Wednesday, February 09, 2011

Nimeta

Sorry I am been absent for a few days (you did so notice!). Sunday brought the tragedy that was the Super Bowl, and then we had a good friend visiting Monday and Tuesday.

And since I hadn't seen her in a year and a half, it seemed rude to demand blogging time!

Today I was in class alone. My classmates got sucker-punched by the creeping crud. I hope they feel better soon.

Class alone is both awesome and exhausting. (I got a well-earned nap today!)

One of our assignments for today was to write a long dialogue, either occurring in a market or a taxi.

I opted for a taxi.

And for a drunk calling for one.

On New Year's.

Within my first sentence, my teacher said, "Wait, did you mean to say you shouldn't drive?"

Yep, I did.

Then two sentences later, I had the person requesting the taxi to say "Oota," which is the imperative of "wait" in a way you would use it with children or someone very familiar. My teacher thought I had made a mistake...nope, I meant to be rude.

"I don't think you are going to get your taxi."

She was correct. By the end of the dialogue, my caller had admitted being drunk and at a bar and not knowing the name or location of the bar. And saying that someone said the bar had no name.

In Estonian, you can be "with" something by adding "ga" or without something by adding "ta." So my caller says the bar has no name.

And the taxi dispatcher says, "Oh, you mean Nimeta."

And the caller said, yes, the bar has no name.

The dispatcher says, "No, the name of the bar is Nimeta."

Which is a real bar. In Tallinn. The No Name Bar...on Suur Karja 4.

I ended with the Dispatcher hanging up and not sending the cab, and, I think, with my teacher liking the story (she laughed a lot anyway).

And I am so checking out that bar when I get to Tallinn.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I thought it was weird myself that you hadn't blogged...glad you're back. = )

Diplogeek said...

That is awesome. I wish I had the energy to get that imaginative in Chinese. It gets a little harder to be funny when you're being assigned minitalks on collective farms, though. Meh.

Also nice to know I'm not the only one who came down with some kind of plague. Whatever it is that's going around, use a ton of Purell and avoid it if you can- it totally wasn't worth a day off from class (spent in a haze of cough medicine).