Globe Corner Blogs

As They Say in Zanzibar -- by David Crystal

Even after a mere weekend away from the store, I nearly always return to find several new and exciting titles awaiting my perusal. Today, I was immediately drawn to David Crystal’s newly released collection of proverbs titled As They Say in Zanzibar: Proverbial Wisdom from Around the World. This six-hundred plus page compilation is subdivided into 468 “thematic classifications,” ranging from expected categories such as family, health, and happiness to more atypical groupings such as semi-liquids, semi-solids, animal noises, and inland water. Crystal also conveniently indexes all proverbs by theme, to Roget Thesaurus’ semantic categories, to lexeme or key word, and even to country of origin.

There are some particularly relevant to the savvy traveler, such as “those who wait long at the ferry will get across sometime” (Scotland) and “money is a good passport” (France). Some that left us scratching our heads: “One should not board a ship without an onion” (The Netherlands) and “A dog may look at a bishop” (France). Others seem comically obvious, like “No melon-seller cries: bitter melons!” (China) and still others are comically bizarre, “The quiet duck puts his foot on the unobservant worm” (China). Continue Reading »

Montenegro Has A Fjord!--photo by Lisa

I am constantly asked why I am trying to speak Croatian/Bosnian/Serbian. Most people assume that I have some relative that came from the area and I am trying to reconnect with my heritage. There is always some confusion when I explain that my grandparents were from Norway and being Norwegian and having black hair are not mutually exclusive properties. Most of the my fellow students have Croatian or Bosnian background and I must admit sometimes I get a bit jealous when they reminisce about growing up with the foods, playing Tamburi (folk music), visiting various cousins in the area, and all the colorful swear words that they learned from some uncle.

Then I always begin to feel a bit guilty about neglecting my “homeland.” I am a bad Norwegian.

I speak a total of ten Norwegian words and none of them are swear words. I have never met any of my cousins, nor have I visited the small, isolated village where Grandpa was born. I hate lutefisk and I have never successfully made krumkake.
Continue Reading »

Rough Guide to Brittany and Normandy

The new destination for the month of July at the store is France (15% off all titles for France!). I always think that I am “over” France, but then something always comes along to remind me why I love it so much. I think that it is precisely all the cliches about France that I love the most. I love the Eiffel Tower, going on bateaux mouches, cafes, crepes, red wine, pain au chocolat and when people mock my “bizarre” accent when I massacre the French language. I lived in a microscopic village in Brittany for a year and now I sound like a strange American-French hillbilly with really outdated slang. I have even been told by professors that my French sounds like the equivalent of what would happen if you sent a Japanese student to the Deep South for a crash course of English. This did loads for my confidence, but in the end I have chosen to think that the way I can’t pronounce my “r” is endearing.

Which brings me to one of my favorite books that deals with being an American struggling with genders of nouns while living in rural France, Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris. He makes me laugh and not feel like a linguistic failure. He also makes me really wish that he sat next to me in one of my language classes. I have a feeling he would be the best dialogue partner ever!