You are foreign, so I won't understand you.

The other day in Assam, I needed some photo copying done. I wandered about for a while but couldn't find anywhere that did it, so I went up to a likely looking local guy and asked 'Photo Copying?' He looked at me in complete bewilderment, even though I repeated it a few times in my best Inglish accent. He then stopped another passerby who knew English: I told guy2 what I wanted, and he turned to guy1 and said 'Photo Copying' in, as far as I could judge, exactly the same way as I did. A look of comprehension spread over Guy1's face: 'Oh, Photo Copying!!' and pointed to a shop nearby.

This has happened a few times to me; usually in remote rural locations that rarely see foreigners. Its as if they convince themselves before I even start speaking that as I am foreign, they *won't* be able to understand me, no matter what I say.

Has anyone else experienced this, or have any stories to tell in a similar vein ?

Tim Makins

Happened to me in Uruguay. Driving a car, went to the gas station to fill gas and told the attendant, "diez litros". Bewildered expression. Repeated maybe three time, same result. My "native" colleague, repeats, as far as I can make out, "diez litros". Attendant, with an expression saying, "Huh! Why didn't you say that earlier?", proceeds to fill the tank.

very few people on street understand photo-copying on the streets of india, here we call it "xerox" after the US co. Xerox.
if u say xerox everyone will understand

Well, I'd say the locals misunderstood you...

Photocopying may have sounded like 'foto' - which means a photograph, usually taken by a camera and 'copying' which, to the locals' ears, may have sounded like 'coffee' to the locals, coming from a foreign tongue.

Anyway, to cut a long story short, in Assam, 'photostat' and 'xerox' are the more widely used words for photocopying!

Because the Raj (and subsequent whatnot) was sort of a mixed bag, I'd rather read more posts focusing on orientalism than occidentalism.

OTOH, I know nothin' bout Assam. What's it like?

happens to me too. When I say Thorpe Park, the bus driver suddenly becomes hard of hearing & I have to repeat it at least 3 times and/or say additional locations for him to get the context of where I want to get off. This is in the UK. & this happens everytime I convince myself I can speak English reasonably well.

The look of comprehension when it finally dawns on him that I wanted to go to to 'thor-rup park' is weird. Maybe I should be saying 'thor-pee park'?

BTW, how does one pronounce Thorpe?

tuh-WHORE-pay.

duh.

Wicked; Tadka

It seems that I frequently mispronounce my mother tongue, due to the fact that people have come to speak an English here (in TN) which is much closer to the way it is spelt...

"I had a lovely "proorn" curry yesterday"

"What, Nicky?"

"proorn: you know, I know you know, I've eaten it here. Small fishy thing"

"Oh, Praan, Nicky, Praan"

As well as prawns, I've had similar problems with salt and cow .

But, even though there are variations according to regional dialect and, even, I learnt last week, caste, in spoken Tamil it seems that even the slightest mispronounciation will completely baffle the listener. Maybe Assam people are similar in this

When I was in south India I found that people who hadn't been around Americans had a very hard time understanding my English. Especially those who had less practice with English... they had a very, very hard time understanding me.

This didn't surprise me too much, because I also had the experiance of not being understood in Mexico when I spoke Spanish to people who hadn't been around Americans. Those who had been to the north were able to pick up what I was trying to say in my gringo accented Spanish, but otherwise I heard a lot of 'manda?', especially from children.

It's taken me 6 years of living with and being around Spanish speakers to lose the gringo accent, and now in retrospect I realize that what I thought was my good pronounciation in fact sucked.

Rhymes with 'Gawp'

I found pretty early on that affecting an indian accent when specifying the destination to a rickshaw driver helps a lot.

Originally, I just couldn't understand that my "Nandidurga" was apparently incomprehensable.

I get it all the time, though not in India! There people do seem to understand my hybrid Scottish accent.
Mostly I get it from my nieghbours from the British Isles and it's just as you say, usually I get a kind of off handed justification of "oh I don't understand Scottish people"
It is just a mental block I think, as stand a Geordie in front of them and they can understand him/her strange!!

have noticed a difference (in that, you are more easily understood) if you are on the phone instead?

Accents and terminology are always tough.
I know that around my Anglo-Indian In-laws, I try my darnedest to understand them but sometimes it's just inpeneterable. There's English going on in there somewhere. I'm probably just as tough for them to understand.

We always had fun in Amritsar trying to get the rickshaw drivers to understand 'Cooper Road' which is where our hotel was.
In the end we just used to say 'Cooper Road' really fast and it always worked
We found this is quite a few places, just speeding the words up worked.