Like a proper Berliner, Bertie slurred his words and chopped off syllables. He overpronounced some letters, mispronounced others, and threw away whatever was left. He had no concern for grammar. His friends teased that he sounded both in a hurry and drunk, perpetually pissed by everything in even his softest voice. “You’re destined to be an old man yelling at courtyard children,” Gert once concluded. Bertie responded that if he talked like the big city, then Gert sounded like a cow town.
