"Americans, Famous Worldwide as Linguists" Dept

So you guys reading this next little vignette are going to think I'm bragging about how well I speak Russian. But if y'all were Russian, and we were sitting around the dinner table, and I told the story the way it happened (which is to say, with the conversation given verbatim in the original Russian), you'd know without being told what's truly funny about it.

I found out about a new Russian grocery store the other day and went to check it out. I found it without any trouble and went in, and looked around a bit. I figured I'd pick up some khalvá (I can't really describe it but it's made from sunflower seeds), which Duane and Desiree love; but I didn't see it.

About this time the owner comes out of the office, so I just ask him:

"Khalvá yest?" That is, "Do you have any khalvá?"

"Yes," he answers (but in Russian), "over there."

I look to where I think he's pointing on the shelves across the room, without realizing he's actually pointing at the counter right in front of him; but eventually we get it straightened out. But there are actually two different brands of khalvá, both at exactly the same price.

"Which one's better?"

He looks at me with an air of being mildly offended. "Everything I sell is good."

I chuckle and pick one of them at random. I start to take out my wallet, and he explains that I don't pay him there; we have to go to the cash register at the front. "Ah, I see," I say, and we march over to the cash register and take up our respective posts.

"How much do I owe you?"

"Three dollars and twenty kopecks," meaning $3.20 (you run into this idiom occasionally here in the U.S. with Russian immigrants, kopecks being a small part of a ruble the way cents are a small part of a dollar).

I pay him, and as he's making the change he asks me -- this is all still in Russian, of course -- "So, what country are you from?"

I chuckle because I figure he's teasing me. "Ya Amerikányets" -- "I'm an American."

He looks me in the eye without the slightest trace of a smile and says, "Nyet, éto ni právda -- Amerikántsi ni tak khoroshó govoryát po-rússkiy. Otkudá vwi?"

Which means, "Oh, no, you're not -- no American speaks Russian as well as you do. Where are you from?"

Now, I would be really flattered by this, except that I know what's truly hilarious about it -- I don't really speak very good Russian. My Russian is probably at most sixth-grade level. But it's so taken for granted by everybody else in the world that Americans can't be bothered to speak anything but English, that even my halting Russian was "too good to be American" (at least, good enough for him to tease me by pretending I couldn't be American and speak Russian like that).

Well, I convinced him (or he pretended to be convinced), over the next two or three back-and-forth exchanges, that I really was American. And at that point, even though we had been speaking happily in Russian up until then, he switched over to a very painful, careful, deeply accented and halting English, much worse than even my Russian -- and insisted on speaking English the rest of the conversation. For, after all, everybody knows there's no point in speaking anything but English to Americans... ;-)