Sunday, December 21, 2008

My Hovercraft is Full of Eels

One of my browser home pages at the moment is the WikiTravel Romanian Phrasebook. I'm trying to expand the smattering of Romanian I can currently speak. Why, you might ask is someone like me trying to learn Romanian, or perhaps you've already guessed. Yes, a woman is involved; but that's actually not the point of the post.

I'm always surprised by the selection of phrases they consider worthy of translating in phrasebooks and therefore, by extension, what they assume it is likely you will ask in some parts of the world. There are no real surprises in the Romanian guide, the usual stalwarts such as...

Does the room come with bedsheets?
Exista in camere aşternuturi?

I haven't done anything wrong.

N-am facut nimic rău

When tired of trying to get my Western European tongue around Romanian pronounciation I sometimes mooch off to another WikiTravel page and reassure myself I do have an aptitude for languages by looking at a language I do know a little of. Today I went to the French phrasebook. Pretty high up on the list of phrases deemed useful on a trip to France is the valuable....

Do you think I'm a whore?
Vous me prenez pour une prostituée?

The other page I always enjoy is the Omniglot page which has kindly translated the phrase "My hovercraft is full of eels" into all the languages you might possibly hope for. So, here with go with

Romanian

Vehicolul meu pe pernă de aer e plin cu ţipari

French
Mon aéroglisseur est plein d'anguilles

...and especially for my favourite regular reader Saby, Malaysian
Hoverkraf saya penuh dengan belut

Friday, December 19, 2008

Jesus' Blood....

Take four minutes out of your life and tell me what you think of this. It's a recording of a homeless man improvising a simple hymn with the addition of Tom Waits towards the end.

I'm not religious, if anything I'm actively irreligious but I'm pretty sure it would be a less powerful piece if it didn't have a religious angle.