Never ever in my life did I expect that I would be addressed by my surname- Uppu, which means 'salt' in my mother-tongue, Telugu. In fact that would be the least thing I would ask anyone to do. Now that I am left with no other choice than accepting the fact that my foreign friends would even more spoil my name, I have decided to better go along with them rather than put myself into trouble trying to teach them pronounce my name correctly.
My first trial with a Chinese girl went this way:
me: Hi. Hello.. your good name??
her: ___.. How about you??
me: Sree Lakshmi ! (Better I make things easy for her even before she makes an attempt else Goddess Lakshmi might feel bad :P ) You can call me Sree.. S R E E.. sree..
her: Three?? 3??
me: (Good that she has made a gesture else I wouldn't have spotted out immediately how exactly she understood my name!! ) Noooo.. Its Sree... S R E E.. not T H R E E..
her: Ohh... Okk.. SHHHREEE... !! ( Oops.. English alphabets are not of much help in this case.. Probably I have to learn their script and only then can I produce the same sound.. )
me: (No other option left Sree.. You have to do it.. cmn.. !!) Err.. You might as well try calling me Uppuuuu if you find Sree difficult to spell.
her: Ohhh.. Uppuu.. Uppu.. Upppu... !! Cool !! ( Enough ... plzzz stop repeating it for god's sake.. )
I guess its only we Indians who can TWIST our tongue whichever way we want.. But that somehow landed me into problems..
Hmm... So.. gave up after that.. But good that she had put in her effort and learnt to address me SHREE which relieves me to a great extent :) :) And shez become one of my good friends here..
No comments:
Post a Comment