kissing and crossing

St. Nicolas

Sunday 2

"Mister - belt - problem ... "

On the way out of St. Nic's, I actually see a police check-point beside the road; not only see it, I am actually stopped by it ...

This interchange is remarkable, since the two policemen seem to master between them a total English vocabulary of three words - 'Mister', 'belt', and 'problem'. However they use these three very fluently, in various combinations, all the while I'm smiling warmly and assuring them that, yes, I always use the seat-belt, I had just started off after looking at the map and was about to fasten it again; and although I suspect much of my spoken vocabulary is beyond them, my body-language seems to create a strongly positive ambience and encourage them to give me the benefit of any doubts they might have had, they wave me on with a renewed avowal of 'belt' and 'Mister', but no 'problem' this time ...

Greek seems to be a fascinating language, where the one word 'kyrie' stands for concepts as different in nuance as 'Lord', 'Mr.' and 'Sir' ...

Of course it all depends on what you need: the Saami (Lapps) have 107 different ways of describing what we call simply 'snow': and they have just one word for every kind of 'small bird' ...

Oh, it's "chook", if you're interested.