Friends, how many of you migrated to the US and faced challenges with American English pronunciation? Today, I’ll share my challenges with English pronunciations with you and will share my journey of dealing with those challenges.
I landed in the US for the first time in 2003. It was winter season. At an airport, after collecting items of baggage, I went to Starbucks coffee shop and said to the lady at the counter: One coffee please. Then I asked, can I have water? Lady said: what?? I said water….water to drink. Oh water, she said. Yess.. water, I said. It took a long time for me to understand what I missed in asking for water. Later I realized that water is pronounced differently in the US than in India. Also, I learned to say , "a cup of water without ice".
Then she asked, May I have your name, please. I said, Ravindra Prasad Shastry. She said, can you please spell it for me. That request from her almost gave me a nightmare. I had to spell her my name with a letter by letter, like R as in Red....Somehow, I completed order. Then she said, "your total is dollar 19". What, I thought without uttering a word? one coffee for 19 dollars? With some hesitation, I handed her my 20 dollar bill. But, she surprised me by returning 18 dollars, 81 cents. That explained to me that she meant 1 dollar and 19 cents, it was not 19 dollars.
Finally, I got coffee and went to my place of residence. I called up my friend and shared with him this story of getting coffee, how difficult it has been to mention my name to the lady. He said, Oh yours is still simple, think about my name: Lakshminarayan Kedarnath Sharma. Then, he shared his trick to get coffee faster. He said he uses a made up, nickname, to order food at restaurants.
To fix this problem, I joined a course at a University. That was not helpful at all. I did not learn anything out of it. Then again, recently, I started another class, with the hope to learn American English pronunciation. I am yet to know the outcome.
With all the practice I am doing these days, I wish to be understood well without hearing “can you say one more time”. One day, when I will say CORPORATE, people will understand it in one go. That will be my success criteria.
( This was Speech #3: with purpose make them laugh, from the Toastmasters manual: The entertaining speaker)
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