I have amnesia and can’t come to the phone at the moment. I feel stupid talking to everyone that I don’t know. So why don’t you forget about leaving your original message, and instead tell me my name and something important about myself. Thanks a lot.
In Australian English it’s pronounced with the vowel /a:/ like in ‘part’. Problems arise when people use the /ʌ/ vowel (like in ‘up’) instead of /æ/ or /a:/. If you do this is will sound like the worst swear word in English. Many non-native speakers often pronounce the vowel /æ/ more like /ʌ/ because they don’t have a vowel like /æ/ in their first language. Many speakers of European languages will do this (Spanish speakers and Italian speakers) and also speakers of Japanese and Korean. This problem with /æ/ also means that if you say the word ‘back’ in your voicemail greeting sample, you are likely to pronounce it more like ‘buck’. remember to pronounce word endings in English. Check you aren’t dropping any endings off or mispronouncing them.

People may not want to give information about who lives in their home to unknown callers for a variety of reasons. This information may be used by telemarketers who could then ask for you by name when they call again, scammers who might do the same, or people who are not interested in your welfare. Women living alone for instance may use the “we” instead of “I” to suggest more people living in a house, and can even opt for using the machine generated message or computer generated “male voice” instead of their own voice to increase their security at home. For personal security reasons, you might want to avoid indication of children in the home, too, and you certainly shouldn’t mention that you’re on vacation.
Before you leave a message, I’d like to ask a question. How can someone keep a dork in suspense? Leave me a message and I’ll get back to you on that one.