Je ne comprends pas!
My biggest obstacle so far to communicating with locals is my recently
improved Spanish.
Every time I want to say something in French, it's the Spanish words that
come out of my mouth. Sometimes helpful Belgians take a clue and try to
reply in Spanish and this totally confuses the things. At moments like
that I feel like Gedevan Alexandrovich from Kin-dza-dza: "A etot patsak
voobsche vse vremya dumaet na yazykah prodolzheniya kotoryh ne znaet".
The reflex to respond to any foreign speech in Spanish is so strong that
it extends even to such basics as "Oui" and "merci", words that I
pronounce as "Si" and "Gracias". Yet, in the end everything gets sorted
out, even despite the fact that Spanish "si", has in French the opposite
meaning.
I don't even know why do I go through all this trouble of learning
foreign languages - their usefulness is greatly overrated. I really
admire old Russian ladies (and not only ladies), who walk into a grocery
here and ask in a matter-of-fact manner: "Pochem klubnichka?" And they
are understood! The language of commerce is truly international.
5 Comments:
Je te comprends parfaitement! Because I have some basic knowledge of 4 Romance languages (French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, in order of my familiarity with them), I constantly get tongue-tied the first few days I'm in one of those countries. Usually I gravitate towards French (e.g., "oui" instead of "si", "merci" instead of "gracias", just as you said) because I know it better than the others. That passes after the first 2-3 days, however.
Regarding your "pochem klubnichka?" comment - I'll never forget how you walked into a little store in Princeton and said the sales clerk: "Ya izvinyaus'..." (the bewildered clerk turned his head to you) "A skol'ko eto stoit?" The amazing thing was that he told you the price and you didn't even realize you asked in Russian. :0)
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