– Hey, ce faci? La job, în call-uri back to back, sunt full. Tu?
– Eu sunt în wfh, sper să mai stăm așa, să nu mai pierdem timpul pe drum spre office.
– LOL, eu vreau să lucrez de la birou, m-am săturat de hybrid work.
– Most likely, o să fie un amestec de online și câteva zile la birou. Whatever…
– Da, well, auzi, nu pot să deschid atașamentul pe care mi l-ai trimis.
– Hai că îl pun pe whatsapp. Dar te comiți că îl citești, da?
– Clar, îmi asum. Mă rog, more or less.
– Pai bine, hai pa!
(- Hey, how are you?
– At work, in back to back calls, I’m full. You?
– I’m in wfh, hope to stay that way, no more wasting time on the way to the office.
– LOL, I want to work from the office, I’m tired of hybrid work.
– Most likely, it’ll be a mix of online and a few days in the office. Whatever…
– Yeah, well, listen, I can’t open the attachment you sent me.
– Let me just put it on my WhatsApp. But you promise you’ll read it, right?
– Sure, take my word. Well, more or less.
– Ok, bye.)
Sounds familiar? It’s a fragment of contemporary language. I couldn’t even put a ‘care’ instead of ‘pe care’, my fingers would have stuck.
The language is constantly on the move, we’ve incorporated a lot of expressions, we’ve romanticised them, they’re part of our way of speaking ‘on autopilot’. Even my mother, who is almost 75 (don’t read and get upset, she’s still months away from 75), asks me about the calls at work.
The way we express ourselves and the way we behave are interrelated. It’s all on the fast track, we’re out of breath, we don’t take the time to communicate in peace and quiet, to sit ‘for a drink’, or ‘for stories’, as we say less and less. We no longer seem to have the patience to read a description, although I hope there are still people interested in Balzac, Callinescu, in the way they described the contexts in which characters were formed.
We no longer take the time to notice the first tree in bloom, to read a poem – someone was surprised last year when I said I read poetry, as if I was from another planet.
I wouldn’t want to be nostalgic, it’s a good thing I got the ‘cravată’ instead of the ‘gâtlegăului’. But there are words that have a flavour of their own, and I’d like to use and experiment with them more. Among them: ‘tihnă’ (peace), ‘a sta de povești’ (to stay and talk), ‘șugubăț’ (funny), ‘blândețe’ (gentleness), ‘a se găti’ (to get ready for an important event), ‘domnișoară’ (damsel), ‘rânduială’ (tidy), ‘zgribulit’ (cold), ‘a dezmierda’ (fondle), ‘privighetoare’ (nightingale), ‘cărăbuș’ (beetle), ‘poznaș’ (funny), ‘ageamiu’ (newbie), ‘hangarale’ (difficulties), ‘turmentat’ (drunk).
What words do you miss?
