Jokes For Polyglots Part 2

This isn't so much of a joke as a humorous anecdote, but I was picking up my main source of linguistic hilarity from school and on our way down the stairs we walked past the Spanish teacher who said to us ¡adiós, adiós! In response to this he said:

"Hey, my name's not adios!"

Jokes For Polyglots Part 1

Recently I was learning about the reflexive and how it works in Brazilian Portuguese and I asked if there were any subtleties to the placement and the acceptability of either form. His response was Não me importa...

o não importa me!

I guess you had to be there.

More Posts!

Now that some chaos have subsided, I can take some time to think about linguistics and write again.

A couple of days ago I ordered some Chinese food and while I was waiting, I hear a conversation between the young man who was handing my order, and a little girl who answered the telephone. Both seemed to me to have a near native grasp of English, but did have traces of an accent, so I cannot be sure exactly where they stood. I did hear them both speak Chinese as well.

This was a few days ago granted, but I assure that the crucial part remains unchanged.

Little Girl: The last call did not want delivery.

Young Man: Why didn't he?

Little Girl: It wasn't a man, it was a woman.

Young Man (irritatedly): Fine. What did they want?

I thought it was very interesting that he decided to use the gender neutral pronoun they, even when he already knew the gender of that person. It was as if he was adding extra emphasis in a way to cover his bases, so end any further debate on the issue, even though logically there should not be any. It was also nice that someone who might not have English as their first language use they as a third person singular gender neutral pronoun. So many times I hear of people claiming this to be unacceptable, even a friend of mine worked as a tutor for (mainly foreign) students in a linguistics department rallied against it!