What Completely Insignificant Things Have I Done Today?

[Opsa]

I was supposed to be working on a script, but I wasted much of the day compulsively researching hotel amenities and rates. Gotta spend one day out of town next week and I kinda went bonkers trying to get the most for my pennies.

[Griffin NoName]

Yes, saving pennies takes time, and time is money !

[Aggie]

S'why I don't bother much with the stock market any more.  With the amount of money I'm comfortable playing, the amount of time I need to spend in order to play well makes a terribly poor wage, even when I do well (percentage-wise).

[pieces o nine]

I splurged for a lovely salad at a local buffet, which I hadn't been to in years.  The young, blonde waitress reached for the receipt clarifying what I had chosen, when she introduced herself as my server. I said, "Oh, did you need this?" and reached for it to hand to her.

She froze, turned to me with a questioning expression, and said (slowly), "English not so good?"

My turn to freeze and look confused, thereby confirming her assumptions. My mind raced through response options while trying to decipher what she thought I said. Probably 4 out of every 5 patrons today were speaking Spanish or English with a Spanish accent, so I knew responding in my high school Spanish was a no-go. My one year of conversational Russian has atrophied from lack of anyone to converse with, and "How does one arrive at the Kremlin?" wasn't going to take me very far...  I can count to ten in Welsh, but didn't know how long I could string that out...  Sadly, I didn't think of talking like a pirate until much later, so I just said, "I said,  did you need this?" And tried to smile like someone born in Amurka.

When she visited tables around me she checked in with complete sentences. When she checked on me she restricted herself to gesturing to my iced tea and brightly asking, "Refill?"

The table next to me was occupied by two young couples with too many fat, tow-headed, shrieking toddlers, whose young mothers carried on an endless conversation mystified as to why they couldn't lose those last 25 post-partum pounds while eating everything on the buffet, including some of all the pastries. They left a terrible pigsty when they decamped. The waitress came back and said, loudly, "REALLY?"  before actually sitting down in defeat while assessing the mess.

Several neighboring diners spoke to her kindly and reassuringly. My comment to her, "I also waited tables in college and swore to god I would never behave like the people I waited on, when I became a customer," made her do a double-take. Perhaps she thought I mastered English as she is spoke during my time there...



Dear siblings: I have been accused of being incomprehensible by many functionally illiterate co-workers, and some Wiscaaaaahnsinites originally mistook my South Dakota vowels for Swedish (?) but I've never actually been mistaken for a furriner by a waiter before. Does my general written discourse here seem strange to you? Be honest with me, I implore you! I believe that the only one of you who has actually heard me speak is Grif; trouble having I wiss ze English?

           

[Aggie]

I've never noticed you having any difficulties with your second language.

My level of discourse drifts mightily depending on the audience. My kitchen mouth sounds more like something out of the Pirate's Cove. It's rare that I speak in real life the way I write here.

[Bruder Cuzzen]

You describe the server as a young , blonde , woman .
You may have your own answer already .

[Griffin NoName]

I am not aware of any problem with your written English or your spoken English. I am puzzled there was a problem.

[Opsa]

Sounds to me like the waitress was having quite a day, heard your  "Oh, did you need this?" as a non sequitur to her introducing herself and gave you a flip reply. You were so nice to lend her your understanding.

I just watched Nina Hagen sing "New York New York" on YouTube and nearly cried with nostalgic joy.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Perhaps the lady was Amish and spoke one of those German/Dutch dialects...?
---
Do you have one of those German/Dutch accents? 

[Swatopluk]

You botched that link, Opsa.

[pieces o nine]

Did you mean this version?

[youtube=425,350]A-r9TQmpkNA[/youtube]

[Opsa]

YES!!!!  Thanks. I love her so much. She's a demon pixie with one of those German/Dutch accents. (Well, not so much Dutch.)

[Swatopluk]

Totally reminds of One Night in Bangkok
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlihFItzYEc

Here's one of Nina's early superhits:
Original 1974
http://vimeo.com/56693598

Sung again many year later (with English subtitles)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko1IBe4qh1A

[Darlica]

Dear siblings: I have been accused of being incomprehensible by many functionally illiterate co-workers, and some Wiscaaaaahnsinites originally mistook my South Dakota vowels for Swedish (?) but I've never actually been mistaken for a furriner by a waiter before. Does my general written discourse here seem strange to you? Be honest with me, I implore you! I believe that the only one of you who has actually heard me speak is Grif; trouble having I wiss ze English?

           

I never heard you speak so I can't be the judge of that but being Swedish I could probably answer the question if you sound like one of us if I got the chance.
As for your writing... Well you spell better and have a better "flow" in the text than most Americans I have encounter online (except on this forum which seem to be an anomaly in so many ways...).

[Swatopluk]

I always have to stop myself from imitating/mocking other people's accent when speaking English. It's too easy to be mistaken as making fun of them (e.g. putting a French accent on my English when talking with a French person in that language). I am not sure how my English sounds when I do not think about pronounciation. The moment I do I automatically switch to a chosen accent (the most neutral one being an attempt to sound like an old-fashioned BBC radio announcer).
In German I normally speak even informally in High German with but a hint of the Berlin 'g' (that sounds like the y in yarn at the beginning of a word and like the ch in loch at the end). But I use a variety of mock accents when I get upset or sarcastic. It's my way of putting irony tags on my speech. Be careful though when I start to speak overly calm and overpolite. The umbrella in your face may be just moments away.

[Griffin NoName]

I have a habit of picking up the accent of the person I am speaking to. It's automatic and I find it hard to stop and talk in my normal accent. I am always terrified the other person will notice and think I am being patronising (patronising because my normal accent is middle-posh London, so it's sort of like talking down). It's like my empathy gland goes into overdrive.

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

I have a funky mixture of accents, I learned English watching an old (70s?) series (I believe it was from the BBC), plus the occasional traveler from the US, Canada or Europe that came home. Later my French Horn teacher (who is American) did her lessons in English and after I worked for BP where I had to deal with English and Scots. By the time I got to Miami (where you can hear a heavy accented English from Cubans and other Hispanics) I spoke more with a brit accent, that now has been softened to American (although I imagine that not enough to fool anybody).

In Spanish, apart from a few Colombian accents, I can do a pretty close Mexico DF accent, a close porteño (Buenos Aires), one of the Cuban accents (the one harder to understand) and to a degree, a generic Chilean accent and Castillian (I can mock Andaluz more than actually do it). 

Subtle accents and subtle differences are harder for me to do (ie: I can do Scot but I don't know how to do Irish, or have trouble doing a credible cockney or Australian), I would have to spend enough time with someone from the Indian subcontinent to be able to do that accent, same thing with the Caraqueño accent (note: not all Venezuelans have the same accent).

Funnily enough, a French teacher I had said that I had an specific French accent (I imagine Parisian but I have no clue), not that makes any difference considering that I'm not fully fluent in French. In Italian I should have an Hispanic accent because I'm more concerned with grammar than accent.