Communication Breakdown
At work we have voice mail. Nothing odd about that I think every organisation now has voice mail. Ours however is a voice recognition system. This means that I can pick up the phone, say a name in the internal phone book and it will call them for me. It also meant that I had to record a voice signature (basically my name) as well as a standard voice mail greeting. To get this started I had to repeat my telephone number to the system.
Firstly, is it just me or does it feel unnatural to talk to computerised voice? It felt strange having to repeat my number back to something that had been programmed to listen to me rather than actually listen. Because of this I guess I mumbled the numbers because the voice told me “I’m sorry, you said a number I didn’t recognise, could you please repeat the number exactly how I say it?” So I tried. Again the same message came up. I tried for a 3rd time this time speaking clearly and precisely. No joy. It took me 6 attempts in all and I grew steadily louder and louder until I was practically screaming down the phone, after this the message said “Ok, calm down, I heard you the 1st time!”
No it didn’t really. Anyway I started to realise that although I speak the same language as Americans I actually don’t speak the same language and there are certain things that I say that people think are funny, cute, or very polite, which back in Britain are just the way we speak. It is so easy to slip into the everyday language here because it becomes tiring not being understood, or standing out. So slowly I find that I have started using garbage or trash instead of rubbish. At work I deal with a lot of CV’s and have to continually remind myself that to the American market they are resumes. And as for ordering water….it appears that most Americans don’t pronounce the t in water the way I do. Every day things become difficult to ask for or order or talk about because at least 50% of the time the person listening to me is either too busy thinking how nice my accent sounds without listening to what I am saying or they don’t understand me because I have used the word trousers or jumper instead of pants or sweater.
Another side effect of being here is that when I use spell check (my smelling has always bin terryble) is that it changes words that I have spelt correctly into the American spelling. I hope I have picked up all the realizes, computeriseds and recognizes and spelt them the correct way.
Firstly, is it just me or does it feel unnatural to talk to computerised voice? It felt strange having to repeat my number back to something that had been programmed to listen to me rather than actually listen. Because of this I guess I mumbled the numbers because the voice told me “I’m sorry, you said a number I didn’t recognise, could you please repeat the number exactly how I say it?” So I tried. Again the same message came up. I tried for a 3rd time this time speaking clearly and precisely. No joy. It took me 6 attempts in all and I grew steadily louder and louder until I was practically screaming down the phone, after this the message said “Ok, calm down, I heard you the 1st time!”
No it didn’t really. Anyway I started to realise that although I speak the same language as Americans I actually don’t speak the same language and there are certain things that I say that people think are funny, cute, or very polite, which back in Britain are just the way we speak. It is so easy to slip into the everyday language here because it becomes tiring not being understood, or standing out. So slowly I find that I have started using garbage or trash instead of rubbish. At work I deal with a lot of CV’s and have to continually remind myself that to the American market they are resumes. And as for ordering water….it appears that most Americans don’t pronounce the t in water the way I do. Every day things become difficult to ask for or order or talk about because at least 50% of the time the person listening to me is either too busy thinking how nice my accent sounds without listening to what I am saying or they don’t understand me because I have used the word trousers or jumper instead of pants or sweater.
Another side effect of being here is that when I use spell check (my smelling has always bin terryble) is that it changes words that I have spelt correctly into the American spelling. I hope I have picked up all the realizes, computeriseds and recognizes and spelt them the correct way.
posted by Nick at 10:01 AM
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