Farty's Fortunes

Friday 4 May 2007

If you come from Scotland, how come you speak English?

Dontcha lurve Merkins? One little slip of the brain can give me enough material for a whole post.

I suppose it was a fair enough question, given that he was a seventeen-year-old hick from North Carolina who'd probly never been further east than the Outer Banks. The correct answer would have involved the Union of the Crowns, the Quarter-to-six rebellion, the outlawing of Gaelic, maybe a sideswipe at the Highland Clearances and the deportation of a sizeable chunk of the population of Scotchland to make room for all the sheep.

But I thought I was being sharp that day and replied: "If you come from North Carolina, how come you don't speak Cherokee?"

Which was a really lucky guess. There must be a squillion Injun tribes in North Merka, and I'd picked a local one by chance.

Hell, I was seventeen myself, so that was pretty damned smart!

But there are better ways to make friends and influence people. Like not being sarky.

Camera-ha and that. The noo.

5 comments:

Unknown said...

Hi, Farty. I visited the Cherokee reservation in 1982, very good it was too.

Ariel said...

Arf. The one I get all the time is "Wow, do you know the Queen?". I love confusing Merkins by speaking proper English, telling them to queue up, explaining about what we'll have for tea... Their goldfish impression is priceless. Another famous line when they arrive in the UK is: "Can we drink the water here?". Oh dear.

apositivepessimist said...

some of them jest don't know any better.

oooh excellent guess.

SpanishGoth said...

Probably would have been a lot more before the invading euro-twats brought all their lovely diseases.

Still, they got the casinos right :p

Mr Farty said...

John - Thanks for the info, I'll look out for other reservations on my forthcoming trip to The Canada.

Ariel - Welcome. And Snap! Snap! Snap! on the blogroll.

Well? Do you know the Queen? My sister met her once.

And I've had the drinking water question too.

Apos - It is our duty to educate the ignorant fuckers. With a wet fish, if necessary.

And of course he didn't speak a word of Cherokee. That would have impressed me!

Mr Goth - Erm, yes. Many of the invaders were Scotch. We taught them about scalping, apparently. Think I'll keep schtum about that one.