LL-L "Idiomatica" 2009.07.20 (06) [EN]

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L O W L A N D S - L - 20 July 2009 - Volume 06
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From: M.-L. Lessing <marless at gmx.de>
Subject: LL-L "Idiomatica" 2009.07.20 (03) [EN]

My own Old Lady (a really sweet one), when excited, separates the s-t and
s-p in German as it is done in Platt; that is called "s-tolpern übern
s-pitzen S-tein". So in winter when it snows, she calmly says "Da draußen
ist ein Schneegestöber", but when it comes thicker or I have to go out,
she presses me not to because of "das schreckliche Schneeges-töber!"
Schneeges-töber is something quite different from Schneegestöber :-) Surely
the earliest years define the "folds" of our brain, later years only
"decorate" them...

Marlou
(Hamburg)

From: Roger Thijs, Euro-Support, Inc. <roger.thijs at euro-support.be>
Subject: LL-L "Idiomatica" 2009.07.20 (02) [EN]

My parents came from small larg-family farms in the South of Belgian Limburg
and it was a practice that the girls of the family were sent to Liège in
their teen years  for learning some French while "serving" and getting a
little bit of money.
So my mother, in her young years, has been serving for serveral years in the
kitchens of the hospital Saint-Joseph and of the technical school
Saint-Roland both downtown Liège.
At the time Liège was about 60 minutes away from where we lived: 30 minutes
with the old tram to Tongeren, and a further 30 minutes with the multi-stop
train to the Gare du Palais. Liège was still the capital of our bishopric as
well as of our legal district at the time.

At the age of 70 my mother got a serious stroke and was taken into to the
Antwerp Middelheim hospital. To my big surprise, when she restarted talking,
she did it in French with the Antwerp hospital staff.
So I guess it has to do with release of things related to memory and
practice hidden in lower parts of the brain.

Regards,
Roger

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From: R. F. Hahn
<sassisch at yahoo.com<http://uk.mc264.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=sassisch@yahoo.com>
>
Subject: Idiomatica

Thanks, Roger.

Your story is not unlike the two I've shared here before.

An old German-Finnish-Russian professor of mine started speaking Mandarin
when he was delirious close to his death. He did not know Chinese as an
adult (which was seen as a professional detriment in his case), but he had
been taken care by a Chinese nanny as a young child in Manchuria.

The grandmother of a friend of mine suffered a stroke and thereafter
completely reverted to her native Yiddish, having lost all of her English
that she had used since arriving in the US as a very young person.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron
Seattle, USA

•

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