Toe-may-toe Toe-mah-toe

Sister-in-law Mumoffive works at Borders bookstore now. Recently, she told us that someone came up and asked her if they had "Dee-Jon" available. She sought clarification on the request. "Dijon, as in mustard?" she asked. "No, Dear John, as in letter," the person replied.

I am still getting used to the difference in the way things are pronounced here in Australia. I am assuming the Philippines has its own set of phonetic rules and has managed to create its distinct way of speaking English. (When we had gone to pick up some items from a FreeCycler, one of the homeowners asked if I was Filipino. I asked how he could tell. He said it was from the way I spoke. I must have the 'Filipino English' accent, whatever that is.)

In general, words ending in -er are not pronounced with the R sound and end up sounding like they end with an A. In fact there is a huge shopping centre chain here called SupaCenta. Many other R's are left unspoken if they are found at the end of the word like our, far, factor, motor, more and more. In fact even if they are not at the end of a word, they may be unheard -- warm, tarnish, etc.

The silent R's are not lost, mind you. They end up in places where we don't normally use them. For instance, they would say 'idear' instead of idea. Don't ask me why. I just call it like I hear it.

Just so it is clear, although it is toe-may-toe toe-mah-toe, it is not poe-tay-toe poe-tah-toe. So far, aside from tomato (having a short 'a') here, the other words I've heard pronounced differently are fillet and often (where the 't' is not silent), zebra (with a short 'e'), the letters Z (as 'zed' versus 'zee') and H (as 'heych' versus 'eych'). Did you know that scones are pronounced with a soft O in spite the E at the end and apricots are pronounced with a hard A? (I didn't know that until MyGirl corrected me.)

There is a certain twang in their accent which makes the pronunciation different. It sounds nice and it just takes getting used to.

In general, I believe we can get away with the spoken English, pronouncing words differently and all. However when it comes to written English, most especially for the kids, it would be a whole different ballgame. We would have to learn how words are spelled here and be more conscious.

Australians have somehow figured out how to make their essays longer by adding letters to some of their words. Most common are the words ending in -or become -our such as colour, humour, flavour, neighbour, labour. But there are other words like jewelry back in the home country gets extra embellishment here to become jewellery; it is more than just aluminum, it is aluminium. Perhaps they want more things to be vogue here because we have dialogue, analogue and catalogue. Through all these added letters, I can't quite figure out why it is enrollment in Manila but enrolment here.

Sometimes it is a matter of swapping the positions of letters. This is true for many words ending in -er. These are spelled with -re instead. They have centre, litre, lustre, spectre, theatre, calibre, fibre, sabre, sombre, etc.

Other times it is a matter of replacing letters. Z's become S's while S's become C's. Words ending in -yze become -yse or those ending in -ize become -ise; words ending in -se become -ce. So here if you commit an offence, you better have your driver's licence or else there goes your defence. (I have yet to figure out whether they adopt the same rule for advise whereby advise is the verb and advice is the noun.) People organise, recognise, patronise, realise and analyse here. Their cars have tyres, not tires. I wonder if I will morph from Mom to Mum in the coming years.

I know that I will get accustomed to these peculiarities. Since England, HongKong and Ireland seem to be using the same dictionaries as Australia, perhaps LondonEye, Sister Deer and Mindy can send other related tips and oddities we should watch out for.