Rudynate

Krankenschwester and Krankenhaus may be my two favorite words in the German language. To a native speaker of English, they are inherently funny just because of their sound, and they are doubly funny when you know that they mean "nurse" and "hospital." And then "Krankenwagen" for "ambulance" is pretty funny too. There is that sound in Dutch, the one that the Dutch say only a native Dutch speaker can get right. I had a friend years ago who was a doctor. He went to medical school in Amsterdam and had a Dutch wife. He spoke Dutch very well, I loved to listen to him. He said it wasn't a difficult language to learn at all.

That doesn't mean that you don't hire native speakers. It does mean that the hiring process is broken because it allows unqualified people to be teaching.

At the high school I attended in New York State, one could learn Spanish, French, German, Latin, Russian, Italian and Hebrew. I don't know whether those options are still available, maybe not, since public education is being starved out of existence.

I went to high school with quite a few Puerto Ricans. There seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the manner in which they combined Spanish and English. Sometimes they would begin a sentence in English and complete it in Spanish. Other times, they would begin the sentence in Spanish and complete it in English. Sometimes they would speak a sentence that was mostly English sprinkled with Spanish. Other times, the sentence would be mostly Spanish sprinkled with English. It was really interesting.

I did a three-week intensive German course at the Goethe Institut in Rothenburg in Northern Bavaria. It was astonishing how fast you learn in the immersion setting. When you don't have the option of peeking at a dictionary, you become very resourceful at understanding and finding a way to say what you want. When I was in Frankfurt, before the course started, I was walking along and I saw a big sign, "Ladenflaeche" on the window of a big empty store. In the context, even though the word was unfamiliar, I recognized immediately that the sign said "retail space." In an immersion environment like that, you have such "Aha" moments 10's of times in a single day.

My French teacher was an old lady, close to retirement who spoke French with this godawful American accent. She made no attempt to speak with an authentic accent. Even as a kid, I used to ask myself, "What's wrong with this picture?' Many years ago, I knew a wealthy old lady. She was the widow of a Texas oilman and seemed to have piles of money - she drove around in a Bentley and had a small household staff. She spoke French fluently, but with that same godawful American accent that my French teacher used. She liked to surround herself with people who spoke French, preferably native speakers, but non-native speakers who were skilled enough were OK , too. She would have lunches and dinners with 10-12 guests where only French was spoken. It was incongruous to hear her speak, because, on the one hand, her command of the language was so good, but on the other hand, her accent was so bad. I could never understand how somebody could have made the effort to become fluent in the language and yet make no attempt to speak with an authentic accent.

I was at a Meetup in Mountain View and I talked with a guy from a tech startup in Mexico. His English was outstanding and what was particularly interesting was how rapidly he spoke. He said he learned most of his English by watching English-language TV.

I took four years of Latin in high school. Our teacher made it very easy to learn because we had quizzes all the time and she didn't tolerate kids not doing their homework. In Latin, if you don't keep up with assignments and memorize the vocabulary, you're dead in the water.

High German or "Hochdeutsch" is just Standard German. I don't have much difficulty understanding Swiss German.

Some years ago I worked for a global company. We had German and Austrian subsidiaries. It was just amazing how good the Europeans' English was. The executives could deliver long, detailed presentations in flawless English. They knew business terminology, engineering terminology, scientific terminology, they understood idioms perfectly. I was always in awe of them.

Close to the US/Canadian border, the accents, as you've noted are nearly indistinguishable. The farther away you get from the border, the Canadian accent becomes pretty pronounced. Some Canadians sound almost like Scots.

We have quite a large Brazilian community in San Francisco. When I first heard Portuguese, it sounded like complete gibberish. I have a little bit of an ear for it now, so I can distinguish individual words and it does sound like Spanish spoken in a very peculiar accent.

That's interesting. Thank you.

I have always wondered if a native Spanish speaker would be able to understand Italian. What about Portuguese?

I'm one of those people who learns languages easily. I learned French in high school - completed four years in only three years. I wasn't fluent but I was able to converse easily and French people often complimented my accent. Alas, I never used it much, so I'm very rusty, although I still understand spoken French easily. I have devoted quite a bit of effort to German. I took a couple years of college-level German, several courses at the Goethe Institut, and an intensive course of several weeks in Germany. I also worked one-on-one with a tutor for awhile. During the time with the tutor, I got really good, although not quite fluent. I could sit and converse with him easily on nearly any topic. Again, I rarely use it, so speaking isn't completely comfortable. I listen to the news in German and understand most of it. I watch German movies and understand most of the dialog without looking at the sub-titles. I love the way Mandarin sounds when spoken by non-native western speakers, so I am pondering learning Mandarin.

By about 14, I had decided I was going to try male-male sex as soon as I got the chance. I reasoned that, if I didn't like it, I didn't need to keep doing it. Looking back, I realize I had opportunities galore that I was too dumb to recognize at the time. Finally did it for the first time at 17 with a tennis pro at a local country club who started chatting me up when he came into the place where I worked after school.

I had forgotten about Hercules movies. I was so infatuated with Steve Reeves that it was upsetting. I would sit there, in the movie theater, on a Saturday afternoon, at age 7 or 8, and watch him in his loincloth with this incredible longing that I didn't understand - I wanted him to pick me up, to carry me on his shoulders, to be my friend; to admire me, to go places with me, I wanted to be like him, etc. etc. etc.

Getting boners over the pictures of Charles Atlas on the back of comic books at age 6-7.

I'm very curious about Kobe Raphael. Wonderful looking guy.

Pradaxa is big offender.

I got pill esophagitis once from taking a pill with a small sip of water and then going straight to bed. I woke up a couple hours later with the worst sore throat in memory. I had a lot of difficulty swallowing food for three or four days after.

I mostly stay out of such places, but now and again, I like to splurge. I kind of like Cal-Mart in the Laurel Heights neighborhood. Down the street from them, there's a place called Bryan's that sells esoteric stuff like real Japanese Kobe beef.

In San Francisco, there are high-end grocery stores that make shopping at WF feel about like Safeway or Luckys.

All the advice nurse ever does is tell you to come in.

+1 I luv 'em all.