Like most Malaysians, I tend to swallow half my words and speak at the rate of knots. When I was living in Engerland, my mates there used to hurl such abuse at my garbled diction, that I was driven to revamp my speaking habits by opening my mouth widely and arti-cu-lating my words properly.
Since my return to La Malasie, I can feel my words running chaotically into each other again. The vowels are no where to be found and the consonants are busy trying to catch up with the split infinitives that am producing by the tome. I admit, in the absence of my abusive mates, I have turned lazy and get quite irritable when Ma SFM and SFM ask me to repeat what I have just said (my mumbling isnt that bad I muttered).
I spoke about this to Azures on Monday afternoon as we sat in Harry's waiting for the rain to stop. Much to my astonishment, she agreed the prognosis offered by others like SFM and Ma SFM i.e. that I speak far too rapidly and slur far too often. Azures had not wanted to comment on it before as she was fearful of had put it down to my sleep deprived state but given that I had brought it up....
So anyway, following the discussion with Azures, I decided enough was enough and that I would make a serious attempt to slow down and arti-cu-late my words again.
On Tuesday morning during the drive to work, SFM raised his eyebrows and enquired re: my arti-cu-lation. He was most impressed (or so he says). Spurred by this comment, I decided to make a real go of it at work in face to face meetings as well as teleconferences.
It was a challenge and a half to slow down my speech pattern and pronounce each syllable after all these years. However I am pleased to report that my efforts seem to be worthwhile and that the overall end result appears to be good i.e. my audience have been most receptive and attentive to my cunning plans and great ideas as compared to my pre arti-cu-lation days of yonder.
There is a one slight hitch though. Given that the attention span of most the people I am interacting with at work are shorter than my easily chipped fingernails, it is quite a challenge to get through the sentence/script without being rudely interrupted. One person even forgot the first part of my sentence when I asked him a question consisting of 15 words.. obviously my next obsession project is to speak in short sparse sentences.
Brevity is the new black. Watch me speak (I didnt say write).
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