Confusing people with languages

[aabram]

Do we already have language confusion topic somewhere?
Anyway, topic "about pretending not to understand a language" reminded me of a recent strange case of language confusion me and my wife unwittingly created. We were strolling about around flea market in Vilnius when we spotted few books we were interested in. As the seller saw we were interested, she approached us and told the price in Russian. Apparently she had already deduced that we were not locals so she didn't bother with Lithuanian. I briefly consulted my wife in Estonian and then talked to the woman in Russian. And then... she responded in English. Which was strange, because her Russian sounded good at first, way better than her English. My brain froze for a moment because it was so unexpected. So we stood there, us speaking Russian and she English. We never spoke to her in English (because she understood Russian just fine), and she never uttered any Russian again (because we understood English just as fine). Bizarre. But we successfully concluded our little business deal and I did buy one book (Lithuanian version of The Voyages of Doctor Dolittle) from her for 1€ which was a steal.

[tomgosse]

When I lived in Montréal I worked with a young woman named Mia. She looked like a cross between Leslie Caron and Audrey Hepburn, and she spoke English with the most delightful French accent. Imagine a breathless Marilyn Monroe trying to speak like Charles Boyer.

And, being a young man I would always try to chat her up with my rather poor Québec French. And, without fail, she would always answer me in English. Finally, I said to her, "Mia, I know that my French isn't that good, but I'm trying to learn it. So how about cutting me some slack and speaking French with me once in a while." Her answer to me was, "But I don' speak zee French." At first I didn't believe her and thought she was just giving me the brush off.

But, it turned out that she did not speak French. She was born in Romania, and as a child her parents took her to Israel where she grew up. Her English teacher was from France, and Mia learned to speak English with a French accent. When it came to French she was really clueless.

Not being one to be deterred by this, I told her that we should learn French together. After all we were living in Montréal. Her answer to that was, "But I do not want to speak zee French. I am waiting to go to the America. I want to practice zee English." She didn't like French, Montréal or Canada. She was just killing time until her American visa was approved. Needless to say that ended that relationship.

[garyb]

Tomgosse's entertaining story reminded me of something I've mentioned before, that where I live there is a big Spanish community, and people who come here from other countries usually end up making Spanish friends since international people and locals don't tend to interact much. They speak English, but often end up picking up the Spanish accent and typical mistakes. I've confused and probably offended a few people because I assumed they were Spanish based on the way they spoke English, only to find out they were actually from Italy or France or somewhere else entirely!

Speaking Italian to Italians (outside of Italy) can often cause huge confusion. They're really not used to foreigners speaking their language, and often they do a double-take and don't quite know how to react. I've had responses that seem very strange or even rude, but I've come to realise that it's just because they're taken aback. Often it's better to just speak English at first but mention that I know Italian, easing them into the idea rather than giving them a big shock.