Obviously, the English language is a big puzzle for me, which I put together with the help of books explaining the rules of a fun game called grammar.
As a consequence of above, my spoken English is even more annoying than my accent-rich writing. Just one demonstrative example of the countless: whenever I say I download apps, what I actually download are:
Another task that presents a challenge to me is what we call small-talk. Whereas the habit of small-talking is virtually non-existent in the culture of my home country, in addition my personality is entirely incompatible with the practice, while living in the US I was thrown into the deepest water to improve my skills in that area. The weather is apparently a last-straw material for small-talkers everywhere in the world, so whenever I was trapped in those anti-social social situations, I invariably escaped into referring to the given temperature of the surrounding air.
As one may expect the outcome of the two challenges combined: my anxiety rising by the prospect of a small-talk always entered an inverse correlation with the quality-level of my pronunciation.
One of my dearest professors in the US, who otherwise believed my mind ticked at an okay rate, obviously had been amused by my accent, but he was kind enough to not make it a point until one day while I was struggling to survive a small-talk happening between the two of us. He returned my weather-related comment with a painful grimace, indicating he was fundamentally clueless as to what I was trying to say. I was petrified. What I was mumbling was blindingly obvious anyway from the given context (so much about the ‘practical merit’ of small talks) which was impossible to misunderstand despite my innovative language usage. Yet, to remain consistently polite, I desperately kept repeating the key-word all over again, each time expecting different results, until he decided to give me a break.
“Hut? What ‘hut’ do you mean”? he said, looking around, then looking at me with the sort of inter-cultural amusement that was impossible to misunderstand.
Fun for bloggers & other animated animals 