No reports on walking with MS today and wheelies in the chair, that does not need effort, just hope.

No, I was reading a blog that someone wrote about the usage of words to express yourself. I write daily 3-4 pieces, sometimes more photos than writing, but I have a problem. Of course I know what I want to write, but over the last 50 years of living in a country that does not speak english, my brain has become more than bi-lingual. Ok, of course I can still speak english, my mother tongue, although to be honest my mother tongue was cockney, the dialect spoken in East London, and they say you are a true cockney if born within the sound of Bow Bells. Although I lived all my England life within the sound of the bells, I was actually born in Hertfordshire, Hitchin, because it was after the war and there was no room in the London hospitals for mum, so she had to go to Hitchin.

But to continue, I moved to Switzerland, a country where they have four official languages, one being German where I live, but again a dialect of Swiss German (Schwyzertütsch). I speak this strange dialect all day and so my brain has now become also bilingual and it is all about finding the right word to use. Language moves on, advances, and new words are included. All these new words that appeared after I settled in my Swiss German frame of mind (1969), were unknown to me in English. Just a simple example “tights”. I grew up with stockings and then the tights appeared, and so I would buy “Strumpfhosen”. How was I to know that the english word was tights.

And so I sit at my desk with the computer and begin to write and then I have my first problem. Of course I know what to write in German, now what was the english word for it. My next step is LEO an online dictionary which I open in another tab on the computer, because I cannot remember the english expression.  Yesterday I had the word “annullieren” in German which I wanted to use in English, so I was off to the online english-german solution and found it was “delete”. Of course, how could I forget it, but “annullieren” was what my brain said.

This happens continuously, my brain is a two track mind in two languages, or is it three or four. German is what the Germans speak and so we have to know the language in Switzerland as our normal daily Swiss German dialect is not always understood by the Germans. And then I have my original cockney, although of course I also speak the Queen’s english, perhaps not so queeny.

Mr. Swiss speaks perfect english, and I speak perfect Swiss German. Our kids speak Swiss German but understand english and No. 2 son needs his English for his work, often attending english speaking conferences, although his French is just as good, so he has become sort of trilingual.

I must say I feel more comfortable with choosing a (Swiss)-German word, because I am speaking and using them daily and there are even words which I have not yet been able to translate. “Stufenlos” would be stepless, but it is applied to those switches on electronic gadgets that do not do off and and on, but gradually climb and descend – get me? Perhaps.

Anyhow it needs effort for me to write in an english that is english, at least I hope it is english. Even Mr. Swiss corrects my English now and again.

RDP Sunday: Effort