Chronicle 2 : Hello, how are you?
English is the language spoken in India and everyone knows that. But Indians being proficient in English? The US doesn’t think so. Every dentist trained outside US has to take the TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) to prove that he or she is proficient. So here I was, trying to get “proficient” at a language that I had been speaking for the past twenty years! Little did I know there were many more things to learn…..
After I moved to the US, the first week at my new apartment building was plain horror as far as my spoken English was concerned. One fine day, my dishwasher stopped working and I walked down to the lobby to raise a complaint with the doorman. The doorman smiled at me and said, “Hi how are you?” and I went, “I am fine”. The doorman gave a weird expression before saying, “Please see the management person to help you fix it”. Later, I tried to reason his weird look and began wondering in my mind whether I should have said “I am good”, instead. The next day, I walked up to the management office to raise the complaint. I saw a couple of people waiting. I go to the last person in the line and ask, “Is this the queue for the service request?” The lady gave me the funniest look and said, “Yes this is the line for the service request”. This went on for quite some time! It was as if I spoke an alien tongue. It made me so nervous that I would think a zillion times before I even spoke a sentence.
I turned to some friends for help. Anderson Cooper and Kiran Chetry, sat with me every morning over a cup of coffee and helped me practice my accent. The doorman was my ‘test’ person. His weird expressions got better as the days progressed- a sign that I was doing much better. After a dozen practice runs like I was auditioning for news channel anchor, I was all ready to head to Brooklyn for a test. A week later, I was ecstatic with a super score at TOEFL!
Now after being in the US for six years, my accent has changed so much that I have to remind myself that I never spoke this way! Many of my patients till now think I am an American born Indian. Well, I think a lot of practice and observation can make a huge difference.
Happy speaking!
Dr Meenakshi Umapathy is a General Dentist who graduated from India. She moved to the USA and completed her DDS from New York University College of Dentistry. She is currently practicing General Dentistry for Kids in Indiana. She shares her stories about dentistry in India and the US through her narratives at the DentistryUnited every Saturday
Disclaimer : The views expressed in this blog are solely the views of the author and need not reflect the views of DentistryUnited.com . For any clarification you can get in touch with the author directly at the address mentioned above.
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