No, I’m an American
Yesterday on my way to pick up my children from their quintessentially Danish forest kindergarten, where they spend their days frolicking in the woods and playing nonchalantly near fire, I found myself without lunch in my gullet. Having been out shopping after a rehearsal that morning, I was in Vejle, an actual city — a small city, but a city nonetheless — and I saw an American fast food restaurant along the road. Normally I don’t eat at these places because of imagined echoes of imprisoned, tortured animals that start ringing through my mind at the sight of one. But this particular fast food restaurant has veggie burgers on its menu. So, suddenly wishing for a taste of not only a savory vegetarian patty and the condiments that ride atop it, but also hot french fries, and cold, fizzy soda, I turned off the road and into the drive-through.
Every time I interact with a Danish person in a place of business I have this little internal stutter or hesitation just before I start speaking, like how I imagine it must feel to be on the brink of jumping off a really high diving board or singing the national anthem at a major sporting event. I feel something along the lines of, SHOULD I EVEN BE HERE and OH GOD I’M A FRAUD. But after my obligatory pause, I finally get around to rattling off my little Danish phrases that I use to get the ball rolling, and I hope the other person stays on script tightly enough for me to get through the transaction before it falls to shambles.
But yesterday I plowed on past my moment of hesitation and I just did it: I ordered confidently in my Danish singing voice (okay, it’s not literally a singing voice, but it has the CONFIDENCE of a singing voice.) All went mostly well, but when I got to the end I choked a little. This has always been a weak point for me — how to end the transaction and signal I’m finished. It should be easy enough: det er alt, tak (that’s all, thanks). But yesterday, despite my bold, unwavering use of the Danish language, I could not access that phrase, and I just reverted to a simple “Slut,” (people! it’s pronounced “sloot,” okay??) which is the equivalent of saying “The End” at the conclusion of a story. So, what I said translated to: “I would like a veggie burger with cheese and some little fries…uhhh… The end.” Silence. “Ah, okay?” I said. I had burned out all my Danish at that point and, drawing a blank, I hit the proverbial wall and just went ahead and said it in English: “That’s all, thanks.” But it was an abrupt change of language for the guy on the other side of the drive-through intercom, and I had to repeat myself twice more before we came to a place of understanding.
When I pulled up to the window he said something to me in Danish, of which I understood hardly anything. But I did pick out something in the string of sounds emerging from his mouth which sounded like the Danish word for “German”: Tysk. Normally at this stage I’d ask the person to repeat his- or herself slowly or ask if we can speak English, having only really understood one word in a very long stream of otherwise meaningless (to me) syllables. But yesterday I decided I would power through my doubts and just get on with it, as it’s known that, when in conversation, we only really pick up a percentage of the words people say to us in our native language anyway; the rest we deduce from context. “Tysk, tysk…Clearly, he must be asking me if I’m German, since I only spoke funny Danish and then reverted to English at the intercom,” I thought to myself in a self satisfied, braniac sort of way.
“Nej, jeg er amerikaner,” I said to him, confidently, with a friendly American smile.
He looked confused so I said it again. “Jeg er amerikaner,” I said again, feeling clever for having made it this far in a conversation with a stranger that had wandered off script, behind the usual talk of what do you want to drink, etc.
Then I doubted myself. “Amerikansk?” I asked. Shit, maybe I’d used the wrong form of the word? Or did I fuck up a vowel somehow?
“Oh, you are American? Okay.” he said, feigning interest, and possibly stifling laughter.
Still confused. So I cut to the chase: “Did you just ask me if I’m German?”
The guy was still smiling at me, being super polite, trying his best to engage with me while struggling to overcome the extreme confusion I’d just apparently injected into this, the simplest of transactions.
“No,” he said, in English, “I just asked you if you’d like to pay.”
So I then stated the obvious, “Mit dansk er ikke så godt,” (my Danish is not so good) and we had a laugh.
But really, my original answer could have worked as well: “Do you want to pay?” “No, I’m an American.” I realized that in that moment, during my linguistic escapades, I was, in some ways, the embodiment of our reputation abroad: shitty at languages other than our own, and not wanting to shell out for a damn thing, ever.
I’ve racked my brain for what it was he actually said to me in Danish that might include a syllable that sounds like “tysk,” but to no avail. This is my work, friends. Perhaps I’ll go back soon and hope he asks me if I’d like to pay, the same way he did yesterday, and this time I’ll be ready with my voice recorder. That won’t be weird at all!
— SLUT —
