I'm sitting in the shady terrace cafe at Yves Saint Laurent's lasting monument to beauty and tranquility, les Jardins Majorelle in Marrakesh. The tranquility remains despite the hustle from the tourists from all over Europe (predominantly). I'm surrounded by languages I recognise and can distinguish without understanding - the dental tittars of Italian; lips and tongues racing each other in Spanish; the swooshing ballet of Polish. I don't have a clue what they're talking about, but I know where they're from, their history, their popular culture, just from the sounds they're making. Even when we don't understand a language we understand people.
What's funny is that there's an English couple on the other side of the cafe. They're talking too quietly for me to hear what they're saying: they are English, after all. I know, however, from the few sounds I can identify that they're from the south-east, probably no more than forty miles away from where I was born. My hearing is not particularly good, but I'm so tuned into my language or accent that I can identify it at twenty paces.
I wouldn't dare introduce myself, though: we are English, and from the home counties at that, after all.
