Millions have tuned in to watch a video of a less-than-cunning linguist’s bid to get out of a traffic ticket by pretending to be an American.
In the footage picked up by several news channels today, the woman is filmed from the passenger seat speaking to the officer in bad-but-fluent Thai with what sounds like an affected Western accent.
“What did I do wrong?” she says in poor Thai.
To her total surprise, the officer scores 10 points by explaining in English that she couldn’t park there.
Her attempt to reply in the same language doesn’t go very well, and sounds suspiciously like English with a distinctively Thai accent.
“Because … just a couple minute,” she offers.
The officer inquires about her nationality: “You from USA?”
Yes, the woman tells him, before lecturing the officer (again in “bad” Thai) that they usually let people off the hook with only a warning in the United States.
In the end, she gets the ticket anyway.
While most videos involving traffic police go viral for the wrong reasons, netizens shifted to take the side of the police in this case.
They accused the woman of trying to get out of the ticket using one of the oldest tricks in the book, at least the one from a decade ago when pretending to be Filipino or Asian-American actually fooled cops.
Some helpful commentators stepped in to offer some advice.
“A couple minutes [not minute],” Ann Chalobon wrote. “That’s a grammatical error.”
