An odd product indeed for us Anglophones. So you speak Russian too? I took one semester of it in college. My father insisted. He said, "You should know the language of your enemy." Erf!
Here in the Detroit area, many items (even signs) are in Arabic. Although there are Russian-dominated suburbs where one might find that same odd juice concoction.
Our biggest immigrant groups' languages are Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, and then perhaps Russian and Spanish (in Mexicantown).
No I do not speak Russian!! My old pharmacist asked me if I spoke Gujarati. She demonstrated shock when I confessed I did not.
I DID learn the elementary alphabet one day waiting for the 2-hour huge bags man to show up. It's fairly easy if you have a visual mind. e.g. c=s as in centimetre H=N imagine the crossbar changing to diagonal. P=R imagine drawing on the last stroke. Etc.
Our immigrant langs btw are the Indian ones ie Hindi+Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi. Turkish & Kurdish (though Kurdish is done in the name of PC bc every Kurdish speaker here also speaks Turkish. They're FROM Turkey.) Somali. A language it took me ages to find out what it was called something like Shqip... = Albanian. Polish is a new one. You hear the word "korwa" pron ku as in could r=rolled va as in vanish. kurva. Means "fuck/fucking" not literally but de facto as a swear word. I think Arabic is used more round here. But usually when you see Arabic script in the council offices it's Urdu. BC we have loads of Indian Subcontinent immigrants and they're very much welcome. We all love curry! And as I said to someone b4, chicken tikka masala is pretty much our national dish now.
I think the cyrillic writing on the juice was Bulgarian bc on the side it had ingredientses in various tongues, using the car sticker abbreviations in little ovals to mark them: ie GB for Great Britain, PO Poland etc. I'd guess we see those more than you do as ppl can take their cars easily thru the Chunnel or on ferries so we get foreign cars on our roads. I expect we'll have 3 alphabets on the Euro notes soon, bc of Bulgaria. Spanish isn't an immigrant language here at all. And the very concept of Hispanic being distinct from white as their own group, distinct from Italians also seems faintly ridiculous to me. What we do get is council translations into French. Not for the sake of French people but for African francophones ... which winds a lot of ppl up as Britain never colonized French Africa obviously. So why are they piling in here? We have the same immigrant/work permit/illegals/housing/costs controversy as you. Except rather than cross in a 1000 mile desert border some of these are not only crossin the Sahara but piling into tiny fishing boats off the coast of Mauritania (I think that is the country) then taking the ultra-choppy trek across the waters to the Canary Islands which are Spanish. Then once in the EU they can claim assylum and in theory come anywhere.
There used to be an enormous camp near the French side of the Channel tunnel outlet at Sangatte. Full of assylum seekers dead set on coming to the UK.
Of course we only hear of the ones who are determined to get to England. The UK is most attractive BC most already speak the language. And I suppose France would attract lots of Africans for similar reason.
We had literally hundreds of Kosovo/somewhere Eastern refugees hanging around a few years ago. So many the local council had to open a specific office to deal with them all. I got mixed up in there by accident and when security realized I was English I got redirected to the other facility.
No, not really. Lying trough my back teeth. It's my dad's favourite food, apart from his own version of Borscht which involves boiling a lot of string with beetroot and milk.
An odd product indeed for us Anglophones. So you speak Russian too? I took one semester of it in college. My father insisted. He said, "You should know the language of your enemy." Erf!
ReplyDeleteHere in the Detroit area, many items (even signs) are in Arabic. Although there are Russian-dominated suburbs where one might find that same odd juice concoction.
Our biggest immigrant groups' languages are Arabic, Chinese, Hindi, Urdu, and then perhaps Russian and Spanish (in Mexicantown).
No I do not speak Russian!! My old pharmacist asked me if I spoke Gujarati. She demonstrated shock when I confessed I did not.
ReplyDeleteI DID learn the elementary alphabet one day waiting for the 2-hour huge bags man to show up. It's fairly easy if you have a visual mind. e.g. c=s as in centimetre H=N imagine the crossbar changing to diagonal. P=R imagine drawing on the last stroke. Etc.
Our immigrant langs btw are the Indian ones ie Hindi+Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Punjabi. Turkish & Kurdish (though Kurdish is done in the name of PC bc every Kurdish speaker here also speaks Turkish. They're FROM Turkey.) Somali. A language it took me ages to find out what it was called something like Shqip... = Albanian. Polish is a new one. You hear the word "korwa" pron ku as in could r=rolled va as in vanish. kurva. Means "fuck/fucking" not literally but de facto as a swear word. I think Arabic is used more round here. But usually when you see Arabic script in the council offices it's Urdu. BC we have loads of Indian Subcontinent immigrants and they're very much welcome. We all love curry! And as I said to someone b4, chicken tikka masala is pretty much our national dish now.
ReplyDeleteI think the cyrillic writing on the juice was Bulgarian bc on the side it had ingredientses in various tongues, using the car sticker abbreviations in little ovals to mark them: ie GB for Great Britain, PO Poland etc. I'd guess we see those more than you do as ppl can take their cars easily thru the Chunnel or on ferries so we get foreign cars on our roads. I expect we'll have 3 alphabets on the Euro notes soon, bc of Bulgaria. Spanish isn't an immigrant language here at all. And the very concept of Hispanic being distinct from white as their own group, distinct from Italians also seems faintly ridiculous to me. What we do get is council translations into French. Not for the sake of French people but for African francophones ... which winds a lot of ppl up as Britain never colonized French Africa obviously. So why are they piling in here? We have the same immigrant/work permit/illegals/housing/costs controversy as you. Except rather than cross in a 1000 mile desert border some of these are not only crossin the Sahara but piling into tiny fishing boats off the coast of Mauritania (I think that is the country) then taking the ultra-choppy trek across the waters to the Canary Islands which are Spanish. Then once in the EU they can claim assylum and in theory come anywhere.
There used to be an enormous camp near the French side of the Channel tunnel outlet at Sangatte. Full of assylum seekers dead set on coming to the UK.
ReplyDeleteOf course we only hear of the ones who are determined to get to England. The UK is most attractive BC most already speak the language. And I suppose France would attract lots of Africans for similar reason.
We had literally hundreds of Kosovo/somewhere Eastern refugees hanging around a few years ago. So many the local council had to open a specific office to deal with them all. I got mixed up in there by accident and when security realized I was English I got redirected to the other facility.
"Fried Lakl Snitches"
ReplyDeleteseen on a tin in our local Polish deli.
No, not really. Lying trough my back teeth.
It's my dad's favourite food, apart from his own version of Borscht which involves boiling a lot of string with beetroot and milk.