Missouri, 2024: fluent English is not Midwestern English
I came to Saint Louis to teach Spanish and Turkish, which meant my English was supposed to be the easy part. It was not the easy part.
On day one somebody walked past me in a corridor and said "how's it going?" without breaking stride. I stopped and started answering. They were already gone. It took me a week to understand that the question is punctuation, not an enquiry.
Then there is the noise. Someone reaches past you for a coffee cup and says "ope". It is not a word so much as a small apology in sound form, and once you notice it you hear it forty times a day.
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