A Tidbit A Day Keeps Boredom At Bay.

Linguistic hoops...

Aren't we all glad to learn a bit more about the people in or around our life? Even if they don't know that we know? Ah, the gist of small village living.

If you think about it, the social networks are merely an updated version of village news, the village is of course far larger but the same feeling applies.

One can go straight to the cauldron but even then it might have been rehashed and elongated to add a bit of lustre. Any place where many gather in a small place usually is bound to be abundant with tidbits. Waiting to collect medicine, to have your hair cut or to pay for groceries spring to mind.

Well, sometimes the people one least expects to be interested in learning more about their fellow villagers, actually do...a little birdie told me about a funny story only set in summer. Summer, when the windows are open...

If you live in a city, this might be foreign to you but once you've spent time in a small village you even do it yourself. Conversations with neighbours are often had across yards, over streets but always with operatic zest.

The other day I heard about a person enjoying a summer's tale while standing at the open window behind a billowing curtain...naturally, there had to be a fly in the ointment. If you haven't grown up in the village, then the local dialect is extremely difficult to understand.

Each village has their own peculiar expressions and pronunciation even when only ten kilometers apart never mind a hundred kilometers such as Vienna. A few years ago they shot an Austrian thriller, Landeskrimi, close to Schandorf which is not more than fifteen kilometers from us. In one scene the main characters, a couple of cops from Vienna, were lost in the village and stopped to ask two elderly ladies who were sitting on a bench, for directions.

They were happy to oblige but when one saw the look on the cops face, it was clear that they hadn't cracked the code of that local dialect and were heard upon driving away:

" Did you understand anything they said? "
" Eh, no. What language were they speaking. "

. Naturally, Bob and I found it funny ( because it often happens to us ) and a good caricature of village life.

Biggi