Random memory: Good hope

I remember how Stella was pregnant with Amy, and we were ready to announce it to the public (we kept it to ourselves for the first few weeks).

I came into work and my co-worker Meike was there. She asked how Stella was and I replied, "Gut; sie ist guter Hoffnung." Which literally means, "she is of good hope", but Meike twigged at once and replied, "Oh, that's nice! When's it due?" ("Oh, schön! Wann ist es soweit?"). Heh—fixed euphemisms.

Incidentally, when I looked up "guter Hoffnung" on Leo just now, it was marked "veraltend" (obsolescent). And translated as "to be expecting; to be in the family way". The latter phrase made me think of my father, who would often make fun of that phrase by saying, "she's in everyone's way", so I don't think I could ever say it with a straight face because I would instantly have the association in my mind!

What euphemisms do you use for being pregnant? Or do you always come straight out and say "I'm/my wife/my friend is pregnant"?

(One I find cute is "to have a bun in the oven".)

09.09.09 09:09:09

Funny datetime!

Bad spelling exists in every language

A link in another user's profile led me to SpamPoison.com, which has a link to lots of translated versions of their site (well, main page) on the sidebar at the left.

I clicked around a bit and found, among others, a Maltese translation.

And good grief, that site hurt my eyes with its spelling. And I'm not talking about the absence of diacritical marks (ċ ħ à), nor even of the absence of hyphens between pronoun+article and noun ("fil website") or the absence of the apostrophe after words such as ta' or tista'; I've pretty much come to expect that on the web. I'm talking about things such as "bix" for "biex", "trappjghat" for "ttrappjat", "huza"(!) for "uża", and "hawnek" for "hawnhekk". I've no idea what "jittrapjahwon" is even supposed to be. ("Jittrappjawhom"?) The use of initial j- after consonant (instead of i-, e.g. "prattikament jfarrakilhom") is also a bit disappointing.

Aiya.

Baked apples

I received a postcard from Finland today.

I had requested in my profile that If you can't find a postcard to send me (or even if you can but want to send something different!), write me on a piece of cardboard from a cereal box, packet of biscuits, or something like that! :), and the sender followed that suggestion by cutting out a piece of a box for vanilla sauce.

She also wrote that it's the best season now in Finland to enjoy vanilla sauce with "oven-made apples (uuniomena FIN, ugnsäpple SWE)".

I wasn't quite sure whether I had deciphered those words correctly, so I googled them to be sure. Interestingly enough, it seemed that pretty much all hits for "ugnsäpple" were on .fi domains; I wonder whether the dish is not common in Sweden or whether it's merely the Finland-Swedish term for it and that the Swedes in Sweden call it something else?

It seems to be pretty much what I know as "Bratäpfel" here in Germany, but then, I don't know of a typical English word for it (LEO suggests "baked apple; roast apple") so it's possible that it's not a dish typically eaten in England, so that might be the case in Sweden, too.

Amy and the telephone

Amy's usually been pretty reticent about speaking on the phone; perhaps she was wary of this strange device where voices came out of people whom you couldn't see; she'd sometimes agree to listen to it but would usually not reply verbally.

However, when her aunt called to congratulate her on her birthday recently, Stella went up to her and said, "telephone for you", and Amy not only came to Stella but held the telephone to her ear and actually talked to Auntie Debbie!

She said perhaps I should call Amy occasionally, so that she would get more used to speaking on the telephone.

And that reminded me of the cartoon strip where Calvin calls his father on the phone and asks him to tell him a story... which ends up being about "the hydraulic pump (fig. 1), the wheel shaft flange (fig. 2), and the evil patent infringement". (You may be able to see the comic strip here.)