Chika nga lang…

Migrating to another country means you have to hurdle a lot of challenges. But I wasn’t expecting language to be
on top of the list — not when the country you’ll be in uses English as their native tongue. But I guess this is
what all Pinoys have to get over if they truly want to embrace life in the land of Frodo.

Consider these scenarios:

You ordered a meal at McDonalds and the service crew forgot to give you a tissue. You go back and asked for it. "Excuse me,
have you got a tissue with you?," the crew looks at you blankly and you remember it’s called "serviette" here. That’s when
you correct yourself and ask for a serviette instead of a tissue.

I was on training with an induction group for my new job and we were asked to draw when a groupmate suddenly asks:
"can you pass me the rubber?" I momentarily stopped what I was doing thinking — what did he say again?! Rubber connotes
something else and I wouldn’t want to be blogging about it. (you green-minded guys know it already..
hehehhe..) He was pointing at something at my side and I passed it to him. "Oh, an eraser." It finally dawned on me.
"No it’s a rubber," he smilingly corrects.

I could not make it on a job interview and my friend advises me to just reschedule it for another day. But before I did
that, she reminded me to pronounce reschedule as "reshedule" without the C. "Importante yan lalo na pag naso phone ka kasi
baka di naman kayo magkaintindihan," she says.

But I guess some words are just common derivation from American to British English:

elevator - lift
CR (di nila alam yon dito.. hehehhe) - toilet/ loo
french fries - chips
sweet potato (camote) - kumara
bellpepper - capsicum
candies - lollies

Some, just plain different pronunciation:

Letter R is not to be rolled on your tongue. My daughter has a teacher named Mrs. Walker and she usually calls her
"Mrs. Walka". And of course teacher as "teacha".

And lastly, "A" (ey) is pronouced as "ay" (to me it sounds similar to "I"). So when leaving, don’t  forget to greet
your friend: Have a good day mate (mayt)!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 27th, 2007 at 8:24 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.