me talk engrish too…
So, this morning I was running a little late because I couldn’t find my scarf anywhere in the house, and I had to get to a 9am meeting here at school. Anyway, I was walking at a brisk pace with my headphones on, when I passed a guy on the sidewalk. As we do here in the south, I looked up and smiled, and he smiled back. Then he stopped. Shit. He asked if I could help him. Damn! Damn smiling and trying to be friendly! I pulled one of my earbuds out, and listened to him with a sort of impatient look on my face, trying to figure out if he just wanted to know the time or if he was going to ask for money. He must have seen a funny look on my face and interpreted it as some sort of lack of understanding. Because then he suddenly started talking in broken English, as if I don’t speak the language, and would understand better if he spoke ungrammatically correct sentences. It went something like this:
Would you help me, please? See, my car ran out of gas, and my phone doesn’t work… Phone no work. See, no work (here he starts pushing buttons on his phone to show me). Me, live far. Far far away… Phone no work… Do you have… just one dollar?
At this point I just said, “Sorry, I got nothin’”, and walked away. I mean, come on! Even if I weren’t a native English speaker, which I am, there is a good chance that I can understand proper English better than whatever your interpretation of my English as a second language. Sheesh.
Yeah my wife, who is form the Philippines gets this a lot too. Fortunately the people the who actually care (like my mom) understand that it’s better to speak slowly and enunciate than it is it not speak correct English. I just don’t get why people do that either.
Comment by Marc — December 18, 2005 @ 9:51 am
When I lived in Japan, I would walk into restaurants and watch the staff all “get into position” when they saw me. Out came the English menus, the picture explainations of everything, the wee-wee pads (you never know with these foreigners). Then someone would inevitably approach me carefully and hand me the English menu, at which point, I’d say in Japanese that I don’t understand English. Haw Haw Haw! I sure taught those guys a lesson.
Then when they saw that I spoke Japanese, it was like Quagmire’s house…they pressed a button, all the settings spun around revealing the real restaurant, and the place went back to normal operation.
Comment by Robotube — December 19, 2005 @ 9:50 am
Yeah my parents did the same thing when you used to come to our house. With the wee-wee pads, anyway…
Comment by friedApplePie — December 19, 2005 @ 11:12 am