Skip to main content

Journey to the West : Mind Your Language

"Lettuce, tomatoes, onions and spinach", I pointed out to the lady wearing the apron behind the counter.

She looked at me questioningly.

"LET-USE, TOE-MAT-OH, OH-NION, SPEA-NATCH", I repeated with better enunciation.

She looked back down at the the multiple compartments of colourful mix of vegetables, leaves and fruits and methodically grabbed some from each, while repeating the names of the ones she grabbed.

"Let-us, Toe-mado, Ah-nion, Spee-Nuch", she clarified.

I shrank a bit in embarrassment. With every passing day in the country, my belief that the English education that I received in a former British Colony, that set high and rarely achieved standards in English for its students, was of substandard quality, strengthens. In a well intentioned effort to assimilate, I have over the past couple of months tried to mimic the pronunciation of the Texans.

"Howz'it goin man?"

"Ye'no"  

"Can I have some wahder?"

These are perhaps the only 3 lines that I can pull off confidently that makes me sound remotely American. Every other time, it either comes out too fast and too muffled that my American friends have to regretfully ask me to repeat as if it was their fault. Exasperated, I would switch back to the pronunciation I knew well, which while they understood (around 80% of the time), they had to make an concerted effort to listen to, And me being me, would carry on in my efforts to revert back to the American words that often ended early and casually, skipping a the last few letters and making the British look like they took the language too seriously.

"Can I have the bill?", I followed up at the cashier.

"Sure Sir. Here's your cheque", she replies while tearing off the piece of paper and handing it over to me, 

And I thought pronounciation was the only thing I had a problem with.

Comments

  1. Andreas14 February 2015 at 21:33

    'Here's your check sir' - Americans re-spell everything aye

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

An Ode to Marriage

I remember pondering about the need for marriage during a certain period of my life. Partially inspired by stoicism, I saw a man as an island in a big ocean, continuously being battered by the waves and storms, but holding fort and growing strong with each test. It was also when the idea of monasticism greatly appealed to me, to leave behind, for the lack of a better work, the bullshit of society and trying to attain enlightenment.  Somehow that idea fell apart after a brief meditation stint in a monastery, but the idea of marriage I resisted. The freedom that came from being single seemed too precious to let go. Furthermore life was complicated as it is. Why complicate it further by introducing another person to that life, someone who would bring her own mannerisms, rules, habits, many that might end up conflicting with your own. However, a lot of these ideas and beliefs start to die when friends of yours each start getting into their own relationships and have no more time for yo...
Post a Comment
Read more

An Eye for an Eye

"Something that three or four years ago you told me was one of the touchstones of maturity: being nice to people even when they’re not nice to you…" - William Styron It was an plan that came out of nowhere. Perhaps half depressed by the winter and half depressed by the inactivity at work, there was sufficient turmoil in the mind to create these type of plans and then let it fester, until something that started off with a what-if turned into a why-not. It would have been the perfect revenge for the past hurt and humiliation that was yet to completely heal.  The circumstances were similar. On one side, an eager visitor who had traveled far to say "Hello" and on the other side, a host, bewildered and surprised by this visit. In the first case, the host would not receive the visitor, who would turn back humiliated and vowing never again. Now the roles were reversed and I was the host. What if I agreed to receive? What if in reality I did not plan to receive? ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Sparing the Rod

 She gave me a look of deep displeasure, not very atypical of the look most members of the opposite gender gave me. “You know you can’t do that in Germany?”, she asserted with the same authority my mother used to tell me about not messing around in her kitchen.  “Yes I am aware”, I meekly responded, knowing well that any kind of argument about this would not end well, so it was better to close off the topic quietly and unlike the kitchen, I could not afford to get kicked out of Germany. She was not the first to respond with such hostility to what seemed like the most natural of things in my experience. The last one who told me the same was a teacher I had met at a party. When she sounded shocked that I was ok with it and said it was not right, I (with some alcoholic courage) had retorted, “How would you discipline them then if they do something wrong?” “I would tell them I am very disappointed with them”. I almost laughed. However, that was very much the theory of my new frien...
Post a Comment
Read more