[etni] You say tomato, I say tomahto

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(read the whole article at - www.etni.org.il/news/accents.htm  or  
www.etni.org/news/accents.htm)

You say tomato, I say tomahto 
Haaretz - February 27, 2004 

At a Jerusalem international call center, customers demand workers with 
specific Anglo accents. 

When 24-year-old Danny Brill began working at the CSM call center in Jerusalem 
a year-and-a-half ago, it took the native Australian a full three weeks to 
realize that the Americans he was calling on the other side of the Atlantic 
didn't understand a word he was saying. As a customer service agent, an 
unfamiliar accent, he soon discovered, was simply a liability. 

"I was trying to do my best at the job, but my accent was impeding my 
performance," he explains. But Brill, with the encouragement of his superiors, 
decided to remedy the situation; for a few days each week, each time he picked 
up the phone to place a trans-Atlantic call, the recent immigrant to Israel 
adopted the accent his employers encouraged and his customers would finally 
understand. "I pretended that I was American," he says proudly. 

(read the whole article at - www.etni.org.il/news/accents.htm  or  
www.etni.org/news/accents.htm)


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