Wednesday, December 08, 2004

An example of the language barrier

Since it might be hard to understand what I mean about the language barrier, I decided to give you a real life example. Our leasing agent speaks fairly good English. The landlord speaks minimal English, so we go through the agent to get to the landlord. Below is an e-mail I sent the agent to check about changing the gas and electricity into my name. I actually chose to e-mail because trying to discuss this over the phone is ten times harder to understand.
(Keep in mind that I am appreciative of ANYONE that speaks English, so by no means am I making fun of her, I just want y'all to understand what I am talking about.)

Hi, I was looking over the form I filled out to change the gas bill into my name. I noticed that only the GAS box was checked, and not the ELECTRICITY box. Does the electricity need to be changed into my name also?
Thanks,
Emily and Kyle

I'm always waiting the documents for the transfert. Normaly the gaz and electricity are on the same documents. ( document you signed at my office.) Can you, (if you have the possibility) to give me the number of the compteurs( gaz and electricity) and the index. ( like that i don't have to waiting the informations from the expert)
Thank you.
G.perelli

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like someone needs to install spellcheck on your agent's computer! Glad to hear y'all are getting settled in. Are the fries as good there as I have read about? I hope you get to watch the GA game on satellite in a few weeks. Good luck with your French lessons!

Au revoir,
Corey