Check out The Unpronounceables by Balli Kaur Jaswal
Read an extract from The Unpronounceables by Balli Kaur Jaswal.
1
The Five Stages of Mispronunciation
There is no glory in receiving a prize at school assembly if your name is unpronounceable. I know this because my name is Navkiranjhot Ahloowalia and soon my name will be butchered in front of an audience of eight hundred. The only consolation is that I’m sitting between Shaz and Pree, fellow champions with difficult names. Humiliation is more tolerable when shared between friends.
But before we get to that spectacle, Mr Hartnett, the vice-principal, steps up to the podium to give the sports update. ‘It’s the last day of term three,’ he announces.
Cue cheers and whistles.
He grins and waits for the noise to settle. ‘Let’s talk about how we’ll win the finals against Oakwood Secondary.’
More cheers, this time featuring animal noises.
Mr Hartnett rubs his gleaming bald head and chuckles. ‘Settle down, guys,’ he calls. ‘This isn’t a Tigers game.’
Good-natured boos ricochet off the walls of the school hall. (I say good-natured because we were treated to a less civil type of booing last year when the drama captain promoted the school musical as like a football game but for clever people. Know your audience, my friend.)
‘Go Hawks!’ someone yells from the back. ‘Tigers suck!’
‘Charmed,’ Shaz mutters.
Pree giggles along with everyone else, but stops when Mr Hartnett shoots a glare over the hall.
After the chatter dies down, he announces the top cross-country participants in a stroke of butter-smooth pronunciations: Louise Farwell. Martina Lee. Oliver Batterson. Mr Hartnett congratulates them and says, ‘Now, on to the academic competitions.’
The time has come. Pree and Shaz and I draw our shoulders back as the string that binds us is pulled taut.
‘I have the pleasure of announcing the participants and winners in the district STEM challenge. Tanglewood Secondary students have participated in four competitions with area schools. Our school has seven competitors in year nine. This morning, we will present certificates to these students for their achievements.
‘Eva Delano.
‘Corrine Reynolds.
‘Sue-Ann Truong.
‘Jack Crowley.’
Mr Hartnett hesitates. He frowns and squints at the page. The prolonged silence becomes noticeable – people begin to look up from their laps and crane their necks to see what’s holding him up.
It’s my cue to stand.
Having been subjected to mispronunciations of my name throughout my life, I am familiar with its stages. First, there’s Shock. The announcer’s gaze meets the unusual combinations of letters. He freezes for a moment, then recovers to make a tentative sound. I call this next stage the Toe Dip, like it’s early summer and he’s testing the temperature of the ocean. After this is the Unexpected Leap of Confidence: he’s made some rumbling noises and now there’s momentum. A motivational playlist roars in his head as he belts out a syllable or two. It’s an adrenaline-pumped sprint of sounds until the Unexpected Stumble. Inexperience catches up to our announcer, who becomes so tangled up in stray consonants and syllables that his face begins to turn blue. He gasps and staggers. Disoriented and confused, he blinks with mild suspicion like perhaps his eyesight is failing. Or is this a prank? Who strung all these letters together? Lastly, there is Improvisation. The final syllables are always casualties here. Sometimes the announcer admits defeat and makes an apology. ‘Sorry, I’m not pronouncing this correctly, am I?’ He might laugh at himself with some humility or look irritated with the name-bearer for subjecting him to this torture. Then he chokes out a few more sounds and makes eye contact with the unpronounceable to make sure there are no hard feelings.
And there aren’t any. I understand that Navkiranjhot Ahloowalia is a long and uncommon name. There are no souvenir keychains with this barbed combination of consonants and vowels, with silent h’s and a misleading pair of o’s that cause people to croon the second syllable of my surname (Ah-loooooo). I have certainly never been mistaken for another Navkiranjhot Ahloowalia at school. Whenever somebody begins to read my name out loud for the first – or second, or eighteenth – time, I shrink until the moment passes.
