Turnin' the cultural tables....
Okay, we've all been there. Either us, in a moment of cultural insensitivity, or, more likely, you were with an assinine friend (be it a normal state of being, or lapse of PC moment)... Yes, I'm talking about... mocking the Asians. You've been there. You've seen it. You probably didn't do it, as my faithful readers are all courteous, cultured, sensitive individuals (yeah, okay, whatever). You're at a Chinese restaurant, and the "theme appropriate servers" break into a conversation in their native tongue. It is inevitable thatan Occidental is going to screw their face up into a bad Oriental parody and say, "hoy chong kong, doyyyyyy fu tu ho!" Okay, maybe funny when we were, say, six, but today? Not so much.
Having, through odd circumstance, had pizza for dinner for three nights in a row, I decided that lunch need, very badly, to be something completely diametric to pizza. (Another geographic phenomenon: those from the South "get a pizza". From the North, they "get a pie". Weird. But I digress...) I decided that Chinese would fit the bill nicely, so headed to one of the local buffets (of which we've about 6,037, all within a couple of blocks from each other....). While masticating my General Tso's, I overheard the young girl at the register speaking with the hostess. Now, it is not exactly listening in, as I really couldn't understand what they were saying, and they were speaking loudly enough that I really wasn't being nosey, but something about the conversation nagged at the back of my brain. I realized that a few English words were slipping into the conversation.
The conversation went something like this (I'll just use random letters in place of the chinese words, so as not to appear like "that culturally insensitive guy"...):
"Gkdkd kwkdksdk Yahoo hekeke, fjfds odsl Laugh Out Loud" Followed by a burst of uproarious laughter.
After a bit of this, it occurred to me that...they were mocking Americans and our IM slang. Hey! That's.... pretty much what we (our assinine friends) do to them all the time. I didn't find it very amusing at all, but then again, it was hard to get indignant....
Oh, well. Some of our slang is pretty stupid. I suppose it was the least we deserve... Dammit.
Having, through odd circumstance, had pizza for dinner for three nights in a row, I decided that lunch need, very badly, to be something completely diametric to pizza. (Another geographic phenomenon: those from the South "get a pizza". From the North, they "get a pie". Weird. But I digress...) I decided that Chinese would fit the bill nicely, so headed to one of the local buffets (of which we've about 6,037, all within a couple of blocks from each other....). While masticating my General Tso's, I overheard the young girl at the register speaking with the hostess. Now, it is not exactly listening in, as I really couldn't understand what they were saying, and they were speaking loudly enough that I really wasn't being nosey, but something about the conversation nagged at the back of my brain. I realized that a few English words were slipping into the conversation.
The conversation went something like this (I'll just use random letters in place of the chinese words, so as not to appear like "that culturally insensitive guy"...):
"Gkdkd kwkdksdk Yahoo hekeke, fjfds odsl Laugh Out Loud" Followed by a burst of uproarious laughter.
After a bit of this, it occurred to me that...they were mocking Americans and our IM slang. Hey! That's.... pretty much what we (our assinine friends) do to them all the time. I didn't find it very amusing at all, but then again, it was hard to get indignant....
Oh, well. Some of our slang is pretty stupid. I suppose it was the least we deserve... Dammit.
posted by Turtle at 1:18 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home