English is the most widely spoken and understood language in the world. However, all of us do not write and speak the language in the same way. The American English is always difficult for Indians and we experience this while watching Hollywood movies.
While in college I with my friends used to watch these movies and interpret the story in our own way. After the movies, we used to keep endlessly arguing amongst us claiming that their versions to be true. Google was not there in seventies to confirm the correct version and one of the first uses of Google for me was checking the story line of these movies which I had seen a few decades back.
Later when I travelled to other parts of the country, I found out that the pronunciations can make a lot of difference and sometimes can result in funny situations. While working in the eastern Indian city of Ranchi I went to meet my friend who was in a different hostel. He was not there and his roommate informed me that my friend had gone for boating. I was thrilled to know that the lake in the small town had boating facility. On the next Sunday, I asked my friend if he could join me for boating. He was surprised and asked me where was the boating? Then I understood that he had gone for “Voting” in the local elections as ‘V’ is pronounced as ‘B’ by many in that part of the country. The sentence “Why are you bandering in the barandah” will not make no sense to a non Bengali unless he replaces B with W or V while listening. I had difficulty in understanding my boss who happened to be from Calcutta when he used to tell “Kalyan shek it out” when actually asked me to check it out and “short out the problem” for sorting out the problem.
My misunderstanding was not limited to Indian shores. When I visited Japanese company, I was introduced to the employees there. One Japanese politely bowed, as is his custom, told me that his name is Yamaguchi and that he is a “Crack” in the organisation. I was startled by his self confession. Later it transpired that his position was that of a “Clerk” and Japanese pronounce ‘L’ as ‘R’.
In the middle East it was difficult to find locals speaking English. However I was thrilled to find that my boss was able to speak fluent English albeit with Arabic accent. I could not understand the term “Gurney plan” a term which he was mentioning very often. When I asked him to clarify, he showed me the form which had the Heading as “Journey Plan”.
However this misunderstanding was not always one sided. There was a teleconferencing for discussing project progress with our American Project Manager. As many of us, hailing from different parts of India, spoke with different accent, he could not make out as to what we were conveying. We also could not pick up some vital points due to his American accent..
A few conferences calls were leading us nowhere and it was more like shadow boxing. Finally the exasperated American asked for a translator who could translate our English into his English.
