Howling

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It was a real puzzle. When we bought our West Hills house, my father-in-law was still around and helping out. Some of the help we got from him was even helpful. Well, OK, most of it was. He did a few things we asked him not to, and in one case we had to do a little damage control, but for the most part he really helped a lot. That house was a fixer upper too. The bushes and grass in the yards were long dead, the fences were damaged, the sprinklers were pretty much not connected, and there was a thick bank of ivy with a lot of debris in it. There were old bikes, toys, booze bottles, many weird things. He hired some day laborers to rip out the dead plants, rip out the ivy, pull out all the debris, etc. Then he came and talked to us about hiring a company to do the "howling". Well, Richard and I looked at each other really funny. Now you must understand, my father-in-law was German, had never formally studied English, learned English from printed matter and got his pronunciation by pronouncing the English words as if they were German. It made for some interesting and funny times trying to interpret. For example, the words rug, rack, rock, rake and a few others that I can't recall right now, sounded exactly the same, and it was like a little puzzle putting them into context and figuring out which was the right one. But we could always do it. Until howling... So we looked at each other funny and asked him for an explanation. Well you see, there was all this debris and we needed somebody to howl it away. Yep, hauling. Au in German is pronounced like ow in English. How (hau?) we laughed. That is the first and last time I ever recall that even Richard couldn't understand what he was saying. Which reminds me of the times on television that I have seen them put English subtitles for people who are already speaking in English (with accents). What's up with that?