Last year as I packed for my relocation to G Town I was very conscious of the fact that I was moving to a place where although people claimed to speak English, it was a far cry from the English that I knew and loved. It was a garbly-goo version that drew perplexed looks even folk on the other side of Scotland. Still, I persevered and after much random smiling and nodding during my first few months here, I eventually tuned my ear into the melody of Weegie-speak. We will ignore the fact that I probably agreed to all sorts of unmentionable stuff in the process of being lost in translation.
There was a lot that I was nervous about as I packed my bags to head to England for this summer, but one thing that I didn't think would be a problem was, language.
Well, it should have been.
Other than four Irish folk, the rest of my colleagues are all English hailing from as far north as Newcastle and as close by as Portsmouth itself. All of them claim English as their first language. Yet, I'm having the darnedest time with comprehension. The accents are broad and varied, the phrases they use totally alien and the words don't seem to have the same meanings that I am used to.
And so I've resorted to the tried and tested coping mechanism of smiling and nodding. Again, I'm not sure what I have agreed to or promised out. I'm sure I'll find out over the course of the summer!
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