As age takes away bits and pieces of my
memory, surely but slowly, and usually at the most crucial moments, leaving me knee deep in my thoughts when I cannot remember the right word for something; I cannot
help smiling at the end result of these fights with my brain! As a teenager, I had
come across embarrassing moments of others who mixed up similar sounding words
(embarrass- embrace, e.g.), but I could only hope I was too inaudible for the
friend at the other end of the phone when she called up to ask me how I was. Instead
of saying I had been put on a sedative, I think I said 'seductive'! Must have
either shocked her, or she would have assumed that I was so sedated that I had
forgotten the difference between being sedated and seduced!! Another time, I
have mixed up my fizzy drink with my fuzzy logic- now that was really embarrassing
because I was with people with whom you are expected to be just right- I am
sure, it was that tension of not wanting to make any mistake that made me call
my fizzy drink my fuzzy one!
As if that was not
enough, it is the various accents of the same language that I have found myself
struggling with as much. Only the other day, I was asked a simple
question, "Are you a friend of A's?"
It had to be repeated
thrice before I could finally get it. It was a simple question, but her
being from New Zealand and I being from India, and meeting for the first time, I
kept on hearing it as "R U a freend of Aeeys?" and in my mind, I was
processing it like one big long word "RUafreendofAeeys?" !!
Try reading it like that, and tell me if my brain was really not playing tricks
with me!
As we spent the
next two hours working together and chatting, I realised, it was easier to
ignore some words which seemed so different in her accent than to interrupt the
flow of conversation; and also because soon I got the hang of where she
stretched, paused, or hastened her sounds.
Quite recently, I
also found my friend straining his ear on the phone...speaking to a Peter
and asking him to repeat since the line was not very clear. After he finished
the call, he said, "It is so difficult to understand their accent
sometimes...especially on the phone!"
“Is that why you kept saying the line was
broken…not clear?”
“:)” a big grin was what I got as an
affirmative reply.
While our ears have become proficient in
recognising accents; Indian, British, American, Arabic, Filipino, Sri Lankan,
Pakistani, Scottish, Irish, South African, Australian and sometimes, even
Russian; understanding them is a different story.
A Scottish
neighbour and I speak often enough to understand each other's accent (I hope!).
I have grown to love her accent but still have to concentrate on her lips
sometimes when she is talking, and sometimes, I just nod; hoping whatever she
said was good enough to be passed off with a nod. My real problem appears when
she suddenly changes the subject and asks me a totally out-of-the-blue
question!
All this makes me
wonder whether there is anything like a 'native' language speaker really?
Unless what you speak can be understood by your audience, how does it matter whether
you learnt a language from the moment you were born, or picked it up along the
way? Does that also mean one can never learn a language enough; good
enough; for its different dialects and accents to be spoken and understood
perfectly well? Is that why we celebrate diversity? I guess so :). If you have ever overheard the conversations of the our very own Punjabi women at the airport waiting for their UK flights, you would know what I mean. The ease with which they switch between their true UK accent and theth Punjabi accent is just pure melody to my ears!
