profound question

Now as my friends know, I am what you might call "challenged" by the English language. Oh, ask me to write and I'm just fine as long as a English teacher doesn't get to grade my work. Then there are all these red circles and crossed out words and notes in the margins about "run on sentences" and "dangling participles". So what's wrong with that? Our entire nation would be healthier if there was more running and dangling.....(hmmm, I probably need to rethink that business about the dangling....sounds like something that should be censored). It's strange because the people that like my writing give me the same reasoning why they like it that the English teachers give me as criticism...I write the same way I speak.

The only area of English that I'm as challenged as I am in the structure of the English language is pronunciation. If they had created "Hooked on Phonics" when I was a kid, I would be the part of the control group that flunked the testing. The only way I can get hooked on phonics is if they use a very large fish hook. I've often thought that part of my problem is this "auditory discrimination hearing" problem that I have. I think I wrote in an earlier blog that I have problems hearing the difference in sounds. So red and dead sound pretty much the same to me. That used to make hospice work interesting. Anyway, I'm getting to the point, or the question I have, about sounds.

Now, as I understand it, phonics refers to the sounds that create the word. But what I'm having a struggle with is how different areas of the country can have such different sounds, otherwise known as accents. How can making an "i" sound in one part of the country sound like an "a" sound somewhere else? How can you say "car" with a hard r sound in one state, and up north, they call it a "ca" with no r sound? Or more to the point, how can Texas and Louisiana use the same version of Hooked on Phonics?

Today I had to deliver a check to this man, who gave me the best directions he could. But because I've been here long enough now, I really don't expect to understand every word that is said. My objective is to understand enough to get me started in the correct general direction, and to make certain that I have the telephone number of the insuree easily available. I bet sometimes they feel like a air traffic control tower the way they have to guide me in to their run-way....I mean driveway. So he tells me to go down this highway, across a little bridge, and turn on *&/%# street. It sounded something like Carl street. Although I did miss the turn the first time, I did figure out quickly that I was supposed to turn on Carroll Street. I don't know about you, but when I say Carl and when I say Carrol, my mouth doesn't move in the same way. (Try it) Anyway, the check got delivered with only two extra phone calls.

Then I talked to the next person to whom I was delivering a check. She was meeting a friend for lunch and I agreed to go to the restaurant. "No." I told her, "I'm not familiar with that restaurant, but I'll find it". Actually, when she told me that she was meeting for lunch at Imperial Top Pick, I thought that might be a steak place, and I'm always looking for a good rib-eye. It was a good thing that I had the first word in the restaurant's name correct, or I would have driven past "Imperial CHOPSTICKS" without stopping.

I really don't know how much of this is my hearing and how much is their accent. But the next time you see me, look directly at me and talk in slow, clear sentences. By then, I will probably think that you've lost your mind. But at least, I'll understand you!