Telephone-speak – pronto!

In the world of aviation there is a universal language roughly based on English which is used to avoid confusion among pilots and to make sure that millions of passengers are able to hurtle about the world without hitting mountains.

Regrettably, the notion of an international language has not yet occurred to telephonists who, despite all those remarkable technical advances, allow foreign callers to crash into metaphorical mountains or dive into the drink out of sheer frustration.

About 30 years ago I was involved in an global research project that meant having to do a lot of overseas telephoning.

The first few weeks of trying to phone my contacts in France were pretty much like attempting to hold a conversation with your neighbour in morse code by banging your head against the garden wall. Nobody had told me that the ringing tone in France sounds just like our engaged signal here in South Africa.

I eventually got the message and moved on to Italy. I love the Italians and even learnt a few catchphrases in their lingo to break the ice — catchphrases that made sense only if I spoke clearly, succinctly and most of all slowly.

I dialled my first respondent in Milan, took a deep breath as the phone rang and for some silly reason expected someone to answer by saying “’Allo”, which I imagined was Italian for “hello”.

Not so. The woman who answered it didn’t even have the courtesy to say “’allo”, let alone “buon giorno”, “ave” or any other modern or ancient Latin greeting. What a rude lady, I thought. Because she just picked up the phone and said: “Pronto!”

Pronto? I ask you, what sauce! So, I tried again, and again and again. Even different numbers. The whole of Italy was full of ill-mannered people telling me to get a move on. “Stop messing about,” they implied. “Speak to us and speak fast, you Anglo-Saxon git”, I heard them thinking.

So I tried: “G’morningthisisChris-MoerdykcanIspeaktoSignorLamberti?” To which the receptionist replied: “Huh?” It took me a month and a seriously dislocated dialling finger to discover that “Pronto” is telephone-Italian for “Hullo”. Literally, it means “Ready”.

We South Africans also have our little telephone idiosyncrasies. When I started my career in journalism at the Pretoria News in the early 1960s, I had to telephone various government departments on an almost daily basis. And every civil servant I ever telephoned answered the phone in precisely the same way: “Yullie…”

Sometimes the “u” in “yullie” was almost indistinguishable, particularly among those whose gold watches and pensions were only a couple of years away. They managed to compact “yullie” into a word of less than a quarter of a syllable.

For those readers who would like to try to say “yullie” in the manner of a 1960s civil servant, just follow these simple instructions.

1) Hold the telephone about 15cm from your ear, at no stage allowing it to get any closer. This would give the false impression that you are willing to be of assistance to the caller.

2) Allow your lips to be ever so slightly parted as if someone was holding your nostrils closed so that you would only just be able to breathe in enough air to stave off immediate brain damage.

3) Teeth should be firmly gritted.  Close your left nostril by screwing up your face as though you were shaving under your left jowl with a blunt razor and cold water (or, for women readers, as though you are trying to check in a mirror why your earring pin won’t go through that old hole in your earlobe anymore).

Now you’re ready. Fling your tongue upwards as though you are trying to let it escape out of that very right nostril which has been waiting in delightful anticipation for this moment ever since your started on that complicated procedure to get the left one closed. Breathe out quickly. The resulting sound should be “Yullie”.

It does take practice, and it is entirely possible you could end up saying things like “Prrrsliip” or even “Reeyoing”. But with persistence and practice, “yullie” will eventually out. Probably sometime in the early hours of the morning — after which your family will want to have you certified.

Talking about strange telephone habits, don’t you think the Americans take the cake? Well, taking the cake is putting it mildly; sometimes they tend to walk away with the whole darn bakery.

But have you noticed in the movies and TV sitcoms that they never ever say goodbye? They just finish what they’re saying and put the phone down. It seems so incredibly rude.