Cheese Sandwich Brain

I’ve always been pretty shitty with learning foreign languages. I WANT to be multilingual but I’ve never put in the hard work. Not really. In part, I blame the crap ways languages are taught in school—rote word memorization and little to no conversation practice. At least that’s how it was WAY back when I was in high school and college. Maybe it’s all different now?

What would have happened had I listened to Kevin and become a linguist with the Navy like him? Well, for starters, I wouldn’t have learned Hebrew or Arabic (as he had). Nope, too utterly intimidating and overwhelming. I probably would’ve gone with German since I’d already had three years of it. This would mean that Kevin and I wouldn’t have been stationed together—which would have been my reason for enlisting. Also, had I not moved to Boston, I wouldn’t have, on cousin Carmel’s insistence, been evaluated for the family curse—neurofibromatosis type 2. Given that Nf2 can be, symptom-wise, a sneaky motherfucker, it’s wicked unlikely that I’d be alive now. By the time symptoms bloom AND you've found a doc who is a talented diagnostician, it’s probably too late.

Still, it’s never too late to pick up a few useful foreign phrases like:

Brot kann schimmeln, was kannst du? (Bread goes moldy, what can you do?)

Arsch mit ohren as in, Du bist ein Arsch mit Ohren (you are a butt with ears).

Evolutionsbremse (Evolutionary Brake)—this describes a person who’s very existence halts the progression/evolution of humanity. The English equivalent would be Republican, MAGAt, Trump, six of three Supreme Court justices.

More fab German insults here.

In French?

Tu as le cerveau d'un sandwich au fromage (you have the brain of a cheese sandwich).

Il est gentil. Au village, on lui lance des pierres, et il les ramene (He's nice. In the village, we throw stones at him and he brings them back.).

Tais-toi, sac à merde! (Shut up, sack of shit!)

In Spanish you can say Estar más perdido que un pulpo en un garaje—that someone is more lost than an octopus in a garage.

In Mexico—se le fueron las cabras al monte (his goats have fled to the mountains).

In Italy, when someone is tremendously annoying, you can say mi hai rotto i coglioni (you have cracked my balls).

Clearly, the best way for me to learn a new language is to study how to tell someone, whose goats have fled, that they’ve cracked my balls, have a cheese sandwich instead of a brain AND are a full stop on humanity’s evolutionary path.