Tuesday, 29 August 2006

The Djanglish Pidgin

If I wanted to express a regular sequence of days that went "Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and so on", I would say "Every two days". Deb would express the same idea by saying "Every other day". Conversely, to Deb, "Every two days" would mean "Sunday, Wednesday, Saturday...". Between us we have managed to negotiate the phrase "Alternating days" as acceptable to both of us for expressing "Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday...". It's a new experience for me.

Mokalus of Borg

PS - I hadn't quite expected language to be a major area of compromise.
PPS - Though, of course, we do speak two different dialects of English.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

And these nuances between two mature human beings that actually quite like each other.

Now extrapolate that further into people within the same industry, that don't like each other.

Then again into different industries again with people that don't particularly like each other.

Sounds like consulting work to me!

John said...

Indeed. Take it further to politicians from different countries who don't speak the same languages. No wonder there's war in this world.