Oh, for heaven's sake, you *did* mean it!
My sister was once accosted in a London street by a man who said merely -
'Bonk'. She said -'I beg your pardon?' and he said it again. In the end she
twigged that he might be trying for 'bank' with a French accent, which
turned out to be the case. I've always told my kids that the first words you
should learn in any language are 'please' and 'thank you'!
joanna
> Martin wrote:
> I said half Koaxx (my little joke, work it out) for French; I don't
> consider my French to be good enough - I can't translate litrachur into
> it, for instance, and I'm lost when they gabble. Funnily enough, I seem to
> understand Swiss German (Schwyzerdütsch) better than Germans, who get it
> subtitled on TV even when a clearspoken academic is talking - while I can
> understand very little spoken by drunken maudlin roughs from Glasgow; I
> lived next to one once in council housing (municipal lowrent slums for the
> benefit of our Yankee friends) & he would beat up his wife all night when
> he got back from the pub. 'Twas no human tongue that issued forth from
> that benighted hovel.
> mj
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