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

#201

Post by phreack » Fri, May 21, 2021, 8:16 AM UTC

hardwaregeek wrote: post #164

Funnily enough I’ve had to explain this to my friends when ordering in Chinese or other ethic restaurants. Something like “hi, how are you? I’d like the roast duck with rice please, oh and with a Diet Coke too?” is actually quite confusing and a lot to parse when you’re a native Cantonese speaker rushing to serve 30 people. Instead “roast duck with rice, Diet Coke”, while rude sounding, is much preferable. It may see…

If you're in, say, Japan, where most people know a bit of English, it's important to be able to break yours so they understand you better. Even more so, being able to speak broken Japan-flavored English would be perfect if your goal is to convey a simple message by any means. Most tourists don't realize accent and pronunciation could make a word unrecognizable to non native speakers.

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

#202

Post by totalZero » Fri, May 21, 2021, 8:33 AM UTC

zackees wrote: post #28

phkahler wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> but it was the person who sent the message originally's fault? That's not what the article said at all. It seemed to place the blame on the word. I'm with you that one person should have sought clarification since they knew there were two meanings, but that's not actually the root cause. Another person may have only been aware of one of those meanings and made the "mistake" without ever thinking they needed clarif…

It’s clearly putting the fault at the native english speaker, per the title. In an age of trigger culture and micro aggressions this article is a prejudicial sucker punch to native speakers of English.

You give the article too much credit. It's just a collection of words that weakly conveys a badly formed idea.

I find it irritating that the hook is a super-secret word that cannot be shared with the reader.

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

#203

Post by sebmellen » Fri, May 21, 2021, 8:42 AM UTC

phreack wrote: post #201

hardwaregeek wrote: post #164

Funnily enough I’ve had to explain this to my friends when ordering in Chinese or other ethic restaurants. Something like “hi, how are you? I’d like the roast duck with rice please, oh and with a Diet Coke too?” is actually quite confusing and a lot to parse when you’re a native Cantonese speaker rushing to serve 30 people. Instead “roast duck with rice, Diet Coke”, while rude sounding, is much preferable. It may see…

If you're in, say, Japan, where most people know a bit of English, it's important to be able to break yours so they understand you better. Even more so, being able to speak broken Japan-flavored English would be perfect if your goal is to convey a simple message by any means. Most tourists don't realize accent and pronunciation could make a word unrecognizable to non native speakers.

To give an example of the difference:

"Robot" in standard middle American would probably yield a confused stare.

"Roboto" pronounced like an overly effusive Italian would most likely be understood.

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

#204

Post by tuxie_ » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:14 AM UTC

frosted-flakes wrote: post #155

tuxie_ wrote: post #105

Now I'm curious what the old title was.

Probably the title of the article.

LOL yeah, that makes sense. Thanks :)

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

#205

Post by casmclas » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:30 AM UTC

stephen_g wrote: post #194

hardwaregeek wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s the classic “you can’t add too much water to the reactor” where “can’t” can mean you are physically incapable of adding too much water, and therefore should add a lot, or “can’t” can mean you must not add to much water.

Yes, but that’s not so much a problem with the language but more an issue of sentence construction. A big part of good communication in any language is anticipating that sort of ambiguity and adding context or rephrasing to remove it if required. ‘Can’t’ is really too passive to use if it really is ‘must not’ for anything serious, so while the sentence could work either way in spoken communication (because you can co…

"Can't" isn't even the slightest bit passive. But a person who is telling others how to communicate well will always use technical terms with the wrong meaning.

In this case a negative imperative is what you should be using. Moreover, since it's a life-or-death matter, we need to carefully explain ourselves. "Do not add too much water to the reactor. If you add too much water, the reactor could explode. The reactor should never contain more than 1000 litres of water. If it is overfilled, immediately follow the steps in 3.4.1 to perform an emergency evacuation." By being careful in our follow up, we reduce the risk of any misunderstanding. We cannot prevent a person from misunderstanding, but at least they are more likely to realise they have misunderstood something and seek clarification.

"Must not" is reasonably well-understood by native speakers of English, but it is confusing to non-native speakers because even though "must"="have to", the negations have different meanings. It is no use being technically correct if the person whose responsibility it is thinks you said "you don't have to add too much water to the reactor". The prevalence of "must" also varies throughout the native-speaking world.

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

#206

Post by jhanschoo » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

silicon2401 wrote: post #63

pbourke wrote: post #21

> The non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully, typical of someone speaking a second or third language. Anglophones, on the other hand, often talk too fast for others to follow, and use jokes, slang and references specific to their own culture, says Chong Isn’t this a description of native vs non-native speakers in many languages?

Yes. This is just another article trying to attack English by singling it out for scenarios that occur in every language. It's part of human communication and behavior, not a flaw inherent to English. Otherwise, what's the implication, that non-English speakers universally speak slowly and without any kind of idioms or color? That's disproven within a year of learning any new language

Well, there are a lot of Americanisms in business speak that just aren't frequent in international business that the unaware US speaker, for instance, will have difficulty expressing themselves without these colloquialisms or even being aware they are using them if they are not used to it. e.g. with baseball alone,

* in the ballpark of (around)

* touch base (have a short chat for mutual understanding of something)

* dropped the ball (fucked up on something you are responsible for)

* heavy hitter (the one that brings a lot of cash, etc.)

https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/M.-LAKHWANI-R.-CLAIR.pdf

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

#207

Post by hnick » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

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…

Even English speakers sometimes miss this context. I played FFXI, and it had an auto-translate feature (hit tab to enclose certain words, to translate to the reader's language). Very useful with some care taken to understand what you're writing.

A lot of people didn't put enough thought into how they used it though, and tripped over many English homonyms/colloquialisms. For example putting {cap} as a synonym for 'limit', when it meant 'hat'. So when they wanted help with the level 50 limit quest, Japanese players must have been confused why all the Americans are talking about level 50 hat quests.

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

#208

Post by Tarsul » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:42 AM UTC

thaumasiotes wrote: post #191

henearkr wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was you complaint about something related to Japan or the life there or the administration? Japanese people very easily feel compelled to defend their group, because if not they are often treated as "anti-japanese" by the most right-wing (which are the most vocal) of their relations/neighbors. This in turn leads to a lot of self-censorship.

> Was you complaint about something related to Japan or the life there or the administration? I think you're on the wrong track; some people just take everything personally. Compare this story from an American married to an American: ( https://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=49908 ) > Early in our marriage I’d find myself in the middle of situations like this: >> Shamus is struggling with some ridiculous multi…

wow. I can't work with people who take everything personal; it stresses me out because I don't have the mental capabilities to ALWAYS explain that it's not about them (good that it worked out with your wife). No problem with the windows-guy though (we've all been there).

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

#209

Post by Tarsul » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:47 AM UTC

detaro wrote: post #165

ksec wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>but real misunderstandings caused by different understandings of what seems to be a set of perfectly obvious sentences to both sides. Yes. Especially true when it happens between an American and a Brit. Also true between Germans and Brits, when the Germans are so good with their English, the precision with their wordings which tends to trigger some Brits.

Do you have an example/anecdote for the last part? Not sure I know what you mean.

(not op) well, we Germans are very direct. So we would write something like "Can you give me the coordinates? Thanks in advance." whereas a Brit would like it if it was written as "I would very much like to get the coordinates from you. Can you direct them to me? Thank you very much. Much appreciated." (well, my impersonation of a Brit is not the best since I am too German in this respect)

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

#210

Post by casmclas » Fri, May 21, 2021, 9:58 AM UTC

crucialfelix wrote: post #75

teekert wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Yes, I thought I was being funny with my exaggerated french accent. They just found it clearer. Unfortunately this makes them think I have better french than I actually do and they speak to fast.

I found in Paris, the easiest way to communicate was to speak English with an exaggerated French accent, and throw in the few words of French I know. In the other parts of France I've been to, English was effectively useless; I made do with broken German. This wasn't for conversation, but conveying information, buying stuff etc.