Fernando and Kristian are my flatmates. The former, a Spaniard, followed a Danish girl to København and these days the girl is gone. The latter, a Dane, owns the flat and is looking for work as a late 20-something. This morning was my first here, and it felt like a confluence of cultures. Spanish, Danish, and American, converging in the kitchen, over coffee and breakfast. As an aside, french-pressed coffee is the best to my taste thus far; thanks to James for making me my first pot of it all these months ago.
Kristian, Fernando, and I spoke of language first. There are no dialects in Spain according to Fernando. There is only Spanish. Basque is a different language and Catalan is an accent, not a dialect. Potayto potahto I say, and Krisitian agrees. Fernando will have none of it. Segwaying into a brief discussion of Spanish imperial history, we next discussed Italy, how it is split in two with the affluent, 'civilized' north, and the poor, mafioso-controlled south. The Vatican sits as the centerpoint. "It's a funny country," says Fernando, with division and corruption everywhere; the mob controlling the southern half of the nation and pushing its influence into the north through commerce and networking. Fernando says the country's Prime Minister has sent the army to combat the mafia, and even now they are skirmishing. I've not confirmed this, but I haven't really read much into Italy's current events.
The kitchen table is customized with newspaper pages under a varnish layer covering the entirety of its top.
Kristian and I walked while a real estate agent showed the flat. I suppose this is a good time to relay. Kristian has been trying to sell the whole place for some time, since September 08. I recently discovered this fact, in conversation. What it means for me is another move should he finalize a sell. But, not for 2-3 months minimum. The worldwide financial slump has dealt me a fortunate turn: banks won't loan money, so people can't buy homes, which means owners needing to sell will rent out until the the economy swings skyward again. For now, it's a rentee's paradise, and that suits me the rentee just fine.
I scouted out a chunk of DTU's campus this afternoon, riding along from Nørrebro station via S-tog lines to Lyngby station. As the sun set I caught a bus to campus, and found the building where I'll be taking classes starting Tuesday. On my way back to the bus stop, I went through the student center and caught these photographs, each taken through a different color of glass looking out onto a courtyard.
More adventures tomorrow! Hasta luego!
3 comments:
I like the photographs, particularly the yellow one. The red is a bit blurry.
I'd also say that I would agree with your Spanish friend about dialects within Spain. I would, however, say that the Spanish language would have multiple dialects, Latin America being what it is. Although that's somewhat biased by the vast difference between how well I personally understand the average Latin American's Spanish, vs. how well I understood anyone in Cádiz (I swear, half the time they don't say half of the word!).
I identify very well with your final sentiment about pronounciation. Here in Denmark, there are long words and short words aplenty, but the Danes (and this habit varies by region as well) tend to leave off a significant amount of syllables. For example, the word "Fisketorvet," which is the name of a seaside mall in København, looks to me like it would be said Fees-keh-tohr-vut, applying what I already have learned of Danish pronunciation. But, NO, they say this: Fees-katoh, rolling the last two syllables into one quick slurr.
Exasperating to say the least.
I am excited to live with a Spaniard because I still love that language and will relish the chances to practice it. His arguments were vague, hindered by his mediocre English, but he did differentiate between S.A. Spanish, Mexcian Spanish, and Spain (Castilla, Catalan, etc...); though I'm still not sure he actually defended his point completely enough to convince me, but I think he may be right about Spain itself.
When did you go to Cádiz? Also, what's the keyboard shortcut for accented 'e,' 'a,' and 'o,' if you know them?
I went on a brief (2 week) trip through southern Spain right after high school ended (with a group from high school). It was about half tourist-y stuff, half a more extended stay with host families in el Puerto de Santa María, which is just across the mouth of the Guadalete River from the city of Cádiz. It was a lot shorter than I would have liked, but a very fun (and moderately humbling) experience.
Also, I use Linux, so in gnome you put Ctrl-Shift-u, which creates a little underlined u character to let you know that it's right, followed by the hex unicode for the symbol (so the Spanish ones are scattered between 00e1 and 00fa). In Windows there are other methods, involving the use of Alt and the number pad. I don't remember exactly, but I think holding Alt and typing 130 (or 0130?) on the number pad will do an é. The rest are in the 160's (or 0160's?). It usually doesn't work on the top numbers, just the pad. And of course, I am assuming standard English software (I don't know if there are faster methods in use on various European OS installs, or if they just rely on different keyboards?).
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