Curious....

[ladysprite]

When you wander around the city of Boston and it's surrounding suburbs with the general air of someone not utterly and hopelessly lost, you very quickly get used to random people stopping to ask you questions. Any sort of question, honestly, from how to get somewhere to where to park to what brand of shoes you're wearing. It's not something I mind at all; I'm quite fond of talking to strangers most of the time, and I like being helpful.

Today, in the interests of not having my back freeze into an even more solid slab of pain, I decided to try to take a short walk into the town square - it's not very far, and there are plenty of places along the way to pause and sit down, and the inside of my house was rapidly going from 'safe comfy home-space' to 'mind-numbing trap.' So I made my slow-but-steady way there, and was happily meandering down the main thoroughfare when a random lady called out to me, obviously spotting the 'Native Guide' sign hanging above my head in midair. Instead of the usual 'excuse me,' or 'hey, gotta minute,' or suchlike, though, I found myself being hollered at, 'Hey, hey, you, hey, do you speak English?'

For those of you who may not have met me in real life, or might assume that the picture attatched to this journal is a random one I stole, I'm.... um, about as white as a hearty glass of skim milk, except for the excessive freckleage scattered across my arms, shoulders, face, and everything else, and my hair is new-penny copper. I am so un-ethnic it hurts. I wasn't even dressed in anything eccentric, for once, due to the fact that bending to put on anything other than a slip-on sundress is beyond me at this point.

What on earth else would she expect me to speak? Gaelic?

Of course, I answered politely, and tried to help answer her question, which turned out to be more of a desire to gripe to a local about the fact that the wording on the parking sign was unclear to her, but the desire to respond in Elvish was nigh-overwhelming....

Comments

[jadasc.livejournal.com]

French? German? Dutch? Flemish?

[iresprite.livejournal.com]

German was exactly the language I was going to mention. French I'd be surprised at, with the freckles. Dutch and Flemish are largely beyond my experience.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Is there a significant population of non-English-speaking French, German, Dutch, or Flemish people around here?

Or am I just naive for assuming that the majority of people I would meet randomly walking down the street would speak at least some English?

[tpau]

well, lets see, in sommervile, brighton and brookline, everyoen and their grandma speak russian, polish, ukranean, etc... and yiddish or course. there is a large german population somewhere in the area...

i mean really, look at least as white as you and i can honestly claim not to speak english in theory :)

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Oh, I know that it's theoretically possible that I might not speak English. It just surprised me that her first assumption was that I was likely not to.

She didn't ask whether I was local, she seemed to assume that I was. Likewise, she was willing to assume that I was someone that would be able to fix her parking sign issue for her. Those would both seem less certain, to me, than the possibility of me speaking English....

[tpau]

heh. peopel are strange :)

btw, how go the green-beans? i am goign to go buy some at the farmer's market and i think dillify them either on the 23rd or the 30th... any chance of having some of yours by then?

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

There should definitely be pickable beans from our garden by then - we've already got little tiny ones about an inch long; the first ones should be ripe before too long.

We should get together at some point in the meantime - I haven't seen you in way too long....

[tpau]

yes!

we should go see a movie or something... fantastic 4? willy wonka?

also, ia m probably goignto see hamlet in teh park next wednesday,want to go?

[umbran.livejournal.com]

Willy Wonka is running at a solid 84% Fresh on the Tomatometer
Fantastic Four is running at a barely palatable 24%.

[gyzki.livejournal.com]

i can honestly claim not to speak english in theory :)

Oh, you can speak English well enough. It's just your ability to write it we question. :-)

[tpau]

well :P to you as well!

[evcelt.livejournal.com]

What on earth else would she expect me to speak? Gaelic?

Daoine Sidhe.

[rabbitorf.livejournal.com]

er, don't redheads have their own language?

btw, ran into a classmate of yours today.

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Oh? Who, if you don't mind me asking? I didn't know any of them were in the area....

[rabbitorf.livejournal.com]

Jennifer Taylor is in the area and running a house call practice for dogs and cats

[rufinia.livejournal.com]

Latvian. Just out of spite.

[kightp.livejournal.com]

Perhaps she'd just asked someone else the question and discovered that they didn't?

[ladysprite.livejournal.com]

Nope - I had been walking down the block towards her since she got out of her car, and I was the first person she approached.

Again, it's more the fact that she didn't make that assumption when she had already made other less obvious ones that croggles me, more than the question itself....

[weasel2000.livejournal.com]

I've occasionally resorted to speaking in Chinese just to annoy them. I give them a big smile and then speak chinese until they go away. Then I go back to reading my newspaper...in english... :-D

[siderea]

1) Portugues.

2) Presumably she just asked several other people to help who all responded "No habla Englaise" or the the equivalent.

[z-gryphon.livejournal.com]

Want to really irritate people like that? Smile politely and reply, in your normal speaking voice and accent, "I'm sorry, but I don't speak English." Keep smiling and don't react to anything they say, other than to repeat that same sentence exactly the same way until they give up. :)