Whilst I was at uni (x many decades ago), my now husband and I organised a long distance walk (West Highland Way) and were joined by a number of other students including a really nice American student. We had insisted that he reserve a seat with us on the train which was useful because the previous train had been cancelled and there was no room on the train at all, not even standing room, the isles being full of people sitting on their luggage and you had to climb over these people to make it to the toilets etc.
As we were going up through the borders, in a standard loud American accent he asked "what are those white things in the field?" .
the entire carriage very quickly went silent... At a loss as to what he was referring to because there was only one thing it could be, I asked "err, do you mean the sheep?". He had never seen one before. It was an interesting walk with him!
Another time whilst I was a volunteer relief warden in a youth hostel, 2 set of overseas guests (both couples) were sitting in the sitting/dining room come reception (only a small hostel and I was the only warden) all talking English to each other and struggling with some of the words looking them up in their own dictionaries. After about 15 minutes I had chance to eavesdrop on the conversation. I was apparently that only person who had noticed that both couples had the same dictionary at hand (OK I had also registered them, but...) and were periodically looking up English words to use for the conversation.
Eventually I had to ask them why, when both sets of couples were from the same country, they were struggling to communicate with each other in English! Much laughter ensued and dictionaries were put aside as they very quickly worked out they lived less than 5km away from each other!
