That's excellent!My teeth are cleaned now. She didn't even comment on my hygiene, I must have taken good care of my teeth the last 18 months.
There was something that really confused me though. In the German language a distinction between a polite and a casual form to address somebody is made. It is common to use the polite form unless you mutually agree on changing to the causal one. The woman cleaning my teeth used the casual form to speak to me, and I really don't know her at all.
I really don't mind this, but nonetheless it just seemed so strange to me every time she did it. Our brain is really strange if it comes to tradition and habit.
Picked up my first Win8 device yesterday. Learning curve isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Boot times are insanely fast. I'm liking it so far.
Funny I come from a different mindset. Maybe has something to do with being from North America and being brought up somewhat lower middle class (bordering poor). I often find being called 'sir' or Mr. sometimes off putting. Even at my current age where those two sort of 'suit' me. Even though I am no longer a lower middle class person it still feels funny.
Cool. What device did you get?
Got the Vaio Pro 13. Sony had an offer for vouchers and my mum wanted a video camera, so used it on that. Everyone's a winner :wink:
Btw did you get my PM? Wasn't sure if it sent. I didn't realise you needed to enable it in settings.
Maybe this is, because in English this difference is much more subtle.
In German polite form, you address a person in plural and with "Sie" for you, and in casual form in singular and with "Du" for you. Personally I think this has more to do with habit than with showing respect, adults just use the polite form. When talking to friends and family (and usually coworkers, but there are exceptions) or when addressing a child, the casual form is used.
However this can be used to actively express disrespect when the casual form is used when the polite form should be used, for example in an argument. But this wasn't at all the case this morning. I don't really know what it was, it just was strange though.
When I was learning to speak Finnish there were similar things with regard to how you speak to a stranger using 'polite' language over common usage, like for example greeting someone you don't know you use 'terve' for hello. Whereas if you know someone it typically is either 'hei' or 'moi' meaning hello.
There are many languages that have this. Also French for example. In French it's very similar to German.
I plan to start French lessons again one day. The French I learned was in Canada and I've been told by many people that French in France is a bit different. I sometimes kick myself for not sticking with French but it was taught so badly in school that it made it unappealing.
My French also should be much better. I have invested pretty much in this language, but I never use it and forget everything so fast. Early this year I was on a retreat in France and it really bugged me that my French isn't better. I also plan on starting lessons again, but I'll wait another few months. I think short-term I'll be pretty busy else...
My teeth are cleaned now. She didn't even comment on my hygiene, I must have taken good care of my teeth the last 18 months.
Picked up my first Win8 device yesterday. Learning curve isn't as bad as I thought it would be. Boot times are insanely fast. I'm liking it so far.
I'm not sure whether I'll go for French or not. My wife and I are still debating on where we want to move to next. We like France but as my wife put it, we don't really know French people that well. I worked with some French people for about two years while in Australia and I thought they were great. But it's different when you plan to move somewhere. We plan to learn the language before we move there as we feel this makes sense. We just need to make sure that's what we want to do first. This is a few years down the road unless I win lotto or something.
I like how you move from country to country, sounds adventurous
I've spent 3 months in Paris, and if it comes to restaurants and stores, I think it's about the least friendly city I have ever visited. But you'll find everywhere very friendly people, and people in other areas of France I have visited were very nice. I also have some French coworkers and one of my best friends is French, all of them are great.