by Amy Jo Browne

Created on: February 25, 2008

Speaking with an accent can be hard sometimes, as people cannot always understand what a foreigner is saying. While sometimes it is funny, what would happen in an emergency? Would a person speaking with an accent be able to get the help they needed? Can a person with an accent be able to tell the local pizza place what they want on the pizza?

I know first hand the trouble someone with an accent has at times talking as my boyfriend of two years speaks with a very thick accent and at times when he gets excited. I have trouble understanding him.

I have also had to talk to people on the phone for him, because the Americans were having trouble understanding him. He grew up speaking English as most people in Australia do, but the English is way different then what you would hear from the local people here in Northeastern Pennsylvania because of the accent.

When I first met him I had some trouble understand him, but I learned to listen real close. I remember one conversation we had among other friends about how he needed to buy some caulk to put around his leaking tub. Even though we could understand what he was saying because we knew him, to an outsider he very much sounded like he was talking about a male body part.

Talking on the phone is sometimes a problem especially when he is trying to order a pizza from a local place. It is usually loud in there and the teenagers working cannot understand him so I have to take the phone and order the pizza for him.

A few months ago while he was at work, someone confused him with a Mexican and started speaking Spanish in a derogatory manner to him, that man assumed my boyfriend was Mexican because he has dark hair and eyes and spoke with an accent. Luckily, the manager was standing close and defused the situation, and corrected the local man who then apologized.

Listening to my boyfriend tell a joke is funny, because he can say an innocent joke and it will come out sounding funny because of his accent. Many people ask him to repeat himself because they have a hard time understanding him sometimes, and it is even worse when he begins to talk too fast.

He has so much fun with telemarketers, and tells them his name is Bluey Zazaoff, which cracks me up every time. His thick accent allows him to speak as if it is a real name, but I wonder how many of them hang up and laugh when they repeat the name.

My boyfriend is sometimes very easy for me to understand as I spend so much time with him, but my extended family often has trouble. I do talk to his family living in Australia and it is extremely hard at times for me to understand them, as I am sure it is hard for them to understand me.

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