“I don’t know how to do this,” he said.
I looked down at his work and pointed at a symbol.
“That’s ‘y-nought’ isn’t it?”
“It’s not,” he said.
“Did you just say ‘not’ or nought?” I asked.
“Huh?”
I frowned and tried again. “I mean, did you say ‘not’ or…” I pursed my lips, tightened by jaw, and affected a British accent, “…nought*?”.
Everybody burst out laughing.
Hmmm. The pitfalls of a Midwestern-Canadian accent where “not”, “naught”, and “nought” sound exactly the same…
* Click the British and American flags to hear the different pronunciations. I thought I did rather well!
Alexandra says,
Oh, the stiff upper lip…
At least you don’t have a southern American accent which would probably make everything much more difficult.
Which reminds me:
Texan vs British accents joke:
A Texan walks into a UK bank and asks the clerk.
“What’s your job called?”
“I’m a clerk, sir”
“A clock? Then why don’t you make tick-tock?”
Bookish.Spazz says,
As a Texan, I’m quite proud of my non-southern accent, however talking to others with a drawl is a bit more difficult.
Rad Sujanto says,
Love linguistics! that’s why I’ve been studying it
A Kenyan friend of mine said “bird” like we normally say ‘bat’… it took me few mins to find that out…