Sample questions I understood at church today:
- Sister Hannah, would you mind sharing us with us your testimony of the importance of genealogical work, especially how it pertains to temple attendance?
- Can you please play the opening song for us? We'd like to sing "Families Can Be Together Forever."
- Who, truly, can doubt the Lord when he says that he will do nothing except he revealeth his secret unto his servants the prophets?
Sample questions I misunderstood at church today:
- What is your full name?
- How long will you be in Semarang?
- What month were you born?
No prizes for guessing where I currently get most of my Indonesian language practice.
4 comments:
I'm waiting for the punch line after your full name...what did you think they said, "What's your bull's name?"?
Now you know what it's like to be a missionary. You can expound for hours on deep doctrinal points, but can't talk about every-day things, like simple household chores, politics, sports, etc. It's very frustrating at times!
TB: Indonesian has about a billion different words for "you," but rarely uses any of them. Instead, it's more polite to refer to the person you're addressing in the third person; thus the actual question posed to me was, "What's her full name?" Since we had just been discussing the woman I live with, I assumed, erroneously, that "her" referred to, well, her. I answered with "I can't remember," and they all looked at me strangely. It took a few seconds for the ball to drop, when I finally answered my own full name. I've seen this third-person for second-person sleight of hand pulled a thousand times now, and I still fall for it every time.
No prizes?
There are never prizes when I'm right.
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