I was sitting on the bus this morning when a group of what appeared to be
japanese students boarded. This was the express bus to
Vancouver, WA, which has the remarkable distinction of being one of two buses in the area that makes you
pay when you
get off, rather than when you get on. I watched as the bus driver said repeatedly "you pay when you get off", increasing the
volume of his voice with each repetition. He did the same thing when we arrived and one of the students didn't have
exact change.
It was clear that one of them had a better grasp on
english than the others, both instances he was seperated from the group when the incidents with the bus driver took place, and his attempts at
translation barely be heard over the shouts of the
bus driver.
It took all of my
self restraint to keep from grabbing the bus driver and shake him yelling "They're
foreign, not
deaf!!".
The other thing people do is to say things slower... like the
people they are talking to are
stupid.
"fee Dubar unpa habbadash"
read that over and over again, read it slowly, say it aloud,
scream it into the air... does it make any more
sense?
I've known people who speak six
languages but have a poor grasp of english treated like mental
inferiors while in
America. It
disgusts me, I do my best to avoid this when dealing with
visitors to my
country from overseas as I hope they will avoid doing it to me. It's an
international community, we need to start looking at things that way.