Friday, February 15, 2008

Language

Driving home from dropping the older kids off at school, Youngest on the back seat, apropos of nothing, comes out with the F word. It sounds strange and innocent tripping off her lips.

After a pause I calmly say:

" You do know that that is a very rude word don't you?"

"Yes," she replies, "it's not Afrikaans, it's German for poo."

What can I say, we live in a multilingual society here in South Africa!

7 comments:

  1. Hee hee. I've always been a chicken about swearing - I just can't seem to bring myself to do it. But the one exception was when I lived in Germany for three months on a student exchange. Somehow the German language seems to lend itself to swearing.

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  2. That's hysterical. Thanks for making me laugh out loud today.

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  3. Did you ask if she knew the French for "wash your mouth out with soap"

    Just kidding:-)

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  4. ROFL! That's hilarious.

    Reminds me of the day in French class when I learned the French for f-word; I came home and asked my kids if they ever said it. "Yes," they replied innocently. So we had some instructions on that. :)

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  5. Too funny! I hope you didn't laugh after she gave you the definition :)

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  6. ... if only it was miss smartie-pants! there is no such word in German. But we do have a town in Austria by the name of Faak am See (am See = by the lake) and our Australian host brother found it very amusing indeed to tell his (extremely conservative) father on the phone that he was going to "faak by the lake" for a week with school.
    oh, the laughs.
    we also have villages called badaussee and rottenegg, but that's another story...

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