bitful

Last night I realized that my ex-boyfriend's birthday is in 5 days. Now, considering that I have not been in touch with him for 5 years (after a rough split-up) and that we had been together for 5 years, I thought it's about time I drop him a line. Then this morning I came across Francis S.' post about Swedish intakes of breath, and the first night I spent with him (the Icelandic ex, not Francis) came back to me in all its splendor - and embarassment. As Francis points out, Scandinavian, or rather Nordic languages (for Iceland is not geographically in Scandinavia) characteristically use a strong intake of breath as an affirmation. The word for "yes" in Icelandic is "já" (pronounced "hyao" while sucking your breath in loudly as if gasping for air during a a stroke); he uttered that sound a lot during our first night together and - excuse me if I'm thick - I could not possibly imagine it meant "yes". The following morning I sneaked a look at his Icelandic-English dictionary for anything resembling that adorable manly grunt, and the closest thing I could find was "hjá" (the breath-sucking was so strong that I was convinced the word started with an "h") - which actually means "near" or "beside" something or someone. Near? I was quite puzzled and started wondering if I had not precisely hit his sensitive spots, although his reactions were showing quite the opposite. Perhaps it's now time I told him this and hopefully we'll have a good laugh at it for old times' sake.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 4th, 2002 at 9:49 am and is filed under uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.