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English has been my pain for 15 years

antirez.com

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Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#251

Post by [deleted] »

gojomo wrote: post #224
AYBABTME wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The situation can't be flipped on it's top like that. English is the lingua franca, people can speak it everywhere. This is not a symmetric relationship where you can say that if A -> B then B -> A. I'm from Quebec, we speak French there. When you come to do business here, you'll talk to investors and politicians in English and you'll be just fine. People know that foreigners coming to invest/expand their business sp…

"English is the lingua franca " is one of my favorite phrases. It's right up there with the allegation that "the French don't even have a word for entrepreneurship ". (Of course, only the 1st phrase is true, but they're both funny.)

[deleted]

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#252

Post by archivator »

DanBC wrote: post #89
pestaa wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you please shed more light on BBC World Service? Why the past tense? What radio would you suggest now as a general English background noise to occasionally learn vocabulary from? Honestly I'd have to improve my spoken English a lot. It's not even comparable to my written skills. It feels like I have to learn the language all over again with my ears .

The BBC World Service used to have a wide variety of programming. They'd include some of the programmes broadcast on BBC Radio Four, including panel games such as "Just a minute". They'd include some of the science and medical documentary that Radio 4 would broadcast. They'd also have their own programming - some soap operas, some news, some great documentaries. All of this meant that English was being used in a vari…

While it might not be on the World Service, I'd like to point out that a wide range of content is internationally available in the form of podcasts, this is the Radio 4 link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio4 but do browse around. There's really an incredible amount of content on there (and there is a ton more across the pond at NPR).

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#253

Post by josefit »

btilly wrote: post #150
doomlaser wrote: post #30

The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy: "Dear Paul, It's not what you are, it's what you did. At least, I hope. I suspect this is all coming out of a desire to emphasize that communication is important when you're starting a company. It's never just about solving technical problems. Well, sure, that's true. But as Nitasha ha…

Do you really doubt pg's claim that an accent strong enough to impede comprehension is a barrier to creating a successful startup in Silicon Valley? The importance of this is undoubtably a piece of common sense that some need to hear, but really, it is common sense. As a founder you need to interact with customers, vendors, employees and investors. If those groups have trouble understanding your speech, then how coul…

This, honestly.

As european (and italian), I can confirm most of what Antirez said.

Moreover, founding a startup (or running a business, or working as an account, or working as a diplomat) is undoubtly much more difficult when you have to work with people speaking a foreing language.

The truth is that not just "accents", but also slang, technical lingo and even local humour come into play when you have to decode whether the person you are speaking with is really angry, sarcastic or she is just joking.

Things get even worse when you can't see those you are speaking with.

I don't think PG claims that strong accents are a barrier to creating successful startups in Silicon Valley, they just add up yet another hurdle that founders (and employees alike) must overcome to make that startup successful.

Therefore, such hurdles, must be accounted for.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#254

Post by zhemao »

npalli wrote: post #182
doomlaser wrote: post #30

The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy: "Dear Paul, It's not what you are, it's what you did. At least, I hope. I suspect this is all coming out of a desire to emphasize that communication is important when you're starting a company. It's never just about solving technical problems. Well, sure, that's true. But as Nitasha ha…

Would PG (or his predecessor silicon valley VC) have made the same comment about strong accents 30 years ago? I don’t think so. For one, the diffusion of Americanisms (idioms, accent etc.) were weaker and founders had stronger accents. It would be inconceivable to say this in public. To me this signifies, perhaps, a shift in the valley from investing in technology heavy companies toward more consumer branded companie…

Did you read his explanation? He basically said that accents don't hinder founders unless they are so strong that they hinder intelligibility. It's not that VCs won't back founders with accents because they have a subconscious bias towards foreigners, it's that VCs won't back founders with very strong accents because they can't understand them when they are making their pitch.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#255

Post by zhemao »

ihaveajob wrote: post #222
npalli wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grove not being the founder of Intel is a very pedantic point. He was there since day one of the company and had the biggest influence on Intel’s domination of the industry since it was startup (more than anyone else in the company’s history). Also, you need to have a distinct definition of what a strong accent is. If Grove has a clear accent not sure who we are talking about. Every time someone gives a counterexampl…

To be fair (and as an immigrant I was also appalled by PG's logic), he qualifies his statement by saying that he considers it a problem when the accent makes it difficult to understand the person. I think that's a reasonable bias, but a bias nonetheless.

It's a bias to not want to back a startup because you can't understand the pitch due to a language barrier? I think it's pretty reasonable to say you should be able to speak the native language of a country intelligibly in order to successfully do business in that country.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#256

Post by npalli »

kyro wrote: post #232
npalli wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would PG (or his predecessor silicon valley VC) have made the same comment about strong accents 30 years ago? I don’t think so. For one, the diffusion of Americanisms (idioms, accent etc.) were weaker and founders had stronger accents. It would be inconceivable to say this in public. To me this signifies, perhaps, a shift in the valley from investing in technology heavy companies toward more consumer branded companie…

Let's stop being intellectually dishonest for a second and look at what PG actually said. He said accents are an issue 1) in the context of startups when 2) it hinders communication. He is looking at it from his point of view of what running a startup and startup culture encompasses, that is: an environment rife with competition built on extreme uncertainty that can be transcended with the appropriate communicative a…

Ok, so let’s take this iteration of what he is supposed to be saying. “If you have an accent that is so strong that very few people understand you and nobody feels like listening to you then it is bad”. That is very anti-climactic, definitely not a surprising top red flag that he seemed to indicate. His initial position (in inc.com) about mastering the language to an extent that you are well versed in the local idioms etc. was strong. It would have indicated a shift in type of founders/companies YC would look for. It would also require immersion in American culture spanning several years, maybe decades. The version you are attributing to him is just weak.

Sorry, but even the weak interpretation of his statement actually raises more questions. For starters, how did YC end up funding them in the first place if they had such a strong accents that hinders understanding? Given YC accepts 1 in 25 (or 50) of applicants in a short time frame (going by a short video) what exactly did YC see in the founders. Or did the founders suddenly develop unacceptable accents in the three months at YC. Also, what did the YC team do when they found out about these guys’ accent problem? Did they ask them to partner with someone else? Did the founders refuse to partner etc. If so, is that an accent problem or a pig-headedness issue?

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#257

Post by notahacker »

tragomaskhalos wrote: post #71
nasmorn wrote: post #5

English is so horrible because it has no discernable orthography. My favorite example is anti thesis -> antithesis. I mean what the fuck, my mothertongue german is the king of combined nouns but this change of pronounciation on concatenation doesnt happen ever. Or phonetical difference based on grammtic use as in the verb read. Horrible. I think it should be handled like the Finns and Koreans did. Throw all the irreg…

There are several major problems with theoretical English spelling reform: 1. A purely phonetic approach means that, even within the UK, I would spell everything differently from my colleagues from Birmingham, Manchester, Newcastle, Glasgow etc etc. Not good. 2. English spelling tends to represent the "deep" structure of words rather than the ("shallow") representation - your "thesis - antithesis" is an excellent exa…

To be honest, you can dramatically reform English spelling without encountering those problems very often provided your rule-of-thumb is that orthography ought to guide intelligible rather than prescribe "correct" pronunciation

That means leaving alone anomalies like thesis/antithesis (because "antithesis" pronounced phonetically is actually perfectly intelligible, even using the American antai- prefix which is jarringly different from the British anty-) but it also means tackling the sheer impossibility of telling the doctor you would like medicine for a cough (cow? coup? Seb Coe?) without resorting to acting or a pronunciation dictionary

Shakespearean spelling varied more between early editions than many relatively radical proposed orthographies do from standard English. You can guess the opening words of a 1600 edition of A Midsommer Nights[sic] Dreame : "Now faire Hippolita, our nuptiall hower draws on apase: fower happy daies..." , but ironically only from trying to read it phonetically (the 1623 version is more readable) http://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/Annex/Texts/MND/Q1/defaul...

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#258

Post by kyro »

npalli wrote: post #256
kyro wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's stop being intellectually dishonest for a second and look at what PG actually said. He said accents are an issue 1) in the context of startups when 2) it hinders communication. He is looking at it from his point of view of what running a startup and startup culture encompasses, that is: an environment rife with competition built on extreme uncertainty that can be transcended with the appropriate communicative a…

Ok, so let’s take this iteration of what he is supposed to be saying. “If you have an accent that is so strong that very few people understand you and nobody feels like listening to you then it is bad”. That is very anti-climactic, definitely not a surprising top red flag that he seemed to indicate. His initial position (in inc.com) about mastering the language to an extent that you are well versed in the local idiom…

>Ok, so let’s take this iteration of what he is supposed to be saying. “If you have an accent that is so strong that very few people understand you and nobody feels like listening to you then it is bad”. That is very anti-climactic, definitely not a surprising top red flag that he seemed to indicate.

In fact, when it comes to startups, that is exactly what he is saying, and your dismissal of it by saying that it's not a surprising top red flag tells me that you are consciously trying to make this more racy than it actually is.

If you read his real initial position in the New York Times [0], you'll find: "“You can sound like you’re from Russia,” he said, in the voice of an evil Soviet henchman. “It’s just fine, as long as everyone can understand you.”" Again, the issue is communicating to reach an understanding. If you cannot convey thoughts, ideas, facts relevant to the core of your startup/idea, then you are at a disadvantage. Plain and simple.

I come from a community of Egyptians with incredibly thick, hard-to-understand accents, my father being one of them. I have difficulty talking about very complicated subjects with him because neither of us can clearly articulate our thoughts in the other's language, and so we never fully get a grasp on each other's opinions or the positions we hold. We both know the other isn't stupid; there's just a language barrier that's preventing effective dialogue.

Now take an investor who is deciding whether to risk his/her money on a startup. If an investor cannot come to a clear understanding of what it is you do or effectively bounce thoughts back-and