Improve Your English: English in Everyday Life

INTERVIEWER:
So, d’y—, do people comment on your 
accent?
MAN:
At times, at times. Uh, when I came initially in ’94, I 
might have had a little bit of a heavier accent. Uh, I don’t 
know that it will ever change that much, but, uh, some-
times some people do not understand when I express 
myself, sometimes, but most often than not, uh, I articu-
late, I believe I articulate well because I studied linguis-
tics also at the university. Not that that should matter, 
but somehow I put a lot of emphasis on my phonetics 
and pronunciation so a lot of people can get along with 
understanding me, but you run into occasions where, 
uh, people just cannot get what you say, and I would say 
something about two or three times, and they would be 

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like, “What are you saying?” Th
en eventually when they 
get it, they really do not say it far from what I said, you 
know, so I said, “Maybe it’s the accent,” you know.
INTERVIEWER:
Now do you have trouble understanding 
people in the United States who have diff erent accents?
MAN:
Not really. Um, I-I’m at a point now where I can 
actually tell sometimes if you’re from the South or from 
California or from Vegas, you know, so I not only under-
stand what they say but I can decipher, uh, which sec-
tion they-they coming from, but every now and then, 
you run into somebody that have a very fast speech, you 
know, very rapid speech, and it’s hard to pick up every-
thing they say. And, uh, it’s not too diffi
cult understand-
ing people in the United States because also the choice 
of words. Th
ey use high-frequency words, uh. By high-
frequency words, words you hear every day, you know, 
it’s, uh, when you start reading a book, uh, like Agatha 
Christie or something, then you see words which could 
be challenging or require you to go into the dictionary to 
see what they mean. But in everyday language, uh, a lot of 
Americans—and this is probably a plus—use, uh, high-
frequency words, so there is no mystery in the language,