Friday, June 15, 2012

Supratim's Funnelmelody

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Dear Sir,

Your blogpost "funnelmelody" reminded me of my amusing misadventure with wrong pronunciation. 

It took place on the first morning after i had set foot on Canadian soil. I had reached Canada in the evening and was put up in a hotel near the university guesthouse that was booked by my post-doc supervisor. I was too jet lagged to have dinner or do anything else that evening and so did not venture out till next morning. The next morning however, I was hungry enough to go looking for breakfast and found a food court below one of the student residences called the HUB mall.

Being on a tight budget and ever mindful of the conversion rate of 1CAD=Rs. 29 (at that time), I was looking for the cheapest option. I found a coffee kiosk which was selling something called a bagel (a donut shaped bread) with cream cheese for a bit less than $2, the cheapest thing available.

The problem was that I had never heard of a bagel before then and when I asked for it I confidently  pronounced it as "badge-el" having no idea that it was actually pronounced  "bay-gail" and quite popular in Canada. The salesman, most likely a student working part-time in the coffee shop, had initially no idea what I was asking for, but guessed quickly enough and saved me from having to order a more well-known but expensive option called a sandwich. I guess he was quite used to people from different parts of the world turning up with their quirky pronunciations. Later, one of my Canadian friends started calling it badge-el as well in my honour whenever I was around :)    
  
best regards
 
Supratim






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