Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Name Game

People who migrate to US of A for the first time complain about the American accent and the tough time they have to cope up with the American names. But are we any less? I am sure Americans equally face a tough time understanding our accent. We literally kill them with all our long names especially people from south with the usual Big one line names…Imagine the Americans saying ‘Vangala Govindrajan Krishnappa’ or ‘Bhagyalakshmi Kantharajappa Murthy’ or Krishna Kumar Gopalan Visweswaran’. They would die out of sheer frustration of not able to pronounce/say it correctly.


One of my south Indian friend has this big south Indian name. He was on a call with the customer care and this American lady was having a tough time understanding his accent and his name. So she asked him to spell his name…not used to the International phonetic alphabet, he went with the Indian nursery A for Apple, B for ball thingy, he somehow managed to cross this 25letters of his name. Now when he came to his last word of his name which ends like APPA..he says A for APPLE, P for PineApple and we all burst into laughter…A for Apple…P for Pineapple..ha ha ha..we still laugh whenever we remember this incident…I am sure the American lady also had a good doze of laughter even though she had a tough time decoding the name…

My friend has come a long way, now he only uses the western union phonetic alphabets and says A as in Adam, P as in Peter :)
First time bloopers are funny but worth cherishing...


3 comments:

Obscure Optimist said...

Hilarious post!! :D

BTW i have an objection. Why have u only used Andhra names?? why din u use a few mallu names? huh? they are equally complicated..

varu... said...

Thanks :)

yamini...I have used tamil names also, in general I meant south Indian/Indian names..think like an Indian not like an Andhraite :P we all r one :)

I agree there are some mallu names that are complicated but they not so common..I dont have a mallu friend whose name is complicated..

Rohit said...

South Indian Names are difficult even for rest of the Indians what are you talking about Americans.

Just imagine our "aadha sardar" pronouncing these... half the way he would be like "be robo... Kaise bolte bata na..." :P

Btw good one. Others awaited.