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Monday, June 22, 2009

I'm a bee gus - or otherwise entitled 'Pronunciation Problems'

Sometimes, they are hilarious and other times, just plain irritating. I admit, before you point the finger at me, that I am the last person with perfect Catalan accent – but let’s push that aside for just a little bit and have a good laugh at Albert – no, no, I mean, at some random Catalan person.


‘I’m a bee gus.’ He said, looking pleased with himself.

‘What?’ (I forgo the correct ‘pardon’ when speaking with Albert. He responds faster to a more direct language.)

‘I’m a bee gus. You know, you can’t pin me down. I might, and I might not.’

I hit my head on the table and muttered to myself ‘Ambiguous.’

‘Yes, am bee gus.’

This is not the first time, I’ve written about pronunciation problems. I wrote about the big braun in Byron Bay too, way back in march 08.

I guess the most irritating problem is the G that is placed at the front of W’s for some reason. The people say ‘gwhat’, instead of what. I totally accept the heavy h’s, and I understand missing the final letter of words like ‘tent’, but my ears have a problem with the Gwat. I even accept the Alvert Bila B/V mix ups. But the Gwat… is a hard one.

I must admit I have trouble saying just about everything in Catalan, so you can laugh at me as much as you want.

Photo credit - Thanks to Ana and Tania for the photo of Albert.

7 comments:

Tiffany at Patheya said...

Takes one to know one!

Anonymous said...

Did you mean beach? I like the beach?!

I often hear 'I'm so cleaver', to which I reply 'No darling, then you'd be a butcher's knife. I think you mean clever, and now I doubt your statement'.

Anonymous said...

But in due respect bert; if you are a'bee - gus', then I guess that makes Tiffany butthead.

bert said...

Plus!
"Takes one to know one"? What a crappy sentence is that? You always say it but is definitely and obviously not true!

For instance:
"oh look, a mobile phone!"
"takes one to know one!"

or

"look at those beautiful mountains"
"takes one to know one!"

So. It DOESN'T take one to know one.

:-)

bert said...

hummm... little baron... i didn't get the last sentence (probably due to lack of pronunciation ability or english insiderness (!) :-))

K said...

This is soooooo fantastic.

When I first moved to Norway I could already speak Norwegian - but hadn't learnt the latest slang. I marched straight up to a bloke I knew marginally well and thought I'd give the old compliment his spikey hair sentance a bit of a go.

"Å kult, du har fått deg piggsveis/Oh nice, you've got your hair spiked" - would be the correct way of saying it. I said:

"Å kult, du har fått deg pikk/ Oh cool, you've got yourself a dick." (And I was pointing to his head at the time - sigh.)

Tiffany at Patheya said...

Katrine!
I spurted tea out of my nose... don't do that!