Eventually, I came to states for my Ph.D and over the time my English spoken skills definitely improved. At the beginning it was just as difficult as it was in Sweden. Gradually, some of the customer representatives had no problem at all in understanding my accent. Overall, I got tired of this and so started looking into spelling alphabet.
If you don't know what spelling alphabet are let me explain it to you here. In certain situations where it is hard to differentiate between different alphabet you spell some word for that specific alphabet like e for echo. For example, in the noisy situations, it's easy to say something using these spelling alphabet. They use this in navigation where decibel levels are high. People use them when they have to convey something to soldiers in the battlefield. You can see something like this in world war movies.
Anyway, coming back to my situation, I started spelling my name out to people on phone using these spelling alphabet. Whenever they ask my name I say: S for Sierra, R for Romeo, E for Echo, E for Echo, D for Delta, H for Hotel, A for Alpha, R for Romeo, M for Mike, A for Alpha, N for November, C for Charlie, H for Hotel and U for Uniform. Bam! They get it without any problems. If they don't get it even after this then Gold help us all.
Anyway here are the spelling alphabet in case you are interested. These vary from country to country. But overall these work well as these are NATO accepted.
A for Alpha B for Bravo C for Charlie D for Delta E for Echo F for Foxtrot G for Golf H for Hotel I for India J for Juliet K for Kilo L for Lima M for Mike N for November O for Oscar P for Papa Q for Quebec R for Romeo S for Sierra T for Tango U for Uniform V for Victor W for Whiskey X for X-ray Y for Yankee Z for Zulu
It helped me like anything having learned these spelling alphabet. I am sure it would help you too in case you are not native English speaker just like me. In other words you have accent too.
No comments:
Post a Comment