Sunday, June 04, 2006

How would you feel if you were Italian?

Switzerland is a land of many languages. (So is Kenya!) German and French are the two biggest. Italian ranks third. Romansch is a distant fourth.

These two sides of a small shopping bag reflect this reality. The catch phrase is something like, "an advanced idea" [in shopping].

The other aspect of this reality is most Swiss Italian speakers are probably quite fluent in German and/or French. In the same way, most Kenyans in Nairobi are quite fluent in English. Few of the shopping bags here have any Swahili on them. (English is the language of trade in east Africa, even though it might not be the first language of speech.)

By the way, the bag is courtesy of a colleague who brought me back a little treasure from her recent journey up there.

2 comments:

Sam said...

Those are shopping bags for the super market?
I love the beach picture just below - how relaxing!

paulmerrill said...

I took a slice of the bag on each side. It is a little bag, about 5"x8". (Though of course it's some metric multiple of measurement.)

It was relaxing on the coast. Sad to be back to reality!

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