Cross Cultural Confusion

Living in Austin Texas means that there is quite a prevalence of Spanish speakers in the community. The language is spoken by a good number of the community and there are Spanish labels on groceries, billboards in Spanish. Unfortunately, I am not among the Spanish speakers, although learning Spanish is on my to-do list (right now I think I may have time for that in 2015). When I come in contact with Spanish speakers, I have to break out my gestural skills and hope we can get our point across.

A few weeks ago I was shopping at a store with Morey. The clientel was primarily Hispanic and most of the conversations I overhead were conducted in Spanish. As I turned down one aisle, I heard a child saying “Perro, perro”, which I know means dog. Soon the mother of the child walked him over and started encouraging him to pet Morey by petting him herself and pulling the child toward Morey. I asked her in English not to pet him because he was working, but the message didn’t go through. I didn’t want to pull Morey away and make her think he was mean or dangerous (something that happens frequently within black communities) so in this situation I just let her finish petting him and then left as quickly as I could. There wasn’t any real harm done-Morey wasn’t distracted by the petting-but I wanted to be able to educate them just as I would anyone else who had acted that way.

When I went home for Thanksgiving, I asked my sisters who know Spanish how to say “Please don’t touch. He is working” in Spanish; "Por favor no lo toque. El esta trabajando". I am sure I will have an opportunity to use this in the future, as this is  cross cultural confusion is not an isolated event. Hopefully they don’t ask questions in Spanish beyond that, because I won’t be able to answer!