Tuesday, September 8, 2009

Tri-lingual?

A friend of mine, a couple of jobs back, told me this great joke.

We were walking out to our cars after a fun day at work and he proceeds to tell the joke.

Srini: "What do you call someone who speaks 3 languages?"

Me: "Tri-lingual?"

Srini: "What do you call someone who speaks 2 languages?"

Me: "Bi-linqual?"

Srini: "What do you call someone who speaks 1 language?"

Me: "I don't know, mono-lingual?"

Srini: "American."

Srini was not American born, nor is that is full name. He also spoke 3 or 4 languages and he was giving me a hard time for being "mono-lingual."

His full name consists of a whopping 26 letters. I went to great effort to learn how to pronounce his name prior to his interview. Took about 4 weeks to get it right.

Not really sure why I recalled that particular joke today...but it was a good one. I miss Srini...such a good sport and a fun guy. If you ever run into him, ask him, "Can I tie that for you?" and see the different shades of red he turns.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm not sure you could really say that Americans speak even ONE language (correctly, anyway!)

oraclenerd said...

ouch!

i would probably be more offended if it weren't so true. i would joke with my Indian friends that they spoke better English than I did.