Liberian English

The fact that Liberians speak English doesn't mean I can understand them all the time.

My parents are always complaining that I don't enunciate and that I run my words together. They'd have a *really* hard time here in Liberia, because here you *really* don't enunciate and you *really* run your words together. You basically drop the last syllable of every word.

A couple examples:

• houdawe-en?: how was the weekend?
• howdade?: how's the day?
• wataco - cold water
• boyae - boiled egg

Try as we might to get the accent right when learning a foreign language, there's seemingly something very wrong about trying to speak your language with a different accent. I listen to the long time expats do it and... it just sounds absurd. Not to mention I feel like a moron and almost denigrating trying to speak the Liberian way. But sometimes I'm trying to communicate and they're not understanding me and I just say f* it, here goes, and more often than not, it works!

So far I'm only really comfortable with howdade and howdawe-en? We'll see how much I pick up in my remaining four weeks here.