Tonibler and Beau Marais

There are apparently quite a few Kosovan children wandering around with Tony Blair’s name.  This cracks me up; these kids will undoubtedly go into the big wide world at some point in their lives and tell people merrily that they were named after Tony Blair.  And this will cause some amusement I imagine, since their names are not Tony Blair but Tonibler. If you read that in a different way it sounds like Toe Nibbler.Read the full article here.

It reminds me of a pupil I taught in Calais who put his hand up and in thick Ch’ti asked me ‘Madame, Madame, vous aimez le Beau Marais’ (the hideous council estate where I was teaching, living and where burning cars was the favourite pastime). To which I diplomatically responded ‘Oui oui, biensur’ then I went on about how it was a fun place to live (the children were unable to read, so definitely incapable of reading between the lines; by fun I meant ‘damnright dodgy and fairly horrific’). All the kids looked baffled and giggled because I clearly had not understood what the question.  Little Pierre (except he was probably an Ahmed) has actually asked me if I liked Bob Marley. Except he had frenchified the name to the extent that it sounded like Beau Marais.

It is one thing that never ceases to amuse me; the localisation of people’s names in a foreign language. A British friend called Ruth who lives in France has the dilemma of whether she introduces herself as Rooth using a sound she knows the other person cannot make, or to frenchify her name to Root.  Japanese and Chinese students I have taught in the past choose an English name, but it seems no new names books have been published since about 1940 as they all choose names like Gertrude or Doris.

Names, huh. Curious stuff. Nothing is funnier than teaching a class of kids and having a Fanny and a Willy in your class. Classic. Actually making them sit next to each other and asking them questions is also pretty funny. Poor kids.

Wavin' Flags

I've got increasingly excited about the World Cup. I'm not into football, (and certainly not the spoilt, cocky and evidently quite incapable English team), but Switzerland is a great place to enjoy such an international tournament. Every apartment block is now adorned with flags. Obviously there are the Swiss flags; but they tend to be there all year round and also decorate rock faces, pavements, baseball caps and anything else that might need a little Swissifying... but there are flags from pretty much every nation that has been involved in the World Cup. Where I live, there are mainly Portuguese and Italians (although their flags came down pretty quickly), and in some neighbourhoods, the St George's cross hangs from balconies.  The trick to avoid racist attacks or accusations of being a bloody auslander is to hang the Swiss flag alongside your nation's colours.

The excitement of watching a televised game in a bar here is that you can pretty much guarantee that there will be people from both team's countries present, (unless you head to a bar called Mama Afrika like I did last night for the Ghana game.), so the atmosphere is awesome. So, football really can be a great experience...I think I had let those hooligans back home put me off perhaps.