Comments on: The Oy Vey – Amai Connection

By: s.

s. — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:33:14 +0000

I always associate oy vey with kind of an unpleasant shock or “ugh” as that’s how I used it in Russian. (they only use Oi, not the vey) But amai, like someone said earlier… is very flexible to me. An “oh boy” or “oh my!” but never like “ugh”… but I’m not Jewish/a speaker of Yiddish so I don’t know much about the proper uses of oy vey. I have noticed quite a commonality between common Yiddish words used by Jewish-Americans and Dutch, though!

I think the hardest words for me to remember in English are words I associate with another culture, so if I associate something with Belgium then I remember the Dutch or French… (for instance, the commune, because I in Brussels and also I would have rarely said “town hall” in English… the same goes with things such as Vakbond or Mutualiteit…) It’s an interesting process! When I came back from a year in Russia it took me ages to think of the word “sour cream” because the stuff is SO POPULAR in Russia that it’s only natural to use the native word. That, and… it’s much easier.

By: Cindy

Cindy — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 06:46:32 +0000

Exciting! I think I had one of those moments when I was sarcastic to my French teacher…in French.

I’m going to take some pictures of a Taiwanese 7/11 to show you…

By: jen of a2eatwrite

jen of a2eatwrite — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 17:10:41 +0000

I love that kind of transitioning. You’re on your way!

By: Lydia

Lydia — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 15:33:12 +0000

Wow, that is so impressive. How long did it take you to get to this point? I can’t even remember to say sorry in French when I bump into people in the metro.

By: Goofball

Goofball — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:59:35 +0000

hahaha, some foreigner once told me that “Amai” is the most polyvalent word in Dutch and can be used in all kind of sentences depending on the intonation or context, so it was an important word to learn quickly. He gave some examples where it expresses amazement, frustration, joy etc… I had never thought of it and thought it was quite funny :p

By: Goofball

Goofball — Fri, 03 Jul 2009 13:57:59 +0000

I remember very clearly being on an exchange that in the beginning I used the dictionarry Dutch-English all the time.
In the second half of the year I was writing a letter to my parents talking about avalanches and all of a sudden I had no clue anymore what the dutch word for it was. How strange it is to grab a dictionarry English-Dutch to look up a word in your own mother language!!!!

I also noticed that when I talk about my experiences in Canada I keep slipping English words into my story. One time somebody told me “well that makes perfect sense right…your memories are in English as you lived these experiences in English”. I guess indeed I’ve had some experiences purely in English that I never needed to translate before and hence when I all of a sudden need to talk about them in Dutch, I need to translate them for the first time.

Once I heard from a Canadian exchange student in Japan that after x months he had his first dream in Japanese. Finally he had mastered the language enough to dream in Japanese. In this dream his parents were there and they too talked to him in Japanese and he got so mad at them in the dream for already talking Japanese so quickly while it had cost him so much effort to learn the basics of this language

It are very weird processes indeed and it’s so strange when it is happening to you.