Someone who talks to you in another language

[ArenaBoy]

I've only had one bad language moment working here at Whiskeyclone. The bad moment happend 2 years ago when I started. VIP had to be closed because it was full. A guy pulls up and asks the newbie that I was why VIP was closed. I told him we're full, he tells me to perform an impossible action upon myself in Arabic. He then drove off.

[ruffledbirdy]

My only bad language experience came when I was driving through Quebec to go to Ottawa. I had stopped in a resteraunt and pulled out my trusty little berlitz french book and placed my order. The manager lady thought it was hillarious, but was very patient with me. But this other customer just glared at me and started screaming at me for butchering the language, and that I was an idiot, and I should damn well learn to speak French before visiting Quebec, and not while I was there. On and on. I was like and it kind of hurt, cause I know I know I'm not the best with languages, but I was at least trying. I was completely shocked though. It was definitly a sucky moment.

The one nice thing was that the manager told me later that my pronunciation was actually accurate... for France. And that in Quebec there are some differences. And she said I was very very slow, but thats probably because I was new to the language. I was like "YAY."

However, I've decided that if I want to learn French, either version, I should probably try to tackle latin first. It will hopefully help my english skills as well.

Ruffledbirdy

[tollbaby]

yeah.... there's a special breed of sucky people in Quebec who believe that French is the end-all and be-all *rolls eyes*

Two years ago, an American friend of mine came to visit. I took him to La Pataterie Hulloise for a poutine (they used to make great french fries.... they've gone downhill in the last couple of years). He had me coach him for TWO DAYS on how to order two medium poutines in French. So he walked up to the counter and ordered his poutines. Considering that he's an anglophone who had never spoken a word of French before, he did EXTREMELY well, but the lady behind the counter was snarky and made fun of him in French to the rest of the staff. At which point I walked up, held his hand, and started spouting off to her in French (I'm francophone by birth and culture, learned ENglish when I was 5 or so). she did this: and actually apologized to Rob.

He's coming to visit Easter weekend. He has assured me that there's no way Poutine lady is going to make fun of him twice :P He's been practicing.

[ArenaBoy]

Hilariously, I can speak French quite well and I live near Canada. Trente minutes away as a matter of fact. (30 for you non French speakers) I do remember going to Quebec at one point with a friend of mine and we were talking to each other in English. Reasoning being is that said friend can't speak a lick of French. Some idiot overheard us and decided to make fun of us in French. Imagine his shock when I told him to go jump off a bridge in French.

[tollbaby]

Back during Referendum days, things got pretty heated along the Quebec border. When the rest of the country is pissed at you, you tend to get defensive, I guess. Anyway, that was round about the time I started drinking in bars, and I was only legal in Quebec. So, living in Ottawa, we'd either hop a bus across the river to Hull, or more likely, take a walk I distinctly remember one night walking towards the bridge with some anglo friends, and frantically telling them to shut their pie-holes before we got the crap kicked out of us for speaking English (because we were being followed by a couple of thugs). I was the only French-speaker in the bunch, so I started holding several sides of a drunken conversation in French LOL I don't know if said thugs actually fell for it or simply decided it wasn't worth messing with the multiple-personalities crazy chick, but they left us alone after that

[Anakah]

Today I had this asian man come to my window and he held out his ID and his credit card. I repeatedly asked him if he ran his card throught the ATM, otherwise we can't process the money because we can't access bank accounts.

Well, he swore up and down that he did. It kept declining. I asked him different ways if he used the ATM. He told me his room number. Doh.

I went and got the supervisor. I didn't know how to help him. She didn't either. She kind of mimed with her hands and he admitted to have not used the machine. I swear I asked him the same question like five times.

Sometimes it helps when a different person tries or if you use hand motions. Later, my supervisor said: Have you noticed when a person doesn't understand someone talks slower and louder in hopes they'll get it? We laughed a bit. It's true, it doesn't matter how slow or loud you say it, they can't understand anyway. It's like if they spoke their language really slow to me, I'd still be lost too.

This other man didn't know what I was talking about when I asked him for his ID. I finally said passport and he got it. I guess some wording affects it too. I hate the language barrier. I wish we had interpretors of all kinds at the casino but we don't. It'd be helpful. I wish I knew spanish. I know a few words from back in high school but that was like five years ago and I'm a bit rusty

[draggar]

I've noticed that a truly HUGE number of native English speakers who visit a country where English is not the native language, speak English anyway, as if everyone could understand them. Sometimes, to be fair, they were using it automatically, such as at a restaurant: "Yeah, I'll have...."

There are also the rude and self-centered, who think that everyone, everywhere, should understand them all the time. These are the people who tend to speak very loudly, because of course, that's all you need to do to make yourself understood.

I was on a cruise that went to Belieze, Costa Rica, and Panama and every excursion we had there was this arrogant, sucky, and ignorant older couple with us . First, they kept referring to it as the Island of Belieze. Well, at least they speak English there.

Panama and Costa Rica - let's say they demanded to speak to the US embassy because the people there wouldn't (couldn't) speak English to them, amongst complaining that there were no hand rails in Portabello, and no hand rails plus the stairs were difficult to navigate on some ancient Maiyan ruins.

Gee, and I wonder why the rest of the world thinks Americans are arrogant?

I work in suburban Ft Lauderdale, near Miami sometimes. Yo trabajado en la Republica de Hialeah. Great, now it's happeneing to me. I've worked in Hialeah before.

I don't know, I must look Spanish, especially for the whitest boy to come out of New Hampshire. People always come up to me, ¿Se habla Español?, I reply "Hablo un poquito de Espñol". Sure enough, they start to go on and on about how their phone sucks and how their bill is too high. Now, I did say "very little Spanish" for those of you who don't speak Spanish. Sure enough, they lose me soon after "Mi telefono es mie..." (complete that word).

I deny my knowledge of the Spanish language now to customers, it's not worth it. No one was willing to speak slowly to me and just go at 150MpH expecting me to keep up. I was once called something VERY nasty (and the customer was kicked out of the store for this) because I don't speak Spanish (the acronym would be P.M, you figure it out).

I've also seen complete morons get promoted in my company, or morons hired off the street solely on the fact that they are bilingual. They know nothing about wireless phones, the processes, troubleshooting, network, etc.. So which is better, one language and a lot of knowledge or two languages and no knowledge?? Let's say these people will fill up their own thread here.

(On a side note, some of my sales reps speak Spanish to me to help me with it, but they speak slowly and only do it when they're not in a hurry, maybe someday I can be bilingual?)