new friends

I have new friends. Someone introduced me to a young man named Daryl. He has anonymously noisy friends. It is easy to make friends online, especially Icelandic. They speak Dansk in their own way there too.

Today I woke up feeling cold but warm. It was a funny feeling; in Danmark, one wakes up feeling warm but cold if one has toes outside the blanket. Here it is all grey skies in Asia. It is their winter, mild but naughty, like a cat.

Many people ask me about language. Well, Danish language is like a more Germanic English - since many people think they know something about these two languages, it is easier to explain that way. We were even occupied by Germans in World War II, but they did not enjoy it very much because we kept mocking their lousy Danish. Ha ha, my grandmother told me that story, said that grandfather called them 'Hungarians' (well, Magyars to be exact).

That makes a point. In Europe, we are so mixed up in tiny countries that you can take a few steps and your language is different. I was amazed to see that Romanian looks like Catalan. Same kind of vowels. In Dansk, I think we tried too hard. I think there are 25 consonant sounds and 12 vowels (or more). But it means that the Swedish and the Norwegians and Icelanders and Faroese all can understand if we speak slowly or if we transl(iter)ate in our heads.

When I came to China, I found that it was true too, but China has larger chunks and some Chinese languages are not miscible. It is like in India too. Today I went out with a Hokkien friend who claims he is 62.5% Haekke (or something). He is proud he knows so much about European languages. So I mocked him for not knowing much about Hans Christian Andersson. Turns out he was brought up listening to those like bedtime stories. He has a strange family.