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comment by goobster
goobster  ·  2716 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Pubski: October 19, 2016

I'm just itching to hear more! Everything! About walking the streets... the buildings... the people...

Albanian? Wow. That is dedication. I'd suggest Serbo-Croat is far more useful. With Serbo-Croat you can fumble along with every Slavic tongue from the Mediterranean to the Baltic Sea.

But Albanian? You will never speak it well enough to be understood by an Albanian, and nobody else speaks it.

I had a similar problem with Hungarian. I went all-in on it and learned how to speak it. But there are so few non-Hungarians who speak it, that Hungarians can't generally understand my accent. They understand native-speakers of the language, but if you pronounce one vowel wrong, or mis-conjugate a word, they are baffled. Because everyone they have ever encountered speaks perfect Hungarian. (Although I was able to speak in Hungarian to non-native Hungarian speakers, because we all made the same mistakes!)

Anyway, I look forward to hearing more, if and when you are ready.





arguewithatree  ·  2716 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I mean it's worlds away from Jordan, that's for sure. I'm as comfy walking around at night as I am in DC. And everything is so cheap!! esp since the euro is so weak... the reverse sticker shock when returning to DC is gonna be major lol. It reminds me of all the good things about the Middle East (close knit, friendly, idiosyncratic).

For some reason, I'm interpreted as open to frequent interaction? People approach me pretty regularly for random things... man on the street TV interview (but I don't speak Albanian so that didn't pan out), selling me on a specific shampoo brand in the supermarket, some guys tried to get me to spend 8 euro on honey for some reason. This actually happens semi regularly in DC too but it's definitely weird. Also no one can place my nationality right away. I've gotten asked if I'm English (even after speaking which is weird), German, and Irish.

The way people process the war trauma is weird too. It mostly stays under the surface but then someone will casually slip in the time they got shot at in the back of a van or how their friend got their legs blown off by a mine. It's weird stuff that they volunteer out of nowhere too. I haven't gotten totally used to it yet.

Albanian is what's spoken in my office and how most official documents are written so I wanted to get at least comfortable with hearing it and being able to parse the sentences... except the grammatical structure is RIDICULOUS. people also seem to appreciate it when my friends and I bust out the few pleasantries we do know. it's just considerate i think to try and learn a little while I'm here.