As you are probably aware, I'm learning trying to learn the great language of this country, so as I don't have to spend the rest of my time here as a mute social outsider. Despite taking lessons for over a year now I still feel like I understand next to nothing and inarticulately stumble through verb/adjective/nounless sentences (and sometimes all three) with the help of hand gestures.
However, I came to the realisation that I must be making progress following some recent events.
I just stepped out to get milk and bread when a neighbour came over and starting badgering me about buying a camera from him (he's already snared the Malteaser at lunchtime and he understood as much without ever having a Romanian lesson in his life, so no medals so far). He explained to me it was very cheap and that it was a surveillance camera and I could take it and check to see if it worked on my computer before buying it. I agreed, seeing no polite way out of it. He went into his house to fetch said item and two of the young Romani girls from next door came over to ask if I was coming to pay for the camera. When he came back they were pawing him, asking for the money. He told them he hadn't got it and that I was going to try the camera first. I duly went back to the house with the minute (and clearly nicked not new) camera in tow. When I returned I explained that it didn't plug into the computer (which it didn't) and that we didn't need a surveillance camera, thank you. I don't know if he managed to sell the thing or where the girls got it from, but I knew I was best off out of it.
By now, another neighbour had joined us who, fortunately enough, spoke good English so could help the conversation along. He invited us into his garden and gave us strong homemade (is there any other kind?) țuica, he then invited us to have some food with him and his wife, which I felt obliged to accept because a) it looked good and b) he had told me all about how good Romanian food was. The other neighbour left for a family party so we went inside to eat. I sat in the kitchen and waited for him and his wife to come back. Eventually he came back and his wife stomped past me, without so much as a glance in my direction, picked up her plate and stormed out again, saying "I just want to be alone, why did you have to invite her, you sit with her if you like her so much" or words to that effect.
In hind-sight I'm not so sure it wasn't better before I knew what was going on.
2 comments:
Word of advise from a romanian person: next time they offer you things to buy simply say "nu multumesc!". In romania can be wrong understood the english education. About that woman that you were invited in her house to eat, if you understood right what she sad, her behavior is very strange in front of a guest (it does not matter if romanian or foreigner).
Well done on your progress in Romanian! I think sometimes ignorance is bliss, but I am also still at the point in Swiss German that if I hear something bad, then I don't let my ears believe it; perhaps you could try that technique?
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