apologia pro vignettes mea
At Rome airport a frightfully dapper English chap approached an Italian policeman.
The policeman was in the best tradition of Italian law forcement disguised as Foghorn Leghorn, approximating vaguely I mean, to a human sized Rhode Island Red chicken, all plumage and beak and coxcombe and eyes and machine guns.
The dapper chap enquired politely: "I'm sorry but do you speak English?"
The policeman drew himself up proudly.
"No," he crowed in English and with obvious relish. "I speak Italian."
The policeman was in the best tradition of Italian law forcement disguised as Foghorn Leghorn, approximating vaguely I mean, to a human sized Rhode Island Red chicken, all plumage and beak and coxcombe and eyes and machine guns.
The dapper chap enquired politely: "I'm sorry but do you speak English?"
The policeman drew himself up proudly.
"No," he crowed in English and with obvious relish. "I speak Italian."
posted by heelers | 2:30 AM
1 Comments:
I could tell a few dozen stories about trying to converse in Spanish, French, and German. But the one that came to mind when I read your vignette was the time I looked at a Bolivian comic book at a bus stop.
No, not a Foghorn comic. It was an anti-America comic book, and all the back-packing, camera-toting gringos in it talked Spanish exactly as I did -- badly. It was an eye-opener, for sure.
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