Thursday, March 26, 2009

Two unexpected things

On my drive home from taking my parents back, I was listening the the radio and I heard two unexpected things.

I was listening to the Diane Rehm show. They paused to say, "The national broadcast of the Diane Rehm Show is brought to you by..."
and I was sure they were going to say "your brother". But they didn't. Instead, they said, "The German Embassy." ?! The German Embassy brings national broadcasts to people? It underwrites NPR?!


I changed the channel after a while, and got some guy talking in French. His pronunciation was good, and slow enough that I could understand most of the words. I listened for a while, and then realized that I couldn't tell where his sentences began or ended. I thought, this guy is speaking perfect French but doesn't have the right inflection. How odd. Then They announced (in French) that the show was "Radio Taiwan Internationale." They proceeded to give a web address, pronouncing "w" really slowly. It takes twice as long to say a web address in French because you have to say "w" "dooobla-vay" instead of "dubya" and "point" instead of "dot".

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