Thursday, September 13, 2007

Spelling it out

Can you please spell out your first name sir ? Its "Manivannan " . I started spelling it out "M", "A" the voice from the other end said I repeat "M" , "E". I said its not "E" its "A" . "A" as in "Apple". The common issue in US is spelling out our Indian names. Especially the south Indian last name which is really huge. I have often struggled for finding out equivalent . I used to say "I" as in "India", "N" as in "Nancy". Sometimes I blabber something.
Why Americans spell it differently. Why they have different accent ? They tell words clearly. Like multinational .Indians pronounce it "Multenational", they do it as "Multinational". They give stress on each and every letter in the word. That's alright. Unless they can understand our accent and we can understand theirs its well and good.
I then did a Google for phonetic equivalent , so that next time I spell out my name . I don't struggle. Read the table in Phonetic alphabets. Its really helpful. So next time someone asks me to spell out my first name I will say "MikeAlphaNovemberIndiaVictorAlphaNovemberNovemberAlphaNovember" ... Sounds cool :)

2 comments:

Ashwath said...

we are brought up in a society where American slang is laughed out saying "Peter language".

Imagine the plight of my uncle Anantha Padhmanabha Venkatakrishnan who is settled in Canada.. no wonder he is called Paddy there... ;-)

Manivannan said...

Lolz Paddy, wheat, rice..Nice names :)
May be our grandparents did not follow the naming convention :)