Breaking Barriers and Lifting Others: A Story of Power and Purpose

So I think when I started, so I qualified.

I sort of passed out after having done my bar in 2002.

I was already working there.

My first job was as a legal secretary at a local firm in the same place where I went to university, which was in Nottingham.

And I came in for my first day at university and I had grown up in Sri Lanka.

This was my First time in Europe, I'd traveled extensively, but not to Europe.

And I don't know, I think I expected it to just be like it was on TV.

But it wasn't.

I ended up in the Midlands.

I couldn't understand a word anybody said.

Somehow I expected everybody to speak BBC English.

And they just didn't.

They spoke with such an array of regional accents.

And after I said, I'm sorry, I beg your pardon.

After you say that about two or three times and you still don't understand what people say, you know, you just learn to just nod and smile and say, yeah, yeah, whatever.

I can't ask again.

It's really rude.

I have no idea what they're saying.

And I came to the UK being, you know, relatively bilingual, having done my studies in Singhala, but having done A-level English, for example.

But it was still quite difficult, first of all, even for a bilingual person to study in English in that depth that it required and to converse because my accent was extremely different.

So people couldn't understand what I was saying.

I couldn't understand what they were saying.

That probably lasted for at least a year.

And after that, a few times you could see yourself becoming more anglicized because when i'd go back to sri lanka people would say in the first couple of days before you've been in sri lanka very long say oh why are you talking with that english accent and i was like well i was talking english it probably is normal to speak with an english accent but hey listen if you didn't speak with a french accent It wouldn't sound right, would it? But I had to soon learn.

So language was a huge thing.

So I think when I started, so I qualified.

I sort of passed out after having done my bar in 2002.

I was already working there.

My first job was as a legal secretary at a local firm in the same place where I went to university, which was in Nottingham.

And I came in for my first day at university and I had grown up in Sri Lanka.

This was my First time in Europe, I'd traveled extensively, but not to Europe.

And I don't know, I think I expected it to just be like it was on TV.

But it wasn't.

I ended up in the Midlands.

I couldn't understand a word anybody said.

Somehow I expected everybody to speak BBC English.

And they just didn't.

They spoke with such an array of regional accents.

And after I said, I'm sorry, I beg your pardon.

After you say that about two or three times and you still don't understand what people say, you know, you just learn to just nod and smile and say, yeah, yeah, whatever.

I can't ask again.

It's really rude.

I have no idea what they're saying.

And I came to the UK being, you know, relatively bilingual, having done my studies in Singhala, but having done A-level English, for example.

But it was still quite difficult, first of all, even for a bilingual person to study in English in that depth that it required and to converse because my accent was extremely different.

So people couldn't understand what I was saying.

I couldn't understand what they were saying.

That probably lasted for at least a year.

And after that, a few times you could see yourself becoming more anglicized because when i'd go back to sri lanka people would say in the first couple of days before you've been in sri lanka very long say oh why are you talking with that english accent and i was like well i was talking english it probably is normal to speak with an english accent but hey listen if you didn't speak with a french accent It wouldn't sound right, would it? But I had to soon learn.

So language was a huge thing.