Lost in translation

It never occurred to me as a first language English speaker that I might have a problem with people understanding me. Let's just say that I have been getting a lot of blank looks lately. I experienced this a little in India, especially over the phone, but then I had Chanda to act as translator for me. The US accent is if nothing else at all times audible and clear. Unlike the South African accent, it is always clear when an American is reaching the end of the sentence because of the consistent inflection. It doesn't help that the more excited I get the faster I speak!

Yesterday we were going through a few ideas for energisers we can use in our section room to up the energy levels in the class when the participants are beginning to flag. One of them is a very basic but quite fun game called "all my neighbours". It's a little bit like Red Rover. Basically, everyone stands on a place holder in a circle with one person in the middle. The middle person makes a statement that is more than likely common amongst the group eg. "All my neighbours that have been to New York". At this, everyone who has been to New York has to leave their place and run to a new place holder. The slowest person gets stuck in the middle and so the game begins again. I got stuck in the middle quite a few times. Do you know that there are only 2 people in our group of 16 that have milked a cow?

So then it was my turn in the middle. At a loss I called "all my neighbours that have worn mascara" and prepared to run. No one moved. Complete blank looks. It is at times like this that I look to the Europeans who are more familiar with the British accent to bridge the gap. I repeated it again and looked at the Europeans in my team beseechingly. German, Danish, Spanish, French, Hungarian, Romanians and Americans alike remained rooted to the spot. Not one of them understood me. Chanda...... come back.

What I should have said it emerged is "All my neighbours that have used (not worn) mascara (pronounce mass[as in weight]-cah[as in Camobodia]-rah[as in Rambo])

It reminded me of when I worked in Winterpark, Colorado as a waitress (server) and had to offer people the tomayto and bayzil soup because they didn't understand me when I offered them the tomato and basil soup.

You live and learn.