Monday 3 June 2013

These foreigners don’t understand the language anyway: 02 (England)



A student’s brother, Bill, had learned to play the flamenco guitar in Spain and was able to speak fairly fluent Spanish.  This was back in the 1970s when it wasn’t so common for British people to go to Spain and not many Brits could speak Spanish.  (The latter is probably still the case now…)

Back in England, Bill was in a pub one day, sitting at one end of the bar, drinking, with a middle-aged Spanish couple at the other end of the bar.  The wife then addressed her husband, without keeping her voice down (presumably because she assumed that people in Britain couldn’t speak any Spanish at all):

Wife:  Look, look!  Look at that man at the end of the bar.  Look how long his fingernails are.

Husband:  He’s either a flamenco guitarist, or he’s a poofter.

As Bill left the pub, he walked past them and said, in fluent Spanish, “Actually, I do play a bit of the flamenco guitar.”

The couple’s jaws nearly touched the floor.

(England, 1970s)

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