Re: CHAT: Being taken for a furriner ...

--- Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:

> Had a strange experience on the train this morning;
> I went to the train hostess
> to buy new tickets, and, of course, addressed her in
> Swedish. Yet, she replied
> in English, and continued to use it for a few more
> turns before switching over
> to Swedish in the face of me stubbornly sticking to
> the same. She spoke English
> with a clear Swedish accent, so I can only assume
> she thought I was a foreigner
> and tried to be helpful.
Hmm, once I was a guide for an Australian girl in
Paris, and I tried so hard to speak English all the
time that, as I addressed a guy standing on a taxi
file near Etoile, I talked to him in English too. Only
after a while I realized that he was French, I was
French, we were both standing in the middle of the
capital of France, and there was absolutely no reason
why we should not speak French together. And, true, if
proved to be much easier when we went on in French.

Perhaps your hostess was in the same situation.


=====
Philippe Caquant

"High thoughts must have high language." (Aristophanes, Frogs)


		
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