I remember when I was in the primary skool, we used to always make fun of the kids who made mistakes (I wasn't being mean..I'm sure we all did it..). And we would always pick on the improper pronunciation of words. I remember there was this guy in my class who couldn't say 'six' for some reason, and kept sayin 'sis' each time. And the whole class would be in an uproar when it was his turn to recite numbers!! He went 'sisty one....sisty two...sisty three.......' Trust me...it was utterly hilarious.
Apart from numbers, letters and words were another bunch of favourites, and never a day would go by without someone being corrected by out teachers for our incorrect pronunciation. And since this was in South India, where people had a heavy accent over their speech, it sounded even worse....there was 'yay' for A, 'yee' for E, 'haich' for H, 'Ezed' for Z and so on...So my ears are kinda sensitized to picking up these 'weird' pronunciation of letters & words, now even more so since my chinese roomates keep asing me to correct their english...

Now since I landed in aus, I've had some really funny experiences. I found that the words & letters are spoken just as I was taught not to!! People here say 'haich' for H...something which I was told was totally wrong....and most of the times I cant distinguish between their a's and their e's. The sound so much the same....

Its funny cuz back home people had this notion that 'we have to learn to speak english the correct way, just as they do in english speaking countries', and here I find that it's totally different. Maybe there is no correct way....its only as correct as you want it to be. But then again, aussies are decendants of the Brits.....and when the Brits speak english...ah lets not go there... (",)