It's less than 3 weeks to go till our
flight to Denver
and I'm both excited and nervous. A lot of the stuff has been sorted out but there
is still a lot to be done. So my main goal for the next 6 months is to stay
positive and not freak out. Some days can be really hard and stressful but at
least at the moment we are in Australia,
a familiar place. USA
is going to be a real challenge as everything is going to be strange and
different.
Putting the American bureaucracy aside, a
basic thing called “English” can be an obstacle. While reading about the common
experiences of Australians is the USA I noticed that many Aussies
stated that American struggle to understand them.
Firstly, the accent is totally different.
Aussies are lazy in their speech and don’t pronounce a fair few letters. While
going through a list comparing how Aussies vs Americans pronounce words, I
realised how Australian I must sound! I’m especially bad with pronouncing my R’s
and I definitely should practice my pronunciation if I want Americans to
understand me.
The second reason Americans struggle to
understand Aussies is the actual words we use. As little dissimilarity as pushbike
vs bicycle can make the whole difference. And while Australians are familiar with
a lot of the American words through American television and movies, Americans don’t
have the privilege of being exposed to another English. I also discovered that
saying “toilet” (instead of bathroom or restroom) can make Americans go red and
that the Australians national footwear – the thong (flip flop) means a
completely different thing over there…
So, speech being an important way of
communication and my English being potentially hard to understand, you can see
while I’m a bit stressed. Who knows, Spanish might come in handy…
