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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

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