Mamfah
When I lived in Portugal, there was this geezer called Tutnandor who worked behind the bar of a pub called The Queen Vic. He had one eye in the loft and the other in the basement, if you know what I mean, so when he was chatting away you never knew if he was talking to you or someone else at the end of the bar. And you were never quite sure if he was taking the piss or not.
After a while, you’d find yourself doing it as well. You’d be talking to your mate and looking at someone else ….. both at the same time, so your head would start to tilt as you tried to make sense of it all. You could walk in there sober, order a drink from Tutnandor and fall off your stool. That was my excuse anyway.
Anyway, this thread’s not about Tutnandor’s eyes – although perhaps it should be - but his name.
Because he’d been introduced to us as Tutnandor, we always called him Tutnandor. Well, you would, wouldn’t you?
One day his girlfriend, Vicky, had a right go about us always taking the piss out of him. Yet we never did. Well, not to his face anyway. Mind you, if we had been taking the piss out of him to his face he’d probably have been looking elsewhere ….. or maybe WE would. He was a confusing bloke.
“His name’s Tutnandor,” she said, “Not Tutnandor.”
“Eh?”
“Tutnandor! He’s Portuguese. He doesn’t understand English humour. He doesn’t know why you’ve been calling him Tutnandor all season.”
“Well, it’s his fucking name, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s Tutnandor.”
“Eh?”
After a while the penny started to drop. We always called her T’Vicky, because she came from somewhere stupid up north and that was how she spoke. She’d introduced him to us as Tutnandor, but really his name was Fernando. No wonder the poor sod was confused.
Anyway, I’m going about this in rather a long way, but there is a reason to it all. You see, Kai’s childminder has a little girl who goes to the same school called Samantha. He calls her Girl Sam when speaking about her because he has another mate called Boy Sam. And that kind of keeps things in perspective for him, I suppose.
She stayed over the other night. His first sleepover. They slept top-to-tail, which was really cute. And in the morning Sue and I woke to hear them chatting away to each other. Which was lovely.
And we realised then that when addressing her, he doesn’t call her Samantha, but Mamfah. Which I think is adorable, and wanted to share it with everyone in the hope that someone else might have some amusing examples of mispronounced names.
