There Are No Words...

Jeez Eric, even the caption department thinks this is too esoteric...

Before departing the home front for my new life in Sri Lanka, I spent a bit of time boning up on the local lingo in the hopes of making a smoother transition to life in the Indian Ocean. For a mere $19.99, I was able to purchase a Learn Sinhala! DVD, the only one of its kind on Amazon, and I got down to business. After just a few shorts weeks of rigorous study, I had learned nothing.

Such ignorance continues to this day. I've been here for over two months and I think I can say maybe four words in the native tongue. I of course blame this almost entirely on the unmitigated disaster that was the Learn Sinhala! DVD (you're better off just stringing together random syllables) and to a much smaller degree upon my incredible inability to hear things properly. When I lived in Peru, I had a bear of a time understanding the Spanish despite years of training. Hell I couldn't even understand the English when I lived in London. Add in the fact that the alphabet and grammar here are entirely distinct from my Western sensibilities and you have yourself one lost little human rights attorney.

So it doesn't surprise me when waiters laugh at my feeble attempts at pleases and thank yous. No, what bothers me way more is that they can't even decipher the few English words we speak in common. And I don't mean "specious" or "verisimilitude". I mean "fish" and "hello".

This problem has plagued me since my earliest travels...something about my accent makes it impossible for people to know what the hell I'm talking about. Just the other day, I hopped a tuk tuk to enjoy a nice xmas drink on the Mount Lavinia Hotel veranda in the blustery 80 degree chill and said to the driver, "Mount Lavinia". He stared. Ok, I'll use a little accent. "MohntLaveeneya". The stare continued. This went on through six more iterations of the same interaction until finally he said, "Ooooh, MohntLaveeneya!" Odd...sounded just like what I said. "800 is ok," I inquired, remembering always to negotiate before starting the puttering engine. He looked appalled and glared at me, jaw agape. What anger! It took about four more iterations of exchange to realize he thought I said 300, which of course everyone knows sounds just like 800.

Look, I get it, I sound like an obnoxious New Yorker no matter how hard I try to hide it. My trashy Long Island accent once led an otherwise amicable ex-girlfriend to remark that it made me "sound like a fucking animal." Fair enough, I suppose. But I'm trying here people...and it's just not working.