Let me preface this by saying I’m more amused than outraged, but this thing still needs to be posted in the pit.
Sometimes I use one of my days off to work for my girlfriend’s nursery/ landscaping company. I did that yesterday. I’m driving the panel truck to a job site and I got part of the Mexican landscaping crew with me. Three of 'em. Let me introduce them. (names changed) Antonio: Smart guy. He’s the chief of the crew. Good English. Carlo: young kid from Chiapas. 18 years old. Grew up dirt poor and trying to send money home to his family. Good kid, but his English sucks. We communicate using his broken English, my broken Spanish, and a whole lot of hand gestures. Then there’s Avi: … fucking Avi.
Avi, that fucking bastard. Avi’s new and moved in with Antonio about a month ago. Antonio got him the job and Avi doesn’t speak any English. When I tell him to do something he looks at me quizzically and shrugs his shoulders. I was cool with that at first, 'cause he does what Antonio tells him, but then I started to suspect something. I’m not the stupid gringo this guy was trying to play me for.
Back to the panel truck. I’m driving and the four of us are talking. Carlo said “He go’ed to the store” Bad English, but it’s the way the kid talks. Second language and all that. But without missing a beat, Avi says to Carlo “He WENT to the store”
BWAAHAHAHAHA. I knew it! You Mexican bastard! You’re busted. “no hablo Ingles” my ass. You just corrected that kid’s grammar, so I know you know English. Arching your eyebrows and shrugging your shoulders ain’t gonna work on this gringo no more.
I pulled the truck over, turned my head around, and just looked at Avi. I could see it in his eyes. He knew he was busted. Gotcha! you Mexican bastard. He spent the rest of the day with his metaphorical tail between his legs. I don’t hate the guy or nothing, but damnit, Avi, I’ve dealt with too many Mexicans to buy the “no hablo Ingles” trick.
Heh. I used to work with a Parisian whose English would go on the fritz whenever someone wanted something from him. When he wanted something from you, suddenly he was fluent.
I get that kind of crap all day long. I work with a crew that includes 2 mexicans hired for the express purpose of communicating with our south of the border clientel. I say south of the border because it includes Mexico as well other countrys further south. As I am in a customer serivce industry it pays the bills to take excellent care of everyone we can. Anyway, all day I get calls from our south of the border customers asking to speak to the aforementioned counter guys. When the rare occasion arrises that niether is available I offer my service. I can’t tell you how many times I pick up the phone to “Habla englase ?” or "No hable englase " but somehow thier "englase " improves drastically when they find out I’m all they’re going to get . Worth at least 5 good laughs a day
Good story, and I sympathize. But I object to your thread title. Why not “You Bastard”? Or “You Pretending-Not-to-Speak-English Bastard?”. Picking out his nation-state citizenship for the thread title label is not quite irrelevent, but almost. It’s certainly arbitrary and unnecessary.
Also, someday, when your Spanish has improved enough so that you could call yourself reasonably bilingual, you’ll find yourself using the skill surreptitously sometimes. Like, if you and a friend are with a couple of señoritas, and you want to overhear their gossip to each other about you guys, so you can know if it’s worth your time keepin’ up the mack job. For example.
Did you ever stop to consider that the Spanish speaking people are more comfortable speaking with other Spanish speakers and it’s much easier to say “I don’t speak English?”
Because I can speak Spanish if I absolutely have to. I can make myself understood and I don’t have an English accent when speakining it (well, I do have a Puerto Rican accent) but, if asked, I’ll say I don’t speak the language-- especially if I’m trying to get customer service.
Oh Fuck off. “Mexican” is perfectly relevant. You make me wonder. Are you so much of an offenderati that you think a simple descriptive mention of somebody’s nationality is a slur?
Uncommon Sense, I’m a bit annoyed with Antonio, too. He knew damn well that Avi could speak English. But I’m not really that pissed off at either of 'em. The money’s too bad to take the job seriously. But damnit, “I’m not your boss, Avi! I don’t give a shit either. So don’t lie to me you Mexican bastard”
Nice try. A “simple descriptive mention” would be “You Mexican!”. You, however, have bound your chosen adjective to a noun. Kind of like “You fucking racist dumb-ass Georgia Peach!”.
I’m going to have to agree with you. If the title had been “You American Bastard!” and had been about any number of things, there would be a long list of posters praising the OP for speaking out against the evil, lazy, stupid, politically unaware Americans. Anyone other than the US, though? " :eek: :dubious: :mad: "
Regular as clockwork, but a little surprising that it took seven whole posts before this little nugget appeared.
Your only failure is not going far enough. Isn’t “bastard” offensive to children born out of wedlock? Better make it “You Pretending-Not-to-Speak-English Guy.”
But then—isn’t there some sexism inherent in using a gender-specific term? To be safe, let’s make it “You Pretending-Not-to-Speak-English Person.”
But then—as one of our posters might well be along soon to remind us, we can’t be certain the guy was merely pretending. Maybe he has an injury or brain disorder that renders him unable to speak English consistently? If there’s even an infinitesimal possibility that this is true, we should assume it is true. So we’re left with “You Person.”
It might not have the punch of “You Mexican Bastard,” but isn’t it more important that nobody’s feelings get hurt?
Ah yes, the ‘selective speaking’ phenomenon. Some people truly do have some situations with great fluency and others where they cant speak well at all, but the Mexican Bastard in the OP does not seem like such a case.
As to the offensiveness of “Mexican Bastard,” well, it isn’t. The only way it would be is if somehow the OP implied that he was a bastard because he was Mexican, but alas this is not the case. And besides, as Vinyl Turnip said, ‘you person’ just doesn’t have the same ring to it.
I was wondering how soon we would get one of these stupid offenderati posts. The word “Mexican” was perfectly relevant to the situation in the OP. I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t have been used.
Hmm… I’m surprised that recent posters to this thread are perfectly happy with the OP’s choice for the one adjective he used for the thread title. That’s all. The thread title is all that many Dopers will ever see. It makes sense that the mods (and Dopers in general) would rather we choose our titles carefully. In this case, 33% of the title had VERY LITTLE to do with the thread. It is important for the story that the bastard in question was not a native English speaker, and sneaky. But “Mexican”? Nada que ver.
I agree that including a nation-state-affiliation label should not automatically generate offense. But including it for no reason, in a linguistic context ("…bastard") where it very well *could * be taken that way, reflects poorly on the OP. That’s all. Write what you’d like to, by all means, especially here in the Pit. But don’t take “offense” if I point out what your choice of thread title words seems to reveal about how you view the world. Yes, we all have xenophobic instincts, but I, for one, wouldn’t mind if someone pointed out when I had expressed them in a way such as this.
I’ll top that. I used to work with a perfectly competent Russian engineer whose technical skills would utterly disappear as soon as our boss demanded something of him. Once, the boss tried to get him to do some calculations involved force from a hydraulic cylinder, and then tried to break it down to very simple instructions when the Russian demurred. He responded (complete with cheesy accent) “Pi? Bwhat is zees pie zhat you speak of? I don’t hazz anzy of zees pie, I bring sandvizz for lunch today,” and so forth. It was great entertainment for all in that bay. It was such a sad day when they let him go.
Every single word in the title was relevant to this thread. The guy was lying to avoid work - that makes him a bastard. The specific way in which he was doing it was by using common assumptions about the language skills of people from his ethnic background, and that background is Mexican. That’s not irrelevent, that’s the key to the entire fucking story.
Okay, maybe the word “You,” is irrelevent, because “Mexican Bastard” works just as well as a title as “You Mexican Bastard,” although the original has a bit more punch, so I’m willing to chalk that one up to artistic license.
Yes, it could be taken as xenophobic or racist. If you are an idiot. Luckily for the OP, the percentage of idiot posters in this thread is almost, but not quite, zero.
Oh Christ. What do you want from me? Just tell me. How do I stop you hijacking my thread? What kind of apology should I make that will shut you the fuck up?
I like Mexicans. The OP is about the language difference. And yes, the cultural differences sure as hell play a part. I wasn’t really annoyed with Antonio. I busted Avi, and stopped the truck to look at him so he knew he was busted. Then I looked at Antonio. He cracked up. Burst out laughing. Thought it was fucking hilarious. I thought it was pretty damn funny, too. HaHa! Gotcha!
The only thing approaching racism in my OP is the use of the word “gringo”. And I used it in reference to me.
