Pronunciation and Enunciation

            After not meeting for an extended period of time due to both of us getting extremely sick, me being out of the country, and various things coming up in her life, Angela and I finally got to meet up again. We decided on lunch at Potbelly’s because of its convenience and delicious food. I got there and looked around, but she was not there yet. Neither of us seems to be the timeliest of people, which works out well because then neither of us ends up waiting long. When she arrived a few minutes later, she had a friend with her, Gabriela I believe. Her friend from the ESL program was younger, and I soon realized not as able to speak English, but she had not been in the program nearly as long. I was able to pick up on most things that she said in Spanish and she was able to understand a good portion of my English. Angela was able to help both of us though when things weren’t making sense.

            Angela and I spent the first part of the lunch catching up on everything since we had last met. She asked all about my trip to Guatemala and asked about different things she had seen in pictures on Facebook. I asked about her cat, her family, and class. When she started talking about class, she realized that the two of them had a question for me that had really been giving them trouble in class. It was about vowel sounds. It didn’t make sense to them that certain combinations sound the same and how similar it can make words sound. The example that they gave me was sheet. Apparently when they first learned it, the ee sound sounded more like a short i sound, and then their professor would explain that they could not say it like that because then it was a bad word. From there, the conversation progressed from me saying the different words to them quite loudly saying sheet and shit over and over, in the middle of a restaurant, during the lunch hour. Well, worse things have happened to me. After that, Angela began to tell us this story about her trouble with her friend Hardik. I won’t further explain this one even though she did have to explain it to her friend, and I really hope that no one around us at the time spoke Spanish or else that would have been slightly embarrassing.

            As soon as this conversation was over, we moved to a discussion of fruits. I’m not sure how that transitioned, but it did. Her friend was trying to tell me about a dessert she always has when she is at home, but she could not remember the English name of it. She and Angela spent about five minutes trying to think of the fruit while I was trying to think of one that sounded similar to what they were saying. Eventually, one of them looked it up to find out that it was guava. It was a comical situation as we all tried to figure it out.

            At some point, it became time for them to go elsewhere. I explained to Angela how she could get quarters, which was a very hard word for both of them to say, from a bank, although I not sure why she needed them. We said something that reminded her of how I cannot role my r’s, which is awful for someone that is learning Spanish, so she assigned me homework. It is to practice rolling my r’s for three hours a day. Now, I haven’t done it for quite that long, and I don’t think I am making any progress, but hopefully, one day it will happen. Who knew that I would get homework from my conversation partner though?