Wednesday, July 04, 2007

arida

arida... this is how i am advised to introduce myself in kenya, so that people will pronounce my name properly; alida. r's and l's are often interchanged, and in nigeria people would often call me arida.
someone just shared a hilarious story of pronunciation in zambia. there, they pronounce the l's as r's, the r's as l's and take the y's and e's off the ends of names. so, if your name is dave, it is prounounced davey, if your name is charley, they will call you charl.
a new girl was coming from ireland and her name was cloe. the zambian team was going to warn her that she would be called "crow" all summer, as the l would become an r, and the e would disappear. they were going to call her crow all summer. then they had the bright idea of introducing her as crow, then the people would change the r to an l and add an e to the end. and wonder of all wonders, they would say "this is my friend crow" and the people invariably said "oh , nice to meet you cloe"
so, i will arrive in the country, "hello my name is arida" and they will exclaim, "oh alida, how nice to meet you!"

1 comment:

rubyslipperlady said...

You HOPE that's what will happen anyway! Otherwise, you'll forget your real name by the time you return to Calgary. Should we just start calling you Arida now?