Total Bitterness, Driving on the Right and Excitement

Hey Blanchettes!

Well, been to the cinema today and yesterday. Yesterday, I went with Natalie to see that Portuguese film, which was beautifully shot, but I didn't understand most of what was said, which was a bit naff, but there we are, what can you do? Then me and Mike went to see The Pink Panther movie, which was also good and funny, but randomly didn't have an actual panther in it, just a pink diamond called the pink panther. Ah, t'was all in good fun!

Me and Mike took a car for a test drive. Toyota are doing an expo in the plaza at uni, so we took it for a spin, literally, round the block. It was ok, and it killed 15 mins. I was a bit weird driving on the right, and kept using my left hand to find the non-existent gear stick to my left. Ah well! lol

Now for the bitterness part. I'm starting to get really, really anoyed by people speaking English to me. We were talking to a girl called Ana-Filipa who is in our classes. She has excellent English, but with an American accent, with all the American inflections and random words. HOWEVER, as nice as it was to talk to someone, I said that we were having problems as no-one speaks Portuguese with us, and she said "it's because we have no English people here, so we want to practice on you", which I pointed out (in an un-arsey way!) that we are here to speak Portuguese.

She said that they only get chance to speak it in lessons, which is understandable why they want to practice, but we only speak Portuguese in lessons too, and NEWSFLASH, there's hardly any Portuguese in Manchester to practice on. In fact, from 2001's census, I believe there's 30, in the whole of Greater Manchester.

It was nice talking to her, but I did get riled when she said that. I felt like saying, "look, love, if you want to speak English with English people, you need to do an Erasmus placement in the UK, because if I wanted to speak Englis all the time, there'd be no point in uprooting my entire life to sit here and be the "entertainment" for 6 months; I'd rather sit at home and do everything normally!"

It's not just her, it's everyone. Pedro only speaks to me in English, Natalie speak in English half the time, and if you mis-hear something that a shop employee says, they imediately start sprouting English. Like the other day, I asked someone in a butty shop was a filling was, and she said Frango, but it sounded like fennu, so I asked her to reapeat it (the shop was noisy) so she shouted "CHICKEN" at the top of her voice, as if I was thick. Err, no love, I do understand that Frango = Chicken, you just need to talk properly, rather than speaking like the elephant man on acid.

GOD IT'S PISSING ME OFF SO MUCH!!!! And I can feel myself loosing my rag with someone soon...

This is the problem with being English. After studying a language, I have identified 5 certain things:

1. Many people speak a bastardised version of English, which resembles little the English we speak in the UK.
2. When you speak to people in any foreign language, and you give the slightest hint of doubt, they automatically think you're having some sort of breakdown and speak English to you.
3. People think you're a tourist.
4. "There's no point in studying a language as everyone speaks English anyway", which I vowed was never true. Not everyone does nspeak English, but there's a shit-load of people that do. So why bother?
5. Even if you do speak English to people, they can't fooking understand your accent!

I think this is endemic of English people though. English people don't want to learn languages because the average Joe on the street doesn't have to! Anyone in England could come here, not speaking a word of Portuguese for 6 months and still live quite easily and comfortably. Even those of us that do put hard grind, lots of money, and lots of effort into studying a language don't ever get the chance to use it properly, as some foreigners think either "they can't cope: speak English" or "ohhh good! Someone to practice my English on!". Well I've had enough, and it's time to get tough on those people that think I'm a thickie!

There, rant over! Excitement @ coming home at weekend! Weekend JOY! *glee*

Ben xxx