PTSD

English

I am spending the weekend grading papers. Do you ever wonder why, when given a choice of answering two questions out of seven, students almost always seem to choose the same two? Or at least two out of three? And those are the answers you really don't want to read? Well, they do. Does that mean it's a universal truth?

In between grading at the local B and N store, I decided to take a break and walk in the rain to go watch Wallace and Gromit. Considering the options for entertaining a child on a rainy day is probably rather limited around where I live, the line for tickets was huge and the film was sold out. So was my second choice. So, I ended up watching this (Sorry, E). No, I've never seen the TV show. And, I had a really hard time understanding the main bloke's accent (He didn't sound American to me). This made me think about an earlier conversation we were having on accents when I was told that I didn't "sound Nepali enough". As far as I'm concerned, I sound Nepali. Okay, when I'm pissed off, I sound more clipped but usually, I sound like other people from where I come from (well, those of them who can speak English). Or as Nepali as one sounds when speaking a non-native language. At our department at TUWSNBN, apparently there was someone else from Nepal and they sounded just like me too. What does that say then? It says, if there's an essential "Nepali-English", then I have it (yes, based on a sample of two).

But then, when I talk to my little sister (the only other member of the family I sometimes talk in English with), I sound different. So does she. Again, when speaking English in Thailand, we both sound different (slower, enunciating each word, not much swearing) compared to talking to friends here (faster, swallowing some consonants, lot of swearing). So, maybe the guy in the film was speaking some American dialect that I've not yet come into much contact with making it difficult to understand him. The rest were fine. It was just the main bloke (and, hey, since he was the main guy and looked absolutely fantastic, he didn't need to be totally understandable I suppose :-)). At times, he sounded almost like how certain South Africans and New Zealanders talk: swallowing vowels: "Git" rather than "get" and so on.

Still, it was a fun film with probably the best villain I've seen in a while (Why do villains in heaps of Hollywood movies have British accents or are played by British actors?). It wasn't Wallace and Gromit, though.

Back to grading.

posted by Priya @ 10:48 PM