On being a foreigner in my own neighborhood

As someone who does a lot of traveling overseas, I have become accostomed to finiding myself in situations where I cannot understand 100% of what is being said around me. Depending on where I am and the context in which I find myself, sometimes I understand most, but not all, while many other time I understand fifty percent or less. When you live like that for extended periods, you find yourself developing coping mechanisms. One of these is the noncommittal response: a shrug of the shoulders and "mmmmm" while nodding the head. There's also the smile and nod or even the laugh and nod (although if you're ever traveling in Russia, I'd suggest avoiding the smiling/laughing as that might get miscronstrued as I want to sleep with you). Also, if it is obvious that you've been asked a question, sometimes smiling and nodding works then too (although then who knows what you're agreed to!) although a hapless smile and a shrug seems to get one out of these situations easily in a lot of places. Certainly, there are plenty of situations where using these techniques should be avoided, but when strangers on the street or distant acquaintances babble things at you in a foreign tongue, I've found that these tricks work well. That way you don't always come across as the imbecile foriegner who hasn't bothered to master the local tongue.

The accents of the people in my neighborhood here in the US are, in many cases, nearly unintelligible to me. The other day, the man who lives at the house behind me asked me a question four times before I understood him. The first three times, the only words I understood were "your momma." Now, my mom's over here a lot, and I figured there was a pretty good chance that that the answer to his question was yes, and I was just about to give up and smile and nod when I realized I'm in an English speaking neighborhood, I shouldn't have to do that! Finally, after asking me four times, I understood: Was it my mom who had asked him about his dog the other day?

Whenever I speak to my neighbors (which is pretty rare, and after the incident the other day, bound to be rarer) I find myself feeling as though I should emulate their speech patterns. I feel as though if I speak with proper English, I'm setting myself even further apart from them than I am already, like I'm trying to show through my words that I am somehow better than them. I was having a different conversation with the fellow who lives behind me yesterday, and he wanted to know why I wasn't married, why I didn't have a boyfriend, etc. His question, actually, was, Why you ain't got no man? and I found myself answering (without even thinking about it) I on't need no man! (And you're seeing that correctly, no "d" in "don't").

I love eavesdropping on people, and the people in my neighborhood are out in the street a lot. There's a tendency among my neighbors to shout (er, holla) jovially at one another, and I'm always trying to ascertain what's going on without actually having to stick my head out the door and see. Usually I have no clue. It's as though everyone is speaking a different language.

I spent a month in this house last summer, before heading off to Korea. After I left, my mom discovered that someone had written with their finger, in the dust on my trashcan white girl stay here. We debated whether or not it was a request (as in White girl, please stay here) or a statement of fact (There is a white girl who stays in this house). I choose to believe it was the latter.

Similarly, here's a conversation I had with a girl of about 10 who lives on my block:

Girl: I thought you was older.
Jane: Oh, you probably saw my mom. We look a lot alike.

Girl: Oh. Your momma stay wit you?

Jane: No, she lives a few miles down the road.

Linda, who started this topic off for us this week, mentioned that she got the idea for this topic from reading a recent post on my blog - the one about the crazy naked old dude in my house. Yeah, you should probably go read that, if you haven't already. I've been thinking about that incident, and wondering if there was something I did that gave the crazy old coot the impression that I would like to see him naked. Was there something I agreed to that I misunderstood? Did I smile at something that should have instead earned him a glare? Hard to know. (In case y'all are interested, he showed up a couple of days ago, knocking on my door. I didn't open it or say anything, and he went away.)

Also, because I just used the contraction y'all, I would like point out that English desperately needs a plural you, and I think y'all works just fine. So long as it's not contracted like ya'll, as that's just nonsensical.