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The oddest conversation I've had, had to go anti-clockwise around a circle of three people, because although we were all speaking English, everyone had a very d
by monkeycantype 6y ago
The oddest conversation I've had, had to go anti-clockwise around a circle of three people, because although we were all speaking English, everyone had a very different idea of English. Everyone in the conversation could understand someone, and everyone could be understood by someone, but no two of us were mutually intelligible.
We were in Singapore, in the jungle, a long time ago when there was still jungle in Singapore.
I was speaking speaking somewhat Californian-ed Australian English.
An extremely well dressed Indian man in a white blazer with an elegant hat over movie star hair - was speaking Indian English with deep baritone vowels that were perfectly clear to me, but he understood nothing I said.
An elderly Chinese in working clothes carrying a machete and plastic bags full of produce from her garden. Her speaking rhythm and stress were completely opaque to me - but she understood me perfectly. She couldn't understand the Indian man at all, but understood her clearly.
I'd asked her for directions, and she'd waved the Indian man over, and we ended chatting for about 20 mins going round the circle.
- ricudis 6y agoThat's not so uncommon in Singapore (even today that there is definitely less jungle than what I wish there was). Everybody speaks English, but they all carry over their native language phonetics, which is wonderful, especially for the older chinese. Chinese dialects are tonal, and they somehow manage to carry over the tonality when speaking English, so I had to learn how to pronounce my address in the specific way that taxi driver uncles could understand. As for me (I'm a Greek), I have found that the most comprehensible English are spoken by Malays and Indonesians, just because their native phonetics somehow happen to match mine. I especially love the way Indonesians pronounce 'r' - it's a REAL 'r', and it's always a rolling triplet, sounding like "rrr", instead of that thing between "w" and nothingness that English has managed to mutilate a perfectly nice consonant into :D
- monkeycantype 6y agoTYPOS: meant to say elderly Chinese [woman] ... She couldn't understand the Indian man at all, but [ he ] understood her clearly.