srah blah blah

My least favorite things to hear

Actually, there are probably some that are a lot worse. "Maybe she'll wake up if we give her an electric shock" comes to mind. But these are the phrases I would rather not hear again during my séjour in France:

"Oh? You both speak English? You should speak English to each other."

"You speak language x? Say something in language x."

I need more direction than that, thank you. I am not a parrot. Forced conversations or forced language-speaking is, by nature, forced and therefore not natural. And when I hear one of these phrases, all logical normal speech flies out of my mind and all I can say is:

"duhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

or, in the case of "Say something in Chinese,":

"Duibuqi, Xiaomu bu shi zai tushuguan."

because it's one of the few things I still remember how to say.

srah - Friday, 8 November 2002 - 10:42 AM
Tags: language

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