Year
Καταλαβαίνετε ελληνικά;
Katalavaínete elli̱niká?
Which means, “Do you speak Greek?”
and yes, the question mark in Greek
really looks like the semicolon in English,
and of course they speak Greek!
So be it.
This is the only phrase I still remember
from my trip to Greece, despite memorizing
from my trip to Greece, despite memorizing
hard for a month, only to find that
everyone spoke to me in English,
and after all that, the one thing I remember
most is the most useless phrase I learned.
しょうがない
Shōga nai, it can’t be helped.
I went to Italy on the same trip as the one
to Greece and remember a lot more
to Greece and remember a lot more
of the words, my favorite being arrivederci—
despite meaning “goodbye,” it always feels
more like a greeting to me.
more like a greeting to me.
French is harder to remember than
Italian, but my favorite phrase is the
one I learned from a song,
Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?
And no, I won’t translate it c’est soir.
There is little practical value
for a native English speaker to learn
a foreign language, but I’ve grown to love it
for the reasons that are not practical.
I remember traveling to a theme park
for the reasons that are not practical.
I remember traveling to a theme park
in Shenzhen that had these miniatures of all
the famous historical buildings in
China. A trolley of little children
passing by on a field trip became
excited to see the only foreigner
wandering there. They all yelled Hello!
at once and waved—it was probably
the only word of English they knew—
I yelled Hello!too and waved back.
For today's dVersePoets' prompt, which encourages us to write something in a foreign language.