Habergebenen said the GPS one day. I am spelling it just like it sounds in the GPS-speech. It was one of those nice weather days, visiting Ithaca, New York, the home of the famous Cornell University.
Besides Cornell, Ithaca is known for its many gorges and water falls. It also has a great variety of foods to offer. One good place for food is Greenstar Food Coop, or as the GPS lady likes to call it, Greenster. So on this one particular day traveling from the west side of Cayuga lake, navigating in the general direction of Ithaca and the eventual destination of Greenstar, the GPS went off the rails. I assume it’s a software bug but, it reset, sort of in a partial reboot sort of way, out of the blue.
Habergebenen was what it said as I was not quite following it’s directions. This was new and unexpected. I heard a few other words I could recognize like rechts, which is German for right, as in “turn right “. So it was German-ish. But, not quite. Upon arrival at Greenstar, I looked at the settings and the language had set itself to Afrikaans, which is the first one in the list of many languages. I give them credit, whoever designed it thought of the whole world.
As you might have imagined by now the GPS was saying it’s typical recalculating in Afrikaans which sounds like habergebenen . It’s a word that sticks in your mind and now it’s gotten to have a bigger meaning.
Recalculating and Habergebenen
From Urban Dictionary…
A polite way of saying “you screwed up, idiot, try it again.”
A GPS says “recalculating” after you miss a turn it told you to take, then it comes up with a new route based on your current position. It doesn’t call you a dumbass, it simply says “recalculating” which lets everyone in the car know you are a dumbass without it having to actually say so.
Recalculating for me means, I walked into a room and forgot what I was in there looking for, or a general loss of a train of thought. But, habergebenen means some big recalculating as in deep rethinking of a situation that is fundamental or potentially off the rails in a great way. It happens when you have a dark night of the soul. Or the light version that shows up when you have lots of insomnia. I call it the moonlit night of the soul, as it is dim and not quite dark. It is a reboot and recalculating situation for your life and doesn’t always make sense when you are in the moment but, always does from a future vantage point.
Translations
Using Google translate, I get
Herbereken
for recalculating in Afrikaans.
In Dutch which is the root language of Afrikaans, I get
herberekenen
which is closer to what it sounds like what the GPS is says But still not what I hear in the GPS-speech.
Totally random but in Esperanto it’s
rekalkuli
which at least hints at recalculating and sounds cool too.
This is my first post using an iPad and it went OK. It was alright using hunt and peck on the keyboard. The word suggestions are generally helpful along with the word competition that either the iPad or the WordPress editor is handling. Next post I will try dictation out.
Buttermilk Falls
Buttermilk Falls in Ithaca, New York has a trail that runs up the gorge next to the falls and provides for some great views. In the middle of winter some times it will warm up into the 60’s. This winter 2019-2020 has been one of those very warm winters and is a good example of one that warms up nice. When it does warm up and the snow melts the falls can run pretty hard.