Do I think I would be better off as a Liz or a Kylie? Not really. My parents always remind me that they didn’t move from India to Australia for me to forget who I am. My name means a new light, and I like that it connects me to my Punjabi-Sikh heritage. But there’s being unique, and there’s watching a teacher reconsider their profession when they’re trying to pronounce your name. I can’t seem to have it both ways.
There is one saving grace to having a name like mine: it easily breaks into bite-sized nicknames, like Naveen, Kiran and Joti. For a brief spell, I tried going only by my initials, NA, until I discovered it stood for not applicable, which made form-filling a challenge. Unofficially, meaning almost all the time, I’m known as Navy to my teachers, classmates and even my family.
That’s why I feel that this whole debacle of formal name-announcing at assembly could be avoided. Earlier this morning, I approached Mr Hartnett to ask if he could just announce Navy instead of my full name. He said, ‘It’s a formal prize-giving, so I have to use formal names.’ He went back to lining up football trophies before I could explain the proper pronunciation of my name.
That is why he is now at the Improvisation stage, spluttering my name into the microphone. ‘Nav-rika . . . Nap-keen-jon.’ He is satisfied.
Another deep breath. ‘Ahh-loo-walla-LYA.’ The man is yodelling my unique heritage. Laughter ripples through the hall as I make my way to the stage.
Pree and Shaz’s names are not spared the massacre. He confidently announces ‘Shandira Les-Shark-Away’ – a name he practically made up.
Shaz accepts her certificate and stands on my right, muttering, ‘He didn’t even say it the way he spelled it.’ I take a peep at her certificate. Shaidya Le-Sharqui. It’s actually Shadiya El-Sharqawi.
‘Sharks, away!’ I joke quietly.
Shaz elbows me. ‘Don’t laugh at me, Napkin John.’
The school yearbook paparazzo shoves a lens in our faces just then and our smirks transform easily into winning smiles.
Now it’s Pree’s turn – poor Pree. Mr Hartnett grimaces. ‘Pee – no, sorry – Pree?’
More giggles from our schoolmates, now pitching forward to watch him stumble.
‘Pree-yanny. Pree-yan-thingy.’ He shakes his head slightly in exasperation and I know his gaze has fallen on Pree’s surname. He bites his lower lip and says simply, ‘Goon.’
Luckily for Pree, she has the support of Mia Porter and her friends. Their cheers drown out the sounds of laughter. Pree hurries to the stage, grabs her certificate and takes her place on my left. By some miracle, her full name is spelled correctly – Priyanthini Goonetilleke.
‘Nice,’ I say to Pree. ‘I’m Naviranjot Alwullia this time.’ I have a certificate from last term with my surname spelled Hallelujah, a text-to-speech-gone-rogue situation.
Pree’s face clouds over and right away, I realise I’ve made a mistake in drawing her attention to my certificate. She’s noticed I have a Distinction title while her certificate just says Participation.
‘You did your best,’ I say.
For the STEM challenge, we presented a study on the use of biodegradable hydrogels for sustainable irrigation. Pree got confused by the judges’ questions about the impact of climate change on Australian farming practices, and she got points deducted for stammering during her response. Now, she is sneaking a look at Shaz’s certificate, although she doesn’t have to. Shaz has consistently won High Distinctions for every competition since the school counsellor encouraged her to channel her hostility into a co-curricular activity.
‘Who cares anyway?’ I say as we file out of the auditorium. I flap my certificate to make my point – it’s just a laminated A4 sheet.
Pree smiles a little, which is encouraging. I don’t want her feeling left out. To make things worse, it’s Friday. Shaz and I have all our classes together without Pree, so she’s bound to feel even more excluded. It’s easy to forget that Pree and Shaz were once so much closer.
‘Catch you after school?’ I ask Pree as we approach the bottleneck forming at the exit.
Her smile widens and she says, ‘Okay,’ before disappearing into the crowd.
Partially extracted from The Unpronounceables by Balli Kaur Jaswal, available September 29.
The Unpronounceables
by Balli Kaur Jaswal
A modern-day Looking for Alibrandi meets Bend It Like Beckham, The Unpronounceables is a wonderfully warm-hearted and hopeful YA novel full of humour, friendships, family, art and a touch of romance.
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