Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation • Hacker News Board

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#41

Post by mwcampbell » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:30 PM UTC

sampo wrote: post #3

elmerfud wrote: post #2

I agree with this totally and I am a native English speaker. English often has many confusing and ambiguous terms that can only be known by having a very well developed sense of context. Have many non-native English speaking friends, I understand their difficulty with the language. When communicating with my friends I try and choose appropriate words to avoid misunderstanding until I can grasp the level at which they…

Here is another BBC article, from which I learned that this international insurance company has organized training for native speakers to speak in a more understandable manner: > After taking an in-company e-learning course to help native English speakers communicate better with non-native speakers, Barron slowed down his pace of speaking and edited his “American speak” to avoid jargon and idioms that don’t translate…

Thanks for linking to this article. Can anyone recommend a place to get this kind of training for those of us who don't work at a company that offers it? I'm a monoglot American living in a midwestern city where I'm mostly surrounded by other such Americans, but I want to raise my awareness of how I might be a bad communicator.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#42

Post by nottorp » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

Article seems to be selling the Globbish thing mentioned in the middle?

IMO if you get an ambiguous phrase in any language, ask for clarification. Especially if it's work related.

What's more annoying is the cultural differences, mainly anglo saxons always being in a hurry and almost never considering the long term consequences.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#43

Post by Gravityloss » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #8

This is a terrible title and a terrible article. The claims made here are tied to the fact that English is more or less the primary language of international business. Its well known that people who learn secondary languages tend to know the "rules" around the language and tend to be more specific when using secondary languages. Its pretty weird for the article to conflate using slang/abbreviations/language tied to c…

You're missing the point of the article. If you're Scottish, it's probably hard to not use local flavor when talking, and thus it's hard for an international audience to understand. Even if you know the audience is international. It's just the way you talk.

If you're from Portugal, and you speak English, you're mostly not using some local flavor Portuguese words or expressions or jokes because they wouldn't make sense in English. So you speak simply and you're easy to understand.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#44

Post by teekert » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

david38 wrote: post #19

elmerfud wrote: post #2

I agree with this totally and I am a native English speaker. English often has many confusing and ambiguous terms that can only be known by having a very well developed sense of context. Have many non-native English speaking friends, I understand their difficulty with the language. When communicating with my friends I try and choose appropriate words to avoid misunderstanding until I can grasp the level at which they…

Have you ever been to France and tried speaking French after a few years of study? Have you ever had to deal with someone there who speaks far better English than you, but refuses to because of snobbery? This article is trash

Have you ever spoken to a French person while imitating their accent and found that they understand you much better?

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#45

Post by toyg » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #14

The gist here is that English needs to be dumbed down and stripped of any cultural references in order to be intelligible to an international business audience. No surprises there. To say that "native English speakers are the world's worst communicators" is quite a bold claim. Personally, I'd give that title to native French speakers.

I was going to follow up with a similar quip, but I think we're falling into old crypto-nationalistic stereotypes and maybe we should all try to be better, so...

"Personally, I'd give that title to middlemanagers who were promoted beyond their abilities."

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#46

Post by Timpy » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

incrudible wrote: post #14

The gist here is that English needs to be dumbed down and stripped of any cultural references in order to be intelligible to an international business audience. No surprises there. To say that "native English speakers are the world's worst communicators" is quite a bold claim. Personally, I'd give that title to native French speakers.

I agree, it drives me nuts when I see bad hot takes on the English language by Anglophones. Articles in English about English are more often than not egocentric and short sighted.

I heard an Englishman quip that English is the only language where you can tell a person's class by their accent. Or a lot of people think English is the hardest language to learn because of its irregularities or terrible spelling rules. Or that our slang is somehow exceptional. Most of these people don't have enough experience in other languages to have any idea how they compare to English.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#47

Post by bellyfullofbac » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:32 PM UTC

IshKebab wrote: post #20

So what was the word?? This is like those articles about photos that don't actually include the photo.

It's probably not this, but a native English speaker saying "That's the shit!" probably means "That thing is great" but someone who's not very fluent might think the speaker doesn't like the thing.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#48

Post by [deleted] » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

david38 wrote: post #19

elmerfud wrote: post #2

I agree with this totally and I am a native English speaker. English often has many confusing and ambiguous terms that can only be known by having a very well developed sense of context. Have many non-native English speaking friends, I understand their difficulty with the language. When communicating with my friends I try and choose appropriate words to avoid misunderstanding until I can grasp the level at which they…

Have you ever been to France and tried speaking French after a few years of study? Have you ever had to deal with someone there who speaks far better English than you, but refuses to because of snobbery? This article is trash

[deleted]

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#49

Post by fartcannon » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:33 PM UTC

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #8

This is a terrible title and a terrible article. The claims made here are tied to the fact that English is more or less the primary language of international business. Its well known that people who learn secondary languages tend to know the "rules" around the language and tend to be more specific when using secondary languages. Its pretty weird for the article to conflate using slang/abbreviations/language tied to c…

Yeah, it gives the language ambiguity and nuance. It's pretty flipping valuable for the day to day poetry of the language. I personally derive a lot of humour from the ambiguity of the language.

I do recall a colleague of mine who was trying to learn English. He said I was one of the more difficult english speakers he'd ever met. It was fun to try to reel that in to be more clear. Eventually I just directed him to the urban dictionary.

Re: Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

#50

Post by gryfft » Thu, May 20, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

I work with teams across the globe and I can say this has been true in my experience. The experience of communicating with others for whom English is not only a second language, but a lingua franca used to communicate across other language boundaries, is distinctly not one where I am the advantaged communicator, because I am the less versed speaker of the lingua franca version of the dialect. (Imagine switching from a BSD to Ubuntu with no Linux experience. Lots rhymes and sounds the same, but might trip up an experienced user who has built up years of expectations.)

My wife has been showing me Twogether, a show about two celebrities from different countries whose only common language is English, and who are made to travel and perform tasks together in countries whose languages they don't speak.

It's fascinating to hear the version of English they speak to each other. It's not US or UK English, it's a combination of English, Korean, Chinese, intonation, facial expression, and gesture to communicate what they need in a given moment. It was odd for me to that they were actually able to use English to communicate with each other better than I, a native English speaker, could use to communicate with either of them. Built up context and the tendency of language to take the shape of its container resulted in a patois better suited to their purposes than the language I use every day, and in a business context, pretending this doesn't happen is a recipe for failure, I believe.