A Second Language You Had To Learn And Other Things....
By Sue21
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
Pamplona, Spain
March 10, 2019 7:28am CST
Being a G.P.O. trained telephonist was no fun sometimes.
You were in a Telephone exchange with age old switchboards that have since long gone of course.
But from this day to that I would never ever change what I learned from it all.
For one not only did you get to learn more about Great Britain more than what you could ever learn at School you got to learn something else.
If you think just English was enough and your pronouciation of it not so.
You had to learn how to pronounce quite a few of the Welsh towns and cities that were listed.
You could not pronounce them any old how you had to do it properly.
Of course there is no one like the Welsh to pronounce them properly.
Apart from having the patience of a Saint as to when being asked to give a Welsh telephone number and having to be really quick at looking it up you had to have the spelling already in your head to be able to get to it quickly and have an alphabetic mentality too.
I got to love this with time.
As one of my Welsh friends he used to call me Ceridwen Sue said you do alright Sue you do alright.
You also got to learn about your area and other parts of it too.
Priceless is what I would call it as I still remember the name Ashby de La Zouch and wondered where that came from.
8 people like this
8 responses
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
10 Mar 19
I can well understand that too.
I understood most of the dialects from Great Britain because you were confronted with them all the time being a telephonist.
2 people like this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
10 Mar 19
@LadyDuck
That sounded really complicated but fun too at the same time.
2 people like this
@LadyDuck (502251)
• Italy
10 Mar 19
@lovinangelsinstead21 I do not understand all the Italian dialects. If people only speak with an accent is fine, but if they speak their dialect it's impossible to understand. My mom was from Modena, my father Milan, my two grandmother spoke dialect and did not understand one another. I translated.
2 people like this
@bunnybon7 (50970)
• Holiday, Florida
10 Mar 19
nice to be proud of your job and love it. i had that with my last one as care giver
1 person likes this
@bunnybon7 (50970)
• Holiday, Florida
10 Mar 19
@lovinangelsinstead21 i did and now i understand even more the good i did for others
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
11 Mar 19
@bunnybon7
My Mom was so badly in need of a really good caregiver but I was being driven away by the troublemakers around her.
In the end it was all to do with the money of her house.
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
10 Mar 19
Hard job that to be a Caregiver Bun.
You must have really loved it for sure.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (230340)
• Chile
10 Mar 19
In Latin America, we pronounce in very different ways depending on the country we come from. Now that we have so many immigrants in our country, we wonder if this or that person is from Venezuela or Colombia. To us, they sound the same.
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
10 Mar 19
I can tell their accent almost right away most times.
There is one from Peru but she has been here a very long time and has the accent from here you see and then again the other one is from Peru as well and she has a very marked accent from her country.
1 person likes this
@marguicha (230340)
• Chile
11 Mar 19
@lovinangelsinstead21 Some people get the accent sooner than others
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
11 Mar 19
@marguicha
I think it was something that I learned from being a Telephonist more than anything because you had to be able to understand what they were saying and a lot of girls used to pass the awkward ones on to me.
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
10 Mar 19
You know that is right.
However the most tongue tying ones were the Welsh ones till you got to learn how to pronounce them.
Ashby de La Zouch is so much easier than Ystrad Mynach say something like that.
Or say Llantysilio another one.
Welsh city and town names were hard to learn till you got used to them and then it sounds like you are speaking a different language lo pillas?
Have a great journey tomorrow tops and hope you get around any obstacles easily.Wishing you a good night ahead and good weather for that trip and that the meeting goes well for you too.
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
11 Mar 19
@topffer
Okay I send you some nice Spanish weather.
Euskera is really easy compared to Welsh and Welsh is not written as it sounds well it is for the Welsh but for the rest of us mortals not.
You would cringe if you knew how I promounce some French places but I do try at least I do try.
My youngest had a French Teacher at School who had given up on him and I had fits of laughter and I really could not help it as I was making it so easy for him just to say.
This is his pronounciation or was rather San Jillbear dey la Crikes. Which really says San Gilbert de La Croix.
I kept at it in his Homework y de nada me sirvió I can tell you.
Good journey back tops.
Good journey back tops.1 person likes this
@topffer (42155)
• France
10 Mar 19
@lovinangelsinstead21 Basque names are also not bad when it comes to accumulate consonants that cannot be pronounced by a normal human being.
Thank you ! Send me a nice Spanish weather for Tuesday afternoon, I will have 3 hours to visit the old city before taking my train back.
.
Thank you ! Send me a nice Spanish weather for Tuesday afternoon, I will have 3 hours to visit the old city before taking my train back.1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
13 Mar 19
It was challenging and so very strict working for the Government as such so you had to get it all right or nothing.
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
15 Mar 19
It really was you had to learn how to pronounce those Welsh names not perfect but something decent anyway.
Ystrad Mynach is a typical one for a start off.
I was in the Wolverhampton G.P.O. and so missed it afterwards.
1 person likes this
@TiarasOceanView (70020)
• United States
12 Mar 19
I bet that was a good learning experience. Yes the Welsh language is a difficult one.
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
12 Mar 19
It was really interesting as it sounds familiar although it sounds really way out to try and make out what they are saying its very soothing to listen to.
1 person likes this
@lovinangelsinstead21 (36847)
• Pamplona, Spain
13 Mar 19
Was really not a case of speaking other accents rather more pronouncing the names of those towns and villages in Wales and we had to make manual calls all the time intervening for the caller beforehand that is the way it was done and of course its all changed now.
If you had a person to person call and they were in some remote Welsh Village you had to ask the person on the other end was he the said village name and number as you could have always made a mistake and dialled the wrong code and it did happen.
