It would seem that I have arrived into a foreign speaking country....and I’m not referring to the French, I’m referring to the English.
Initially I found it odd that the Canadians would just stare at me when I was speaking. What could have been mistaken for awe was sadly just misunderstanding. I know this now because I have realised I only understand about 50% of all conversation, a statistic which can be further affected with television programmes, farm workers and telephone conversations.
Aside from the fact that Canadians speak faster than the scatman, they also blend words together into long, gentle, flowing sounds that makes little or no sense to fellow (non-Canadian) man. This long constant ‘slur’ is then made more complicated with stress on the letter ‘r’, lots of dropped ‘h’ and a complete disregard for the letter ‘t’ – particularly mid-word e.g. Peter becomes ‘Pee-durr’ and water becomes ‘wa-durr’.
The flip side of this is of course that when I use such words there is complete hilarity or considerable mimicking. Something that is then made worse thanks to the use of certain words or phrases which I have discovered mean different things here than they do in the UK.
Having signed up for some temping work to top up the hours at the winery through the winter months, last week I was given the brain-damagingingly boring duty of simply answering the phone in a place where the phone pretty much never rings. A simple task and one that I have been doing successfully since the age of 8 and something I was not in the slightest bit concerned about being able to undertake. I was wrong.
The first caller I had to ask three times to repeat his name and had to ask him to spell the name of his company – which embarrassingly turned out to be ‘Ponds’. My attempt to repeat the name ‘Ohhh P-O-N-D-s’ in my best cut glass English seemed to do little to alleviate the man’s annoyance.
The second caller again I asked the person to repeat their name twice and was too embarrassed to ask a third time so put them through to the boss anyway saying ‘there is someone on line one and their name sounds something like meeeoharisaaawan’ He did not seem impressed.
By caller three I had started to break into a sweat and having asked for her name once, I had no clue what he was saying so decided to tell her the guy she was looking for was not in the office and offered to transfer her through to the guys voicemail. I do not know if she said yes or no. I put her through to the voicemail anyway.
With caller four, I was so excited that that I had understood her name first time that I panicked and accidentally hung up on her.
By caller five, I had realised that answering phones may not have been as easy as I had first thought. I managed to understand the guys name and that he was looking for the boss, although failed to understand the Company name. So pleased with my progress and called through the to the boss and confidently said ‘I have Paul on line one’, to which he (understandably) said,
BOSS: ‘Paul who’
RUTH: ‘oh, erm..I don’t know’
BOSS: ‘Where is he calling from?’
RUTH: ‘erm, I’m not sure. It sounded something like peeerrrken.....’
BOSS: [frustrated interruption] ‘Can you perhaps ask him?’
It took three attempts but I finally got Paul’s company name, but by this time my stress levels had reached an all time high and panic was starting to set in when I called back through to the boss. In all the stress and panic at getting the name of the company, I had then forgotten the caller’s name, so when the boss picked up his line, all I could manage was ‘Erm, Hi, its Ruth again. The guy....er....from before....he’s from Park and Harper’.
It was clearly not going well.
Shaken by my apparent inability to undertake such a simple task in my first language, I tried talking to the lady sitting nearby. I introduced myself and she replied with her name. I did not understand what she said. At that moment my line rang, I politely smiled, nodded and pointed towards the phone in an attempt to get myself out of another awkward situation – it was the boss asking me if Doreen was around. Not knowing who Doreen was, I replied ‘I’m sorry, I’m not sure who Doreen is?’ At which my newly introduced colleague looked at me with an expression that seemed to say – are you actually retarded? – she preceded to point slowly towards herself in the same way I might do with a dog or other non-speaking and considerably less intelligent creature. I casually, cheerily then said ‘oh never mind, here she is. One moment, I’ll put you through’
Temping in summary: I do not speak Canadian and I should not answer phones.
