So I have an embarrassing confession to make. Whenever I’m in a public space, and I hear someone speaking in another language, I stop talking and try to listen to whatever they’re saying on the off chance it might be Chinese and I might be able to get some surreptitious listening comprehension practice in.
I first noticed this rather alarming habit of mine while visiting Chicago a few months back. My girlfriend and I were riding the train with a friend of ours on our way to a neato little Chinese restaurant. (I subsequently contracted some form of stomach flu from the shrimp, but that’s beside the point.)
My girlfriend and friend were talking work and the future, but I could not be bothered to pay any attention to what they were saying. There was a couple across the aisle from us on the train, and I could swear that I heard the woman saying something in Chinese. So instead of listening to “our” conversation, I started focusing all of my attention on this poor couple, hoping they’d say something else and I’d perhaps understand a little. Sure enough, the woman started talking to the man and I was able to make out that the word 下雨 (rain)! Using my low-level Chinese, I was able to make out that she was concerned it was going to rain, but her husband wasn’t worried. I was so proud of myself for invading their privacy, you can’t imagine.
As soon as we reached our station and my group had moved nearly out of earshot of my target, I turned to my girlfriend and excitedly hissed “I understood a little of what they were saying! Something about it raining later on!”
Now that Oberlin College is back in session and there are a lot more native Chinese speakers around, I’ve noticed this behavior becoming more pronounced. I’ve literally kept pace behind a group of Chinese students, walking out of my way by a considerable distance, head down focusing hard trying to understand what they’re saying.
Has anyone experienced this sort of behavior? And what do people think about the ethics of this language pilfering? On the one hand, I feel distinctly like a peeping tom, invading other people’s conversations solely for my own benefit. What’s worse, here in the Midwest, I wonder further whether the people I’m listening to are speaking Chinese intentionally to avoid being understood by most of their English speaking fellow students.
The flipside of this of this concern is that I think nothing of overhearing other people’s conversations in English. Granted, I don’t go out of my way to eavesdrop on English conversations. I wonder what Khatzumoto would say about this exploitation of my environment?