Adventures in Kiwidom

Adventures in Kiwidom
Lakshmi Shivakumar

Kiwi English. Nothing had prepared me for it. Looking back, I can now say that nothing, except first hand experience, could have really prepared me for it. Having been brought up in a household and school where I heard, spoke and read as much English as I did my mother tongue, I had been absolutely confident that English, even outside my country, would not be a problem. Moreover, constant exposure to the Hollywood accent through the movies and the British accent on BBC, I had assumed, would stand me in good stead. As well as the occasional visits from relatives Down Under, who did speak with a pronounced twang that I thought was an accent, and was able to follow well enough.

But I soon saw how far from reality my expectations were. My first few days in Kiwidom were utterly chaotic, comprehension wise at least. Although it was only English, it was a veritable Tower of Babel to me. The words I used more than any others were "sorry" or "could you please say that again" or "excuse me" -- at least a dozen times daily.

Everyday activities and situations became fraught with difficulties -- at the supermarket checkout, I was hard put to even imagine what it was that the checkout operators were saying to me. Even when I had the advantage of knowing that it had to be something related to payment for the items purchased. Callers on the other end of the telephone line seemed to be speaking some mysterious language that bore a faint resemblance to what I had been taught as English.

While on the road, kindly strangers who gave me directions would have been horrified had they realised that I could make out most of what they had told me only by following the movement of their hands, and not lips.

The problem became accentuated when I discovered, after many futile attempts, that in many cases my Indian accent made as little sense to Kiwis as did their accent to me! And this when I had so far assumed that I spoke English with no noticeable accent! After some serious thinking, I resolved to do what any sensible person would have done in this situation -- adopt the Kiwi accent as soon as I could. If Indians in Yankeeland could, and did, sound American within six months of getting there, I could do it too. But easier said (not really) than done! It took me a couple of months to get used to even the vowel sound substitution. That I had to substitute the sound `i' for `e' and say `aye' for `a'. And to understand that, for example, `six' was pronounced `sex', `seaven' was seven, and when someone said `cheer', what they were meaning was, of course, chair!

I had thought my teachers back in school had done a good job of teaching me the Queen's English, but none of them had even the remotest idea that I'd be called upon to speak the language with an accent so different -- some dim combination of British, Scots, Maori and a few other Euro influences. So, I toiled and and consoled myself, saying that I was indeed progressing. I was, in one way. All the unintelligible sounds began to make more sense to me. I was able to understand Kiwi English if it was spoken clearly.

But still my problem was not solved, as my efforts at speaking English with a similar accent seemed to leave many souls more puzzled than they had been with my Indian accent. I was at my wits' end! I had had just about all I could digest of puzzled looks that greeted my efforts at speaking Kiwi English outside the home or the roars of laughter inside that invariably followed after every telephone conversation with a Kiwi at the other end. And so, quite simply, I just quit.

But time does heal all -- even accents. One day I realised that I was actually speaking English the way it should be in New Zealand.