Wednesday 26 January 2011

Sins, science and saints

Canadians struggle at times with the Aussie accent, especially if they are not used to it.
One day we were in a bookshop and I ask the lady,
"Do you have a book on the saints?"

She replied, "On sins?"

"No, on the saints," I repeated.

"Oh, on science," she said, and headed off in the direction of the science books.

Desperate to be understood I pulled out my fake North American accent, which had served me so well in the past in similar situations, and repeated my original question. To which she replied, "On the saints, I'm not sure. Let me check."

As an aside to this story, Bec asked another bookstore lady that same question two days later who thought she said science.

2 comments:

mom said...

A little girl told me she doesn't have a middle name. This I found strange as her siblings do. She commented that her parents do add a name and say it,if she's been naughty, but it's not her name.
Matter of interpretation?

Naomi said...

Heehee...like your comment mom!
I told you- bec doesn't speak like a Canadian anymore...well, not really. She's always been good at melding with the language around her- she definitely got some western Canada in her day to day speech, as well as some Southern On. I'm not surprised that the other lady misheard her too! (Though it makes me laugh!)