While wandering around today, I witnessed a wonderful verbal smackdown today. I'm not EXACTLY sure what provoked it, because I stumbled upon it partway through (and several others were standing around staring, so I felt okay about staring too). Essentially a woman was letting a guy have it because (I think) the guy pushed her kid, or manhandled him in some way, because she was saying the guy was big, and the kid was small.
The great thing about it for me was that when I got there, the woman was scolding in French. But after about a minute of the guy just standing there taking it, she moved into Haitian Creole. And another minute of the guy just not reacting or moving, she transitioned to Guianese French Creole. And after that, I'm pretty sure she just got tired and realized the guy was about as remorseful as he was going to be. It was the kind of linguistic event that anthropologists just can't elicit (unless, apparently, we shove children, which I don't recommend and I'm pretty sure is against the rules). I kind of wish I had taken notes. Alas.
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