Saturday, October 06, 2007

A culture of contrasts

Even before arriving to Denmark, I was surprised how cosy is the country. Even though it has a language that no one else understands :-P, everybody speaks English (not like in Germany or Austria). They assigned me a mentor and 6 gentlemen and one girl (my mentor) went to look for me to the railway station. The school also got a place for me to stay before I arrived, so I didn't have to take care about that. Yet, last week there were two events (in particular two phrases) that showed me the bipolarity in this Eventyr land.
The first one was with my landlady, the dialog was more or less like this:
Rochy: I will go to the house of a friend to watch a movie. See you later!
Landlady: Oh! (Actually she said the danish expression: Nå!). You ALREADY have a friend?
Rochy:

I wonder if I wasn't I supposed to have friends two months after my arrival??? Maybe the average people has one friend a year later... no wonder why are they depressed in winter... It was so absurd that I tried to formulate an explanation in my mind. I remembered that in German the word for friend and boyfriend is the same, so I gave it a last try:

Rochy: Well, is my friend, not a boyfriend...
Landlady: Yes... it is very good that you already have SOME friends.
Rochy:

So... it was not the language.
The second event was as follows (I will write a long version to set you in context):
First, I was in a store with a friend. He understands danish because it is similar to his language. I saw a very explicit image (the phrase was: "fræk sex er trendy", so you can imagine the image... ok, don't do that). I didn't understand the word trendy. Using developed techniques to learn new languages, I thought that the image would impress me enough and I would be able to remember the meaning of the word (and actually it worked). There was another word that was "fræk" whose meaning I didn't understand but guessed by similarity with "freak", and my friend also told me the meaning of this word. Later on, I saw this last word in my landlady's computer in a phrase "Fniser frækt". Since there was a danish guy online, I asked him (I will write the short version):

Rochy: What is "Fniser frækt"?
Danish Guy: What? Where did you see that word?
Rochy: My landlady's computer. Is it something bad? (I had thought that the meaning of the word was innocent).
Danish Guy: No... where did you see the word before?

I explained him and then he explained me the meaning of the phrase. Then he told me
Danish Guy: Yes... actually here in Denmark people practice talk a lot about his sexual life. How is it in Mexico?
Rochy: Well... I think people can practice it a lot, but we don't really talk about it. I guess it is related to the fact that we care a lot about what others say and think about us.
Danish Guy: Well, here people practice it a lot and talk about it a lot. What about you? Do you practice it a lot?
Rochy: >:Ñ!

I know, I know, that happens to me for asking such questions. Too much time with engineers perhaps. If they had been Mexican I would have never dared to ask the meaning of such words, but I thought: "well they are open-minded Europeans". And yes! they are open minded... but apparently I am not :-P... (if you want to know, I just told him that I was still Mexican).
Anyway, at least I learned not only new vocabulary but also a bit of the culture. Summarizing, the phrases of the week:
- Oh! You already have a friend?
- What about you? Do you practice sex a lot?

Ah! The land of contrasts... I am definitely having fun here :-)