Language

Reading the comments by my friend Pepperfly on my post about Wuppie, I had to laugh. Any language is difficult. But there is of course a difference between decaptiovating, decaptivating and decapitating. The first one is a misspelling of decaptivating and that is the wrong word if you are talking about 'off with his head'. Although...

This post is however not about heads coming off. It's about a conversation I had a few weeks ago. As you know I was able to speak French again with somebody from Morocco. If I couldn't remember the word and spoke Norwegian it wasn't a problem: she spoke Norwegian as well. After a while however, we decided to continue our conversation in Norwegian: a bit nicer to the people sitting around us. 

At one point she was describing having to use medication for some ache or pain and since she couldn't take the ordinary oral route, it had to be rectal. So far, so good. I understood what she meant to say, but now we had to think of the Norwegian word for a pill up your backside. I thought I knew the English/French word, but couldn't get any further than suppo... which was not much help. Fortunately she came up with the word: strikkepinne. Sounds good doesn't it? Although, sticking one of those up your behind might cause a whole new pain, since it's a knitting needle!

We were in fits of laughter, but still didn't know the real word. Realising I couldn't find the English/French word and she couldn't find the proper Norwegian version, we decided to ask her husband. Who told us it was a stikkpille. Well, it sounds like the strikkepinne doesn't it? Honest mistake... 

(About three days later I finally came up with the English term: suppository and the French version would have been suppositoire)