It wasn't all Proust and Ulysses

In Britain I’d have (reluctantly) identified H as working-class. But this happened to be Pittsburgh and so he was blue-collar. H’s origins were one reason why we became pals. Since both of us were appallingly under-educated our friendship depended on what we said rather than what we were. He saw me as a foreign exotic, given to useless long words and my pretentiousness tickled him. I delighted in his concise one-liners seemingly riven from a William Goldman script.

Most of these are now lost, one remains. I mentioned that X, a vertically challenged colleague, had a remarkably tall wife. “And X wouldn’t have it any other way,” said H lubriciously (an adverb he would have poked fun at).

H was brought up in Mount Oliver, on a cliff to the south of Piitsburgh overlooking the Golden Triangle ( At the confluence of Allegheny and Monongahela rivers; Mount Oliver to the right.). As a result we spent laddish evenings there in a bar called Moike’s which I would never have dared enter alone. Moike communicated via insult, it was all he knew. We always drank 25-cent beers and I asked H what would happen if I ordered a martini. “Moike would slam the gin and vermoot bottles on the bar and say: make it yourself.”

Political correctness may not have been invented then but it would been badly received in Moike’s. Mostly the talk was coarse or of sport. I liked baseball and football, could get along with basketball but Moike’s customers liked hockey (the qualifier “ice” was unnecessary in the USA) and I was often left out. Nobody cared about that.

Evenings ended with a hot-sausage sandwich which was impossible to eat tidily. I would give my right eye for one just at this moment.

Ich kann nur ein wenig Deutsch sprechen

I wouldn’t want you all to get the wrong idea: very little BB cuisine comes out of packets, tins and indestructible plastic trays from Iceland. But this Maggi Sauerbraten mix was acquired on one of Mrs BB’s Christmas market trips in Germany and there’s a bit of brisket going begging.

My interest here is linguistic and I’m drawn to Frisch dazu: 500 g Rindfleisch since I’m utterly convinced that dazu translates as “thereto” however archaic the word is in English. No? Then let’s turn over the packet and find that I’m urged to Schlagen Sie eine weitere Seite aus dem Maggi Fix Kochbuch auf:

A perfect example of where a little (German) learning can lead to. I know schlagen is “to hit” so this clearly means “Hit yourself with a further page from the Maggi Fix cookbook.” Unfortunately auf (on) is added at the end, but it’s a short word and can’t mean much. Alas, alas. German is known for its LEGO BRICK TENDENCY which allows words to be infinitely connected as in Donaudampfersgesellschaftskapitänswitwe (Widow of a captain formerly with the Danube Steamship Company). But it is equally known for its DISINTEGRATION TENDENCY whereby bits of verbs are sawn off and put elsewhere.

Thus auf was, in a previous life, attached to another word. How about aufschlagen (consult – as in book). The lesson endeth here. And here’s the moral. Never interrupt a German until he (or she) reaches the full stop, satisfyingly rendered as Punkt. There may be a tail in the sting.

Zach flourishes in the Languedoc

ST JEAN DE LA BLAQUIERE 1. Five-year-old grandson Zach (Or The Zachster as RW (zS) inventively calls him) tells me that Birmingham, West Ham and Blackpool were relegated from the soccer premier league this year and Swansea, QPR and Norwich were promoted. Impressive but depressing – soccer isn’t my thing.

As compensation he rattles aloud through Horrible Henry’s Underpants, a work of dubious literary merit and is seriously attentive listening to passages from Fungus The Bogeyman. This is really an adult’s book and includes quotes from Milton (“The Bogey, subtlest beast of all the field.”) and Herrick (“Putrefaction is the end/Of all that nature doth entend.”). Casually Zach refers to silent letters, citing “know” as an example.

He brought a schoolbook: OUP’s monumental Building A House (Sample quote: “The electricians put wires inside the walls. The wires will bring electricity into the house”) which he reads competently but boredly. I ask him if he’s the best reader in his class and he supposes he is. He ponders then offers, “Perhaps Lisa is.”

After strenuous rehearsal he addresses the village baker with Bonjour monsieur le boulanger adding Je suis en vacance. the next day. Goodish accent.

On the long drive down he marks his I-Spy book regretting, as we all did, that the French edition isn’t out until July. Played the French version of Snap at the overnight hotel.

Parents – especially grandparents – tend to overdo their offpring’s intellect so I limit myself to a phrase which never appeared on my report card: Satisfactory work and progress.

Here he is as referee (with a tendency to cheat) at a game of marine volley-ball – mother and sister on one side, dad and sister’s boyfriend on the other.

A legitimate use for book margins?

Lucy’s post about writing in printed books brings longish comments. Alas, mine was devoted to psycho-analysing her writing style, forgetting the gravamen (I like taking that word out of the shed every so often and walking it round the lawn) of her original observation. The consensus seemed to be against the practice and I would agree.

With one exception. My French lessons consist of preparing a book passage for precise oral translation “in class”. Once read the book has little re-sale value for the reasons shown above. (Click to zoom, if you're interested.) This book is the experimental L’emploi du Temps by Michel Butor. Experimental? You may well ask.

THE LOVE PROBLEM Chs. One and Two 11,328 words, Ch. Three 1709 words. An unexpected sub-theme emerges. Jana, my American pilot heroine, flies planes in France and speaks better French than me. In doing so, she reflects on French vs English, often jokily. This is so fruitful I will have to hold it in check.

Those slightly disabled Swedes

This view from my study window has been Photoshopped to remove the washing line across the garden and an ugly street lamp. Click pic for greater grandeur.

In yet another BBC4 programme devoted to popularising science, a frenetic Swede set out last night to make me love statistics.

Many believe statistics is simply columns of figures. That’s data*. Statistics is data put to use – averaged out, for instance. Statistics tells us on average Swedes have 1.99 legs – reconciling the fact that some unfortunates have only one leg, or perhaps no legs, whereas none have three legs. “Thus we can say,” said the Scandinavian prophet, “that most Swedes have slightly less than two legs.”

But this was mere skittishness. Statistics is serious. It’s generally admitted that whatever suffering Florence Nightingale alleviated at Scutari wasn’t ultimately as important as the data she gathered and interpreted, proving that the so-called hospitals there were far more dangerous than the battle-field. Infection killed more than shells.

However it’s not history that’s astonishing, it’s the future. Google offers computerised translations of websites into seventy languages based on statistical analysis of language. Grammatical and syntactical rules aren’t good enough. Complex sentences in Swedish were uttered to Google’s research wonk who received them on his laptop which precisely and immediately translated them. The next step: mobile phones which allow users speaking in two different languages to hear the result in their native tongues.

Speaking as someone who has spent three decades wrestling with French I’m somewhat depressed.

* Yes, I know data is the plural of datum and I treated it accordingly while still working. But I now think it’s a lost cause.