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Being "Yentl"
posted Sunday, 5 June 2005
So Dr. Darling returned from Halland yesterday after four days of helping out with assorted family stuff at her brother's in Halmstad and her mother's in Laholm.
I was naturally very glad to see her and was pretty much "up in her space" for the rest of the day. She's used to that. She's also used to the fact that I'm very enthusiastic and physically demonstrative with my affection (some people might even say it crosses over into the arena of playful rough-housing) and one of our running jokes is that I have to "hurt" her a little bit every day in order to show how much I love her.
So it was no surprise when at one point she said to me, "Honey, you have to be gentle." But anyone who speaks English regularly with Swedes knows that they have trouble with the letter "G". The hard G in "burger" gets switched to a J sound...so the word sounds like "burjer". And the soft G in words like "Ginger" turns into a Y as in "Yak" or "yes". So what I heard was:
"Honey, you have to be Yentl."
So I've basically been singing "Papa, Can You Hear Me" and imagining myself married to Amy Irving ever since. Somehow I don't think that's quite what Dr. Darling had in mind.
I was naturally very glad to see her and was pretty much "up in her space" for the rest of the day. She's used to that. She's also used to the fact that I'm very enthusiastic and physically demonstrative with my affection (some people might even say it crosses over into the arena of playful rough-housing) and one of our running jokes is that I have to "hurt" her a little bit every day in order to show how much I love her.
So it was no surprise when at one point she said to me, "Honey, you have to be gentle." But anyone who speaks English regularly with Swedes knows that they have trouble with the letter "G". The hard G in "burger" gets switched to a J sound...so the word sounds like "burjer". And the soft G in words like "Ginger" turns into a Y as in "Yak" or "yes". So what I heard was:
"Honey, you have to be Yentl."
So I've basically been singing "Papa, Can You Hear Me" and imagining myself married to Amy Irving ever since. Somehow I don't think that's quite what Dr. Darling had in mind.
1. Sarah Smith left...
Monday, 6 June 2005 10:22 pm :: http://www.journalscape.com/rhubarb/
my goodness, after I read this post I could hear my great grandfather
saying, "I yust went to the store." I spent a lot of time as a very small
child trying to teach him the "j" sound, not knowing it came from Swedish.
Thanks for the flashback.
2. Shazzer left...
Tuesday, 7 June 2005 8:48 am
LOL! So glad I could send you on a trip down memory lane! I occasionally
remind my Swede how to say the J and soft G sounds properly in English but
it doesn't seem to stick. I'm not too bothered by it though, since the
mispronunciation is kind of charming!