Language, Language

My last class of the day is Spanish literature (also my hardest class of the day, but those are the breaks). I'm already thinking in Spanish when I leave class, so I generally try to keep my thoughts going in Spanish until I get home and must use English with my husband (although he does do his best to take advantage of my Spanish education in a 2-for-1 kind of way).


So the other day, I got on the bus, pulled out a Spanish textbook and was concentrating pretty intently (I have to, in order to understand some of this stuff) and didn't really notice that the bus was filling up, until a woman with two little girls came and sat down next to me. There was space for the woman to sit with one of the girls on her lap, but the other one had to stand up and the nearest place for her to hold on was on the other side of the bus.

Now if I were on a bus with my small kids, I would want them within reach (especially when standing). And I can think of all sorts of reasons for this, not the least which would be to make sure they don't fall over when the bus stops and starts--kids are, on the whole, pretty easily distracted and might well forget to hang on.

No double-deckers in Austin, alas.

So, I stood up to give the girl my seat (we were pretty close to my stop, so this was not as much of a sacrifice as it may sound), and since I was already thinking in Spanish, I told her, "Siéntate." The mum smiled at me and we went on, only for me to think to myself, "Dummy!" You see, it's not technically polite to assume that someone doesn't speak English. Since the mother smiled at me instead of scowling, I can only suppose that my guess was correct, but still... It would be nice for me not to be an insensitive jerk from time to time.

It gives a whole new meaning to "watching my language".