British student Alex’s father, Bill, had done military service in India in the 1950s, and picked up some Urdu. Back in England upon retirement, he was in a mini-cab in the midlands or the north of England, trying to get somewhere, when he heard the driver asking his bookings office, in Urdu on the car radio, how to get to the destination address. Bill quietly said in English to the driver, “You don’t know the way, do you?” The driver almost crashed the car. (England)
Bill’s job had also sent him to Taiwan for a couple of decades (as well as Singapore and Sri Lanka). Alex’s sister, Beatrice, went to the American School there, and could speak fluent Mandarin. She then attended university in LA. One day, in the ladies’ loo, she found two Chinese girls complaining freely, in Chinese in the presence of Beatrice, a white girl, about life in the West: these Westerners and their awful food, their culture, everything under the sun. After enduring five minutes of this, Beatrice said to them, in fluent Chinese: “If you dislike the West so much, why don’t you just go back to your country then?” The girls’ faces were a right picture. (Los Angeles)
Also read: These foreigners don’t understand the language anyway: 01; These foreigners don’t understand the language anyway: 02
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