A `claahs struggle' with `tom-ah-tos'

[varun]

interesting and funny article about English accents in USA, UK and India.

http://www.hindu.com/mag/2004/01/04/stories/2004010400140300.htm

WHEN I first came to America as a graduate student in 1975 — fresh from a post-colonial Indian education that taught me to assume that English was meant to be spoken the way it was on the BBC — I discovered that saying "tom-ah-to" and "claahs" wouldn't get me very far in America.

A kindly waitress in the college cafeteria switched me early on to "tom-ay-to" — the alternative, she pointed out, sounded affected as well as incomprehensible, and as a vegetarian I needed to be understood when I wanted my tomatoes. (My "claahs struggle" lasted longer.) My objection to the American variant of the English language was its lack of aural precision — in the United States, unlike in India, for instance, you couldn't tell the difference between "parity" and "parody", and "can't do it" could be misheard for "can do it" (impossible to confuse with the English "cahn't")...

[izzie]

1. Wicked good. We Downeasters love stuff like that.

:eyes: