Despite the fact that earlier tech support guy, whose name was Muhammad, gave a wrong prognosis, I don’t want to put him down, as he was trying to do a good job. But the language problem, or rather pronunciation problem, was something. Not only did I have to keep asking him to repeat himself, but on a couple of occasions when I still didn’t understand him I had to ask him to spell the word. Once he was telling me to look at the “landbots” on the back of my wireless router. I had no idea was he was saying (“bots? what is a bot?”), and finally asked him to spell the word. It was “ports.” Talk about being separated by a common language.Of course, this is THE opportunity to post the absolutely hilarious, side-splittingly funny "Cleopatra Jefferson" video from jtf.org here:
Since I am living in Saxony I have been asked countless times when it came to spelling my family name (which starts with B): "With B or with B?" The Saxon dialect is somewhat painful to listen to. P becomes B, T becomes D, K becomes G and all vowels become umlauts. I once met a man who walked his Beagle. Beagle was called "Gölümbö". I twigged much later that it was actually "Columbo". However, the Saxons, the lovely people they are, are totally unchippy about it and don't mind if you can't help laughing. I always say then: "B like Berta", which clarifies the matters.
2 comments:
I must admit it is difficult to understand English in other accents. I usually try to be very patient with other peoples English their accents are not their fault. But one time I remember I had to Canada for work related reasons. Apparently the company I called was in the French Canadian area. The gentleman I talked to had a very thick French accent. I would keep repeating to him what I thought I heard him say just to make I understood him. I could tell he was getting annoyed with me. I almost said what I was thinking to him which was, “Don’t get uppity with me Frog I thought Canada was an English speaking country.” But I didn’t. When I got off the phone and my boss asked what they said. I said I don’t know, I thought I called Canada but some how I ended up in France.
Even here in the States there are different types of American accents/dialect of English here. You have Southern, Mid-Western even Cities can have accents. New Yorkers from the city of New York and people from Boston Massachusetts have very thick accents and if they are speaking fast it’s sometimes hard to follow. Where I live it is common for people to pronounce “you” as “use”. So, “Hey you guys, wait for me.” becomes “Hey use guys, wait for me.” Or “All of you come here.” becomes “All of use come here”.
The video you showed speaks a certain amount of truth about people particularly with some urban blacks but also can be found in the suburbs as well. It’s not an accent but almost a variation of English. I don’t know why some blacks speak the way they do because most blacks have been here for generations and taught the same English that I have. For some blacks here in America they are able to turn it on or off, some blacks don’t do it at all. But the ones who do I think they don’t even care if you can’t understand them. Their opinion seems to be it’s my problem not theirs. I’ve seen Blacks from Britain and they seem to speak English like everybody you hear in Britain depending local dialect/accents. But you will find white especially young whites using an urban black speak. Which to me is even funnier to hear.
UR
UR, being not American, I thought at first that his point was about women before I twigged that this was about ebonics.
"For some blacks here in America they are able to turn it on or off, some blacks don’t do it at all. But the ones who do I think they don’t even care if you can’t understand them. Their opinion seems to be it’s my problem not theirs."
It's a political statement like the headscarf worn by modern young women in skin tight jeans and with a bare midriff. One of contempt.
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