THE NUANCE OF LANGUAGE IN GLOBAL TECH PR AND BEYOND

During a recent Zoom meeting, I gently corrected an Israeli client on a mispronounced word. Normally, I avoid that sort of thing because correcting a mispronunciation makes me sound and feel like a jerk. But we were rehearsing for an important analyst meeting, and all wanted the call to go smoothly.

The nuances of the English language are often rather nonsensical, so I completely understand when someone flubs a word. I remain in awe of my non-US-based clients, all of whom speak fluent English –including its subtleties and nuances. While I did well in high school French, if I were dropped into Paris today I could carry on only a very simple conversation, much of which would revolve around me explaining that I studied French in school -- but it was a long, long time ago.

In contrast, my clients must understand and speak English well enough to discuss technology, to banter with an interviewer, and be able to seamlessly bounce back and forth between English and their native language. That’s a mad skill.

Today, as is my early morning brain wake-up ritual while sipping coffee, I was playing Words with Friends on my phone. An opponent played the word “does,” which got me thinking about my non-native-English-speaking clients. Does is pronounced “duz” if it relates to doing something, or “doze” if it relates to female deer. The former stems from the word “do,” but that word also might be associated with a ‘do (short for a “to-do” [event] or a hairdo). There’s even a term of these words that have different meanings when pronounced differently: heteronyms.

In the does/does example, the singulars are do and doe – both of which when spelled or pronounced differently have a variety of meanings. Here are a few: dew (moisture caused by humidity), due (meaning pending), dough (the raw form of bread or a slang word for money), or “doh” (an exclamation used by Homer Simpson in that long-running animated classic TV show).

So how non-native speakers become fluent in English seems to me a bit miraculous. Take the word “polish,” for instance. It’s pronounced “pah-lish” and is a verb meaning to make something shiny. Change the lowercase “p” to a capital “P” and it becomes a proper noun pronounced “Pole-ish” (the nationality or the food). And how about the word pronounced “so.” It could be spelled “sow,” such as sowing seeds, or “sew” which relates to assembling clothing with thread. If you change the pronunciation to “sow,” which rhymes with cow, it becomes a pig.

There are literally thousands of examples of these strange English language subtleties. We have words like base (location) or bass (the instrument), both of which are pronounced the same, or bass, the fish, which is not. We have close (pronounced cloze and meaning shut) or close (pronounced clos and meaning nearby), both of which should not be confused with “clothes,” (pronounced more like cloze but which instead refers to garments).

The word my client mis-pronounced? It was “propriety” rather than “proprietary.” In a full-blown, hour-long presentation, that would have been a minor issue, but I’m happy I let him know during the rehearsal. That’s because when we had the actual analyst call, it was perfect (pronounced “PER-fekt” which means exactly right, versus “per-FEKT” which means to make correct).

Ahh, English!