Dear Readers:
The holidays are finally in the rear view, and thankfully we all made it through unscathed. After a rather long hiatus I’m back in the classroom, sharing the most closely guarded secrets of the English language with the youth of Austria. Truth be told, it’s wonderful to be back. The skiing was horrible and the ample leisure time was becoming positively unbearable.
Juho Karhu exploring Austria’s airy outdoor classroom.
This morning, as I sat in the teacher’s conference room sipping a tiny coffee and absorbing the news that Lance Armstrong has mustered the confidence and financial desperation to sit down for a tell-all interview with Oprah, two fellow English teachers ran up to me, distressed looks on their faces. “Dave,” they exclaimed, “thank goodness you’re here!” Yes, I thought, nearly choking on my coffee. Thank goodness.
“We have an important question for you!” announced Katharina. “Regarding proper English usage!” elaborated Waltraud. I set down my coffee, preparing to deliver a well-formulated nugget of linguistic wisdom. Lance Armstrong would have to wait, pressing matters were at hand.
“Dave,” Katharina asked, “do you prefer to say ‘I am quite keen on…’ or ‘I fancy…’ something?”
Foiled! Those cursed Brits and their rotten imperialistic empire, their forcing of Queen’s English upon all of Central Europe! I feigned a pensive look, stalling, attempting to extract any relevant context clues from the performance of Oliver Twist I was forced to sit through in the 5th grade.
I explained that to be honest, these were not phrases frequently used in the United States, land of the free, and certainly not in the Adirondack Park where I was raised. I sheepishly told my colleagues that my British friend Guy, a Londoner, would hound me and ask if I fancied grabbing a beer on Friday night, and that once we finally were out enjoying said beer, he would announce repeatedly how keen he was on the girl next to us in the black skirt. Personally, I didn’t find beer drinking to be a particularly fancy undertaking, and the more of it Guy drank, the less keen his thoughts sounded.
“We say like.” I announced definitively. “In the United States, we like things or we’re fond of them.” But it was too late, Waltraud and Katharina had already lost interest. They nodded apprehensively and turned to discuss the matter in detail on the distant side of the conference room, adjacent the coffee maker. I was not the expert they sought.
Then, a moment of epiphany! I had it! We did use this phrase!
I shouted across the conference room in my thickest Adirondack dialect, “Oh you bettcha! Let’s head down to Keene on Friday night and grab us a few rounds at the old Ausable Inn, dontcha know!”
For those who haven’t yet ventured into the North Country of upstate New York, Keene and Keene Valley are two tiny hamlets renowned for their beautiful peaks, freshly baked pies, and the Ausable Inn. They are not renowned for their abundance of speakers of Queen’s English.
Something tells me the BORG Innsbruck might be requesting a British native speaker for next year.
***
In other, more exciting news, my sister just left after a wonderful visit. We watched the famous Vierschanzentournee (4 Hills Ski Jumping Tournament) held every January in Innsbruck, and as you can see, we took our job cheering on Lake Placid native Anders Johnson seriously!
cloudy with a chance of arlberg 