I got this story from Mukumoto-san, who suddenly came to me in a small party and asked, “Could you give me a favor?”
I stopped my eating and said, “If I can. What do you want me to do?”
“I will say something in English, and please tell me what do you hear.”
Mukumoto-san was a bit prankster, and actually I was hoping that he planned something funny with it :-), so I said okay. And the words he mouthed was: “Traveler’s check”
“You said 'traveler's check', right?”, I said cautiously, waiting for any trick that he might have set. (Un)fortunately, he was serious that time and didn't set any trick up at all :-). He just disappointedly said, “So you could hear what I said...”
“Just in case you doubt it, I clean my ears regularly, so I don't think I have problem with them...” :-)
“It's not what I meant”, Mukumoto-san replied, and then told me his story.
It was when he and some of his friends went for a vacation to Hawaii. They went into a restaurant, but before making any order, they wanted to make sure whether the restaurant accepted traveler's check or not. After pushing each other to ask the waitress :-), finally one of them stood and boldly asked the question no one was dare to ask :-) “Traveler's check, okay?”
The waitress thought for a while before replied, “okay!”, and disappeared behind the counter. Not long she returned, this time with strawberry milk shake in her hand :-)
“Looked like she mistook 'traveler check' as 'strawberry shake' :-) ... that's why I wanted to know whether my English pronunciation understandable or not. You know, my friend who asked the question went to an English conversation class, and he speaks English way better than me - but still, the waitress couldn't understand him, while you could understand me here...”
Actually I wanted to jokingly say that I have a really good ears that I could even understand his unintelligible mumbling :-), but he looked serious about it, so I quit it.
“Well, I'm not a language expert, but I think you and your friend still left some of your Japanese accent and intonation in your English, just like me still left some of my Indonesian accent and intonation. I won't blame you for that, because unless you learn a language mainly from talking with native speakers, chances that you will still left some of your mother tongue traits in your voice.
“I heard you spoke 'traveler's check' close to the sound of 'torabera- chekku' (Japanese writes traveler`s check as トラベラーチェック (torabera- chekku) in katakana). I've been in Japan for almost 9 years now, and I've already get used to Japanese accented English - so when you said 'torabera-', more or less I could guess that you wanted to say traveler. However, it's not the case with the waitress. I won't blame her for not understanding your friend, since I think she wasn't used to Japanese. Moreover, I think she was expecting that you're gonna make an order, that's why when she heard the sound 'torabera- chekku', she googled the menu in her mind for similar words, and she found strawberry shake in rhyme with it.” :-)
“Looked like I better write the words down and show it next time I have problem with that.”
“I think so. Or you can directly show the traveler's check if you have it. And I think asking in full sentence might also help, like: 'may I pay with traveler's check?' That way, even if she still catch 'traveler's check' as 'strawberry shake', she will know that there's something wrong there, since she'll reckon you for wanting to pay with milk shake... :-) well, it won't be a problem if you go to a country where milk shake is the main currency - I don't know where, though...” :-)
Anyway, if I have the chance again to go to an English speaking country, I think I'd like to make this order: “Can I order 'traveler milk check'? Checken, not stirred, please? :-)
