L: We went to a little 'wild west frontier' museum place today. It was deserted, like a ghost town. You had to go into the little office to register on arrival and inside was a little old lady.
People are pretty polite generally I've noticed so in my best, most pleasant and polite English I greeted her with 'Good afternoon' - and a smile. She looked confused and said 'what, huh??'. I repeated my cordial greeting and she still couldn't understand me so Doug helped me out with a 'Hi there'.
She went on to say that they have visitors from all over the world but she's never heard someone speak this language - and could I understand any English, could I read English and could I write any English because I had to sign my name......
After she gave us a little introduction to the place she gave us a leaflet and asked again if I could read English - because she 'doesn't understand Swahili or whatever language you were talking - What language was that you were talking to me by the way??!'
'English' we replied - 'we are English!!' I just stopped short of telling her I was an English teacher, we were laughing that much!!
Funny...
LOL love it! George Bernard Shaw really was right about us being two countries separated by a common language.
ReplyDeletePeople kept asking us "what accent is that?" too. Couldn't believe it, although the even bigger shock for me was that they understood my Hucknall accent better than Natalie's Hugh Grant posh bugger accent. What's that about?!
ReplyDeleteLoving the blog by the way :) Have you managed to replace all of the wine with blood again now? x
I was on a coach in rural Scotland once and a woman asked me if I was Canadian. She was really alarmed when i said no as she said she'd never heard an accent like mine and never seen an English woman reading a book. WTF??
ReplyDeleteAre you able to turn the captcha thingy off on your blog? My eyes are too old for that malarkey :)
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