Speech Fathology

You know when you hang out with someone or you're into this certain kind of environment? Tendency is you pick up some of their culture, mannerisms, and sometimes, unfortunately, diction.

I remember when I was a kid, I spent my summers in my Ninang's house for two months. Now that I've realized it, maybe my parents didn't want me 24/7 in the house so they shipped me out during summers. Anyway, my Ninang's house was all this Chinese speaking, sosy sosy type of family. After I got on "parole" (read: summer's over), I'd get used to speaking in FLUENT Chinese..and I start craving for the regular chocolate milkshake the yayas give us before going to sleep.

What's my point here?

I've been in this company for at least 4 months, and I get the feeling I've been picking up most of their irritating diction. Everyday, you'd hear words such as:

- apterwards
- sopwere
- pose (that's pause for us)
- dammy (that's dummy for us)
- ishpelling
- P-ech (that's PH for us)

It's soooo irritating! Especially when I get bitten by the iskwakwa diction.

My old company has those konotics and the English speaking kind. Or at least when they use an English word, 99.99% probability is that they'd pronounce it right.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not judging them for their poor diction. I even have my (more than) occassional bloopers when I am with my friends. And we laugh about it.

See? That's the diff! We laugh about it. We're aware it's incorrect.

Here though, that's the norm. And when the norm is not corrected, there is a tendency for the "wrong" to seep in to the community. Including me.

*Yoda comment: Over-analyzing, I say, you are.*

I'm writing this entry because I find myself getting into their lingo. And I am getting quite alarmed. Consider this as my personal wake up call.

On Saturday nights you'd find me reading some English magazines and books out loud.
And when you find me talking by myself, don't be freaked out.

I just don't wanna wake up one day and be a SOPWERE tester from our company's P-ech region.