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Tips for Indian and Pakistani English Speakers

Word: hotel
Culprit: pronunciation, meaning

The first I was asked if I wanted to go out to a HO-tl (pronounced with hard retroflex t) on a Friday night, I had to ask the speaker to clarify. She wanted to go out to eat at a nice restaurant, while I was wondering why we'd go out just to sleep in a hotel. In standard English, a hotel is a place where you stay or sleep. Many nice restaurants in the subcontinent happen to be in 5-star hotels, so it's understandable how the term 'hotel' came to mean 'nice restaurant.'

In standard English, the word 'hotel' is pronounced with stress on the second syllable, 'ho - TEL' and with a soft [t] not a hard one. The [t] should be pronounced right behind your teeth, in a similar position to the Urdu-Hindi softer sound.

There is also no verb 'to hotel,' which means we can not 'go hoteling' tonight. If that were a verb in English, it would have to mean something like going out to sleep in different hotels. What you want to say is, "Let's go out to eat tonight."

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