The other day Olof and I were in a local department store, buying a gift for an event we’ll be attending this weekend.\u00a0 At the checkout, the cashier mentioned something about a possible discount, I asked for a clarification, and she answered me in English<\/em>.\u00a0 That rarely happens to me–particularly up here in the hinterlands–but when it does I am invariably embarrassed, insulted, and irritated.\u00a0 I would be less insulted and irritated (but still embarrassed, of course) if the switch were because the person in question couldn’t understand what I had said, but that clearly wasn’t the case, as she answered appropriately the question I had asked in Swedish.\u00a0 Olof thinks that she probably heard the two of us speaking English to each other and had gotten herself all geared up to speak English as well, not registering when I actually spoke to her that it was in Swedish.\u00a0 Could be, but man, that irks me.<\/p>\n The next day I had a hair appointment and got to chatting with my stylist, as you do.\u00a0 At one point I had to say a word that always gives me a little trouble, so I half-muttered it, hoping the lack of enunciation would cover up my bad pronunciation.\u00a0 Of course, she didn’t hear me and had to ask me to repeat it.\u00a0 So I did, and she got it the second time, and we went on from there (my hair looks fab, by the way).<\/p>\n That got me to thinking, though, about this business with accents.\u00a0 English speakers, by and large, are much more accommodating when it comes to hearing our language spoken by foreigners.\u00a0 There are exceptions, to be sure, but in the main we adjust our hearing easily enough when we encounter someone with an accent, and in most cases we even find the accent charming.\u00a0 Swedes, on the other hand–my own children included–often react to anything other than native-quality pronunciation as “you’re saying it wrong.”\u00a0 I suppose this rigidity shouldn’t surprise me–and it truth, it doesn’t anymore, it just catches me off-guard sometimes–but I don’t think I’ll ever grow entirely accustomed to it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day Olof and I were in a local department store, buying a gift for an event we’ll be attending this weekend.\u00a0 At the checkout, the cashier mentioned something about a possible discount, I asked for a clarification, and she answered me in English.\u00a0 That rarely happens to me–particularly up here in the hinterlands–but… Read More On not getting it right<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1196","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1196"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1196\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1196"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1196"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beverlyrevelry.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1196"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}