The English Language

Living in Chennai, we do come across a lot of people working in BPOs. Not to blame them, but sometimes its difficult to understand the ‘ English language’ the way they speak it. It could also be that we are used to hearing it differently. They seem to carry on with their accents even out of office. But then I guess people are people and not automations that you can turn on and turn off. To actually pretend to be a Rachel Anderson for 8-10/11/12 (?) hours and then to leave office to be Pavithra Vasudevan, is a very very difficult task.
English, not native to us, is taught to us differently at different points of life. I work as an instructional designer and I am required to write courses catering to the American audience. We have a person who teaches us how Americanize the way we write English. The spellings I learnt (its ‘learned’ in America!) are actually incorrect, and I have to unlearn what I learnt in school to write the courses I write. Analyse is Analyze, Colour is Color and a Jeweller is Jeweler. I wonder what I would teach my son :-)?
Talking about accents, I met a person last week, actually my husband’s friend/ colleague. He had a major accent and it was difficult for me to follow conversation. I had to ask my husband for clarification, when I didn’t understand. In total I felt like an ‘English Illiterate’. The incident reads funny:-), but actually, it was quite embarrassing. I was wondering, whether it was an English accent or an American accent and then I realized that it was a False accent :-).
People and their accents!!!.