Moving the Clunns

I've been here less than three months and I am already assimilating it seems.

Yesterday, I called the bus driver "love".

He was the nice, older one with a toothy grin and loads of tattoos on his arms. Scared the living daylights out of me when that very bus driver called me "love" the first time I got on a bus here. As does the cashier in the supermarket (female). Or the librarian. Or the guy who fixed our shower.

Lordofclunn and I both have that strange kind of generic accent in English that one gets when working in an English-speaking environment, where most people are not native English speakers. Due to my time in Pennsylvania, many Americans claim I speak like a New Yorker, but I think I only do so in America, when I hear the "twang" everywhere. My head of department here in England says I have a somewhat Irish accent. Unfortunately I haven't been to Ireland yet and would probably not recognize an Irish accent if my life dependet on it.

Anyhow, Missy of Clunn is learning the language at lightning speed and today, when I was speaking to her - in German, by the way - she looked at me and asked "Why?"

She did not say "Whai?" as I would do, but rather that stretched, southern English "Wo-uy?".

I didn't even recognize her voice.

Scary.

So I baby-sitted my friend's kids tonight (it was actually sitting on the couch with the three of them watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire), I heard her again talk to the smaller one in English and she is doing the "so"="sew", "do"="dew" thing in a nasal, lazy drawl. It's so adorable!

I paid attention to the whole language thing specially, because of the lovely audio posts many of you have been doing. It was suggested that everybody does a post saying only "Draco".

While watching the movie tonight, it occurred to me that I'm pronouncing his name wrong. I checked several languages on the DVD and in all versions it is "Drayco". Now, I had read five of the books before I ever watched an HP movie and in my head, it was always "Drahco". I think it will stay this way for me...

Am I rambling? It just feels so good to be online again...

As for assimilating, I bought a poppy today to wear on my lapel and plan on purchasing a tiny plum pudding. My German colleagues claim that it is absolutely dreadful and exclusively made for English stomachs.

I shall see.