Lost in Translation
Dec. 8th, 2005 09:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhythmaningI had agreed to meet some friends from work in Bert’s Bar before we headed off to a party. We were dressed up – the invitations said “dress to impress” – so I was wearing my kilt. (The invitation also said “an evening of decadence…”)
Bert’s is a typical pub, in the West End of Edinburgh. It isn’t large, and it was already busy when I arrived. The small rooms off the bar were crowded, so we stood near the bar; people had to push past us to get to the bar or when they came through the door to the street; the bar staff were ferrying food to the tables, resigned to having to force their way through the crowd - us. (Bert’s is renowned for its pies.)
In a vain attempt not to have too bad a hangover the next day, I was drinking white wine, which seemed a bit weird in what is clearly a beer place. (I had decided not to mix my drinks, whatever I did.)
This old guy, maybe 60 or 65, came up to me; he had white hair, though largely bald, and a neat white beard. He was a fair bit shorter than me. He started to speak. In a foreign language. Gaelic. He babbled a sentence; I looked blank. He babbled some more, until I said in my broadest north Lahndahn accent, “Sorry mate, I’m Scottish by marriage, not by birth.”
He babbled some more – really – and I had to tell him that I hadn’t a clue what he was on about. He wandered off to the bar, where he picked up a copy of the Scotsman and stood reading it.
It was very strange: as one of my colleagues pointed out, most of the people who wear kilts don’t talk Gaelic. Most of the people who wear kilts aren’t Scottish.
And I would swear he was talking English at the bar.
Bert’s is a typical pub, in the West End of Edinburgh. It isn’t large, and it was already busy when I arrived. The small rooms off the bar were crowded, so we stood near the bar; people had to push past us to get to the bar or when they came through the door to the street; the bar staff were ferrying food to the tables, resigned to having to force their way through the crowd - us. (Bert’s is renowned for its pies.)
In a vain attempt not to have too bad a hangover the next day, I was drinking white wine, which seemed a bit weird in what is clearly a beer place. (I had decided not to mix my drinks, whatever I did.)
This old guy, maybe 60 or 65, came up to me; he had white hair, though largely bald, and a neat white beard. He was a fair bit shorter than me. He started to speak. In a foreign language. Gaelic. He babbled a sentence; I looked blank. He babbled some more, until I said in my broadest north Lahndahn accent, “Sorry mate, I’m Scottish by marriage, not by birth.”
He babbled some more – really – and I had to tell him that I hadn’t a clue what he was on about. He wandered off to the bar, where he picked up a copy of the Scotsman and stood reading it.
It was very strange: as one of my colleagues pointed out, most of the people who wear kilts don’t talk Gaelic. Most of the people who wear kilts aren’t Scottish.
And I would swear he was talking English at the bar.