Switching from American English to British English

I have seen so many funny memes about a Filipina named Jenny who’s gone viral because of her “You’re road!” blunder. My first reaction to watching the short video clip was to giggle big time. It took me a week to realize how nasty I was for laughing out loud at her pronunciation. It’s not her fault if she’s got difficulty with English speaking aspect as well as her English word bank.

The realization brought my attention to the fact that it is very possible for me to experience such situation in the land of the British people. Why did I say this? Remember that the Philippines is using American English. From kindergarten until college, I was taught nothing BUT American vocabularies, spelling and pronunciation and even the American accent.

Just thinking of myself making such pronunciation gaffes makes me cringe. I don’t speak perfect English. What I am trying to say is that I have to re-calibrate my English and sync it from the American version to British version. That is one tall order but I love challenges. Let’s get it going then!

I have a compilation of vocabularies/words that I find very “interesting. Please bear with me because I’ll be inserting phonetics lessons. 😛

1) Pantene. Yes, fellas! The Pantene shampoo! I grew up using this shampoo and everybody pronounced it PAN-TEEN. The observant and grammar/pronunciation Nazi persona in me kicked in when I saw a commercial of this shampoo in the UK endorsed by Elli Goulding. She repeatedly said, “PAN-TEN” (short /e/ as in ‘bed’)! Cripes! That made me question my sanity! I tried out saying the word the way she did it and I knew I looked and felt like a dork! 😜😂🤣

2) VITAMINS. C’mon! I dare you to say it! The consensus would be this: “vɪtəmɪn”. Cute but here is the British-correct way of saying it: “vItamins” (short /I/ as in ‘sit’). My brain’s fried!

3) DAYS OF THE WEEK. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. Take note that the syllable –day- is pronounced as /di/ (short /I/).

I’ll stop right here or else I’ll have nightmares! 😅🤣