Uff Da

The Norwegian equivalent of "oy vey!"

In "The Glass Castle" by Jeannette Walls, she writes about how her mother once mentioned Jackson Pollock to a person who had been giving her rides to work. The woman said she had Polish blood and so didn't appreciate hearing derogatory names for Polish people.

That reminded me of a similar misunderstanding. I was responsible for training a new employee who had the habit of asking questions, lots of questions that had nothing to do with her job. It didn't take me long to realize this was her way of avoiding work and when she asked the next unrelated-to-anything question, I told her it was a "moot point." The next day she came to work and resigned telling everyone it was because I had called her deaf and dumb. No one believed I could have said such a thing. They were right and it didn't take me too long to realize that she had confused "moot" with "mute." I explained it to her but she still resigned which was best. She wouldn't have made it through the probation period anyway.

"Uff da" was an expression we heard often while we were growing up. Mother's first language was Norwegian and she would speak it to her brothers and sisters when she didn't want us to understand what she was saying. I always thought it would be fun to learn Norwegian but realized there wasn't much of a demand for it for the amount of work it would take. I once looked up Norwegian sayings and came across one that I recall as "you can't count the pelts until the bears are shot" - or something like that.