Coping with the language barrier: Why am I talking gibberish

A couple of days ago, at the end of my shift, something happened that made me wish I could rewind my life and change the way I learned English. I was leaning over a table, trying to clean up the juice spills and pick up all the left crumbles with a wet towel, when I saw some colleagues of mine passing by. It was my eight or nine table. 

“Should I wipe those too”, I asked (or so I thought) pointing across the dining room. “Yeah, whip it!” David responded, bursting into a contagious laugh. The others joined him. “I meant cleaning, not spanking”, I tried to explain myself, which only made them laugh harder. This time, I forced a smile, pressing the dirty towel harder against the table.

On the surface, the whole story amused me too, but deep inside it made me angry. How is it possible to talk gibberish 70% of the time with all the amount of reading in English I did back home? I mean, I know a lot of words, I just can’t pronounce them properly; besides reading I didn't do much else. 

I relied too much on reading, forgetting that conversations are paramount in learning a new language. Now I’m acting like a broken radio that catches all the frequencies, but can’t reproduce the tunes without damaging their sound. It’s not exactly ear candy. And no, giving myself a good smack upside the head doesn’t work. I’ve tried.

The fact that people are saying my accent is “charming” doesn’t help either. At this point in my life, all I want is to blend in, be like everybody else, especially with the way I talk.

Sometimes I’m literally afraid to speak. Words slowly roll out of my mouth, barely audible, like I just had a lobotomy. ”Thrr yo go”, I mumble whenever I put a plate on front of a resident; then quickly make myself invisible. 

My husband is in the same boat. At the beginning of his shift you can’t tell he’s a foreign, but as the day progress and he becomes tired, his pronunciation gets worse; to the point that people can’t understand him. As much as I wish, our problem doesn’t have a quick fix. It will probably take a full year or two before our funny accents will fade away, coaxing our brains to switch to English.

Now, if only I could cut myself some slack till then…