Sunday, February 24, 2008

languages

i was sitting in the student lounge trying to study, but i was distracted by the group of students sitting near me. they were indian (sorry, dunno PC term for whatever nationality they were) and they were speaking...whatever language it is they speak. and they sounded so funny! every hear indian people speak? it sounds like the gurgling kind of noise you would make at a baby. and it was all i could do not to burst out laughing (which only would have elicited scowls from them and maybe weird looks from anyone else, cuz i was holding a biology and what could possibly be remotely funny about mitosis and the parts of a microscope?)

so i was thinking about all the different languages i hear around me every day. it's a veritable United Nations in community colleges. and all the different nationalities have their own clubs (on a side point, i was discussing this with a friend of mine who attends a community college in a different state and she said that everyone there has a ten year plan cuz they love being part of all the different clubs. me i'd rather cram as many credits as possible into each semester and hightail it out of there asap)

i realized that when people around you are talking in a language you cannot understand, you automatically assume they're talking about you. like when you go for manicures and they're all chattering away in korean. my friend once asked what they were talking about, to which the woman patted her hand and replied "you very pretty" like heck they were saying that. probably something more along the lines of "check out her shirt, man that's one ugly article of clothing, what's wrong with these weirdos they come here in ninety five degree weather wearing long sleeves!" my case was proven last semester when i used to talk to the girl next to me in hebrew and the guy who sat on my other side was always convinced we were talking about him. always.

5 comments:

frumskeptic said...

LOL. I speak russian, and I do not look russian-speaking one bit, and guess what, once in class two guys were chatting about me, nothing bad/good just that one of them was in another class with me or s/t. So, ofcourse that only happened once, but you never know if/when they are chattinga about you

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

lol, yea other languages always sound different. Like Chinese sounds like hay oh hi, the whole time, and all their last names are chow, or something like that. But yet they happen to be really smart. At least in the accounting field, there are tons of them. Some of them have little pocket electronic dictionaries they use. But them some speak such perfect English its surprising, they have no accent at all, so you never know.

About people talking about you, I never really thought of that so much. Just one time recently I went to get a hair cut, and after the lady washed it and I went to the chair to get it cut, an old lady was in a nearby chair, and she commented to the hair stylist doing her hair, something about my long hair. I guess she thought I can't hear her, because she can't hear me.

frumcollegegirl said...

oh yea, old ppl are awesome like that.

in my psych class, there were alot of koreans. one had a name like ku yung kim a so. seriously. and my sister told me that there was a guy in her class who had such a complicated name that the professor would just spell it out and didn't even bother trying to pronounce it

Anonymous said...

Typical Accounting Class:
40% Asian
30% Jewish
20% Asstd. White
10% Various other

Jewish Side of Babysitter said...

lol, that's so true!