Why does pondering about the several million synonyms for “vomit” in the English language leave me thinking about sweet-voiced Norwegian pop stars? It’s all got to do with baldness. Honestly.

One of my all time favourite DJ mix CDs is Erlend Oye’s DJ Kicks. It never takes itself too seriously. It’s a fun listen. Blah blah blah. Erlend has a great fucking voice and he always seems to be enjoying himself as he’s singing along over the tracks. The reason I like it most, however, is because when he is covering Cornelius’ Drop (a song sung in Japanese) he continuously mispronounces an “n” as a “h” thereby changing the verb for “to throw” with that of “to go bald” and the lyrics end up being along the lines of “going bald, skipping, woo ooh” and that just makes it a million times better in my book.

The thing is, I’m constantly making similar mistakes. I guess it’s part of learning a new language but the number of times I say something and realise I’ve completely put my foot in my mouth is a little overwhelming. Today I was talking with some first years about sickness. We were doing some bullshit lesson on going to see a doctor and it was getting to the terminally boring stage. I was trying to ask them what the word for vomit was in Japanese and they were busy trying to get me to repeat the hand signal I’d stupidly done when they asked me what “impotence” meant. This was an exchange that was never going to end in my favour, but it went rapidly downhill when they finally told me that vomit was haki and I mispronounced that as hage (the baldness thing again) and they all burst out laughing thinking I was having a go at their homeroom teacher who is officially as bald as Vin Diesel after he’s just been waxed.

So then I started thinking about vomiting and how many different ways you can talk about it in English. Go on, have a think, I bet you can come up with at least fifteen just off the top of your head. The best is, without question, the all-aussie favourite of “havin’ a technicoloured yawn.” That’s bonza, that is.

The rest of this post is boring and I advise you not to read it.

In other, “how exactly have I listened to that track seventy hojillion times and not realised (...)” related skulduggery, today I found out that Oye also does the vocals on the Safety Scissors mix of Dntel’s (This Is) The Dream Of Evan And Chan. I have owned this for ages and listened to it many, many times and for some reason just assumed that it was Gibbard trying to sound European.

Not tone-deaf, no, just tin-eared.

Posted in Schooled on Wednesday January 25, 2006.

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