Foot in Mouth!

It's been a long time since I've shared a Foot in Mouth post...and NO folks, it's not because I speak Norwegian perfectly and don't ever make mistakes. It's just that my mistakes aren't as entertaining anymore. They're even borderline boring. Or maybe just funny for those that also speak Norwegian.

So I have to share a mistake I made quite some time ago and can't really believe that I haven't shared yet. I thought of it last night when I was reading Rik's blog and he related some of his issues with the word for bag (like a plastic grocery bag) in Norwegian and how he did a little jig one day when he pronounced it correctly.

The word is pose. It's challenging for us English speakers to learn to make this 'o' sound. It doesn't exist in English first of all, and it's really important in Norwegian. The word good for example--god. That's something one says fairly often, but if you can't quite wrap your tongue around that 'o' sound as an English speaker is comes out sounding a bit like gud or Gud I should say, because it means God. So think on that one a little while---anytime in the first months that I meant to say good, it is likely that people heard God. All the assumptions about Americans being strangely religious were confirmed.

But it gets even better and definitely more entertaining. The verb å kose (which means to cuddle or in many other senses to enjoy) rhymes with pose and is equally as challenging. Norwegians use it a lot to say they are having a good time. For example: Jeg skal kose meg med ei flaske vin i kveld. This is challenging to translate into English but literally it would be: I am going to enjoy (myself) a bottle of wine tonight. Get the idea? It's an important colloquial verb to know and to be able to use. Enough said.

One time when Lars and I were visiting his family in Tynset, we were at a sports store and I tried on a cross country skiing jacket that was just a little bit too small. And so I, being the educated American girl that I am, quoted Tommy Boy and Chris Farley and said that I felt like a "faaaat guy in a liiiitle coat". Lars didn't get it, neither did Stine. They hadn't seen the movie! Which is appalling if you have any idea what kinds of movies Lars likes; it's totally up his alley. So I wanted to say that we should go home and enjoy that movie, but I didn't quite make the 'o' sound, friends. So they heard: Lars, da skal du og jeg hjem og kuse oss med den filmen!
Lars, then you and I are going to go home and pussy ourselves with that movie!


Awesome! The best part was that I think I realized it first and started laughing hysterically in the sports store.

Insert foot in mouth here!