No language in our lungs

So far, three different countries and three different languages. Now, I am American and a bit lazy about languages, although at times I do try, but I just don't have an ear for them. I guess I am surprised though, just how many people around the world speak English, or at least some English. I suspect that the Russian phrase book is going to be pretty necessary in parts of Siberia, or Mandarin, well we will see about that one. I have been interested in the various languages and seeing how they work and similarities and all that, or just in how people communicate with each other.

Norwegian and Swedish, those have been the most comprehensible so far. We made do with the few pages of words in the guide books. I suppose that English (having been colonized in part by Vikings and all those) is somewhat made up of languages from Scandinavia. There are an awful lot of cognates (fisk instead of fish), so reading the languages kind of worked in a lot of cases. Where it got difficult is pronouncing things and hearing things. I looked over the rules for letters and sounds but just couldn't grasp it while we were there, like what letters are silent, which ones have completely different sounds than I would expect, and how the additional letters are pronounced. Or just how do you pronounce the 'u' sound as in 'fur' without the 'r' sound at the end. I spent a lot of time practicing that, 'ur' 'ur', no, too much 'r' sound.

Looking ahead at the phrase books for somewhere like Mongolia, the words look completely foreign, no meaning at all in just looking at them, but it does look easier to pronounce them. Or when they are transliterated, they seem easy to pronounce, even going as far as doubling the vowels to show what syllables get the stress (Ulan Bator becomes Ulaanbaatar). Well, ok, the script for that looks pretty, but also incomprehensible. I guess we will see how it goes there too.

So far, one of my favorite things has been looking at signs, especially road signs, and seeing how they are slightly different everywhere. In creating a sign, one without words, there is almost an artistic meaning in there somewhere. Ok, some of them you just have to know, a blue circle with a red X over it meaning no parking, or something like that. I guess you would just have to memorize a few of them. But trying to convey things like pedestrian crossings, there is probably the standard EU pattern, a picture of a person walking on stripes on the road on a blue background. Those have been pretty much the same through the countries, but all the people have been a bit different. The picture of the person in Estonia has a slightly bigger head, a bit egg shaped, almost like the drawings of aliens (the Greys, I think) compared to the ones in Sweden. I really liked the person in Norway, he was wearing a hat, a fedora, and had a bit of a jaunty walk, sort of a ska walk (one step beyond!). I did like in Sweden, or at least Stockholm, people got a bit creative with the signs, adding things to them. Ok, some of them were a bit obvious, adding obscene things, genitals and whatever. My favorite was the one where they blackened in to make a skirt and put on red shoes to make it a woman crossing the street.

Anyways, Estonia. We have been here a few days and I haven't really written anything yet. It has been nice here, although the goal isn't entirely clear. We weren't really intending to come here, but because of the booking and all that, and it seemed like a nice place to rest for a few days, inexpensive and all that and not a lot of things that we really felt like we needed to go out and see, we could actually try to relax for a little bit. After a month of traveling, that seemed like a nice idea. We found a nice apartment for a few days, pretty reasonable, internet connection so we can plan some of the next few weeks (trying to figure out Siberia last night). I made a birthday cake last night, challenging because, well, try to find 'self raising flour' in the grocery store. Apparently, Estonian and Finnish are related and are equally obscure. Somebody we talked to in Sweden said that they could mostly understand Swedish and Norwegian but Finnish was completely beyond them.

I'll have to write more later, this is getting a bit long and we should finally venture out into the rain. The old town is oozing olde world charm, it is really nice and pretty there. I totally love the doors and the layers of paint. But more later.