few all-purpose words in Italian which get used all the time. Another is prego which literally means "to pray" but gets stuck on the ends of lots of sentences as a sort of helper word of the "if you don't mind / pardon me / you're welcome" sort. Or at least that's my understanding.

I don't believe the Southern accent has anything to do with the Great Vowel Shift, which occurred centuries earlier and went in different directions.