Bad Accent

Came to the U.S. as a foreign student many years ago, I wasn't good at English at all at that time. So bad that after the first "Advanced Analysis" class, I felt like I didn't even understand one complete sentence what my math professor said in the class. At the end of the class, I asked him whether there will be a party in the department chairman's house. He looked at me with great concern and said my last name and then, "I read the announcement three times in the class."

I didn't miss the party though. All graduate students went to the party. We all had a good time. To my professor's surprise, as hopeless as I was in English, I was the best student in his class by the end of the semester since, despite my bad conversational English, I could read the textbook and did my homework really well. I have come a long way since.

Then came to the hard part. As a graduate student with a TA (teaching assistant) scholarship, I supposed to teach the undergraduate students. I have seen a statement printed on a T-shirt worn by an undergraduate student on campus. It read: "10 Biggest Lies on Campus, ..., #9, My TA Speaks Perfect English." It supposed to be funny. But it was the truth. There were a lot of foreign students like us, very good academically, but spoken English with bad accents.

If you think Chinese students were bad when they were new, you haven't talked to some Indian guys or girls on campus. They seemed very fluent in English. But they were hard to understand. I think this was because they have spoken English in their home country that way previously, it's hard for them to break off their accent.

We had an Indian colleague in our office. He took some time off to go back to India to attend one of his parents' funeral. When he came back, his hair was shaved off. Some of us asked him what happened to his hair. He explained that "Yes, it is a pussijar. When someone's parent passed away, he supposed to shave his hair off." We were all in a conference room and ready for a meeting when he said that. Everybody was stunned awkwardly when we heard him saying "Pussi" and "Jar". Then finally one guy asked politely, "Did you mean that it's a "procedure"? Now everybody understood that it was supposed to be a "tradition" in his hometown. What a relieve!