Confessions of the Linguistic Spy

Photo credit: dailymail.co.uk

First of all, apologies for neglecting this blog a little bit – sometimes there’s really too much going on, and it has been the case with me for the past few months. Also I spent a couple of weeks in Russia and have been trying to get back into my ‘English’ life.

Today I had another volunteering shift at a local Oxfam bookshop. I was tempted to drop them for the time being while I’m struggling with a large translation project, but I know all too well that you deny yourself one thing, then another and then work just takes over your whole life. I wasn’t going to let this happen.

However, I had a hard time fitting all of the things on my to-do list into my morning, so I was running a bit late. I called the shop on my way there to say that I was going to be late and apologized profusely. To this the shop manager said ‘Don’t worry, we’ll see you when we’ll see you‘.

I remembered that I’d heard this phrase before. It always strikes me as a little bit impolite – as in “we don’t really care that much if / when we are going to see you again” – but according to the results of my Google search it is not meant to be impolite. At least I hope so!