In 24 hours I’ve had two separate linguistic adventures. I suspect this is because I clearly look like both 1. a native English speaker and 2. someone who won’t just frown and keep walking.
The first was in the corner supermarket, where I was carefully considering the cottage cheese selection. A woman accosted me and asked me where she could find the cream. Though it came out sounding more like “clllllleeeem” with a very rolled R. I may have been the worst person in the store she could have asked, since I’ve given up on depending on American sources for decent milk products and I’ve never needed to use, um, cream. I pulled a half pint of “Heavy Whipping Cream” off the shelf and handed it to her with the disclaimer that it probably wouldn’t be as good as what she was used to. “This is cllllleeeem of milk?” I told her “Yes.” I sincerely hope I was right.
The second happened, interestingly enough, when I was retrieving today’s lunch portion of the aforementioned cottage cheese (my choice, anyway) from the group fridge. Another woman with an exotic accent accosted me, asking “You are a native speaker of English, right?” I nodded, and we spent the next few minutes discussing her preposition choices in a manuscript that had recently been rejected due to “some grammatical errors.” Apparently she’d been having a real problem finding a native English speaker in the group this morning.
I told her we don’t tend to make it to the office before noon, if ever. That, coupled with the World Cup fever that’s seized the non-native English speaking population of the lab, means it’s a wonder she found anyone in the lab at all.