Day 219: I Am Virtually Bilingual (Yet Again)

Regular readers will be aware that, when encouraged with a stick, I can speak French (unless I am in French Canada). For this I must thank my parents, who forced my brother and me to move to Paris in 1978, whereupon they locked us in a windowless cellar with a tartan carpet, letting us out only to go to a half-French school with French children.

At our half-French schoool we learnt to speak French French, cross our sevens, break the arms of fellow eight-year-olds in the park underneath the Eiffel Tower, eat Space Dust, make pictures from string and sing the songs of Supertramp and Simon and Garfunkel with a French accent. Importantly, also, we were made to do Long Division like this:























(You will note that I have also supplied the English version, which I have never mastered, as reference. Are there different ways of doing it in other countries? I am Fascinated!)

But still, I digress. French aside, my fanatically loyal and adoring readers may not be aware that I am in fact a very talented linguist, FULL STOP. Not just French; oh no! For I have discovered that I am, after an astonishingly short period of only three weeks, an almost completely fluent Dutch speaker.

Take this packet of plasters, for example: I didn't need to look any words up in a dictionary to know that they were flexible, extra long, new, and for my fingers and fingers alone. What's more, I discovered - with barely any effort at all - that there were sixteen plasters in the box.























Astonishing, I am sure you will agree!

Coming soon: I go on holiday to Iceland, order chocolate mousse and get elk on my face.