Used Own Language After 10 Years

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31365, 10 May 1967, Page 2

Used Own Language After 10 Years

A Norwegian woman, who now lives in Christchurch, spoke her native language yesterday for the first time in 10 years. She is Mrs Else-Marie Pitman, the wife of an Australian company director in New Zealand.

Mrs Pitman visited the practice site for contestants in the 1967 World Plough titles at Lincoln College yesterday to catch up on the news from home and to talk to Gunnar Hersleth, the 21-year-old reigning Norwegian plough champion and Anders Ness, runner-up for the Norwegian 1966 title. They had not met before.

But the Norwegians and their manager (Mr Albert

Swift), a Swedish ploughman (Gunnar Johannson) and his manager (Mr Arvid Johansson) felt they already knew Mrs Pitman.

She had been responsible for translating letters of introduction and welcome to the Norwegians and the Swedes.

“Although we come from scattered parts of the country, the boys were quick to pick up my local dialect,” Mrs Pitman said.

Mrs Pitman took her two Australian-born daughters. Tone (seven years and a half) and Lise (four years and a half) with her to meet her countrymen at Lincoln. Neither the children nor their father speak any Norwegian.

The former Miss Else-Marie Birkeland of Haugesunde, Norway, Mrs Pitman met her husband when she went to Australia in 1958 to work for a Norwegian-American firm in Queensland.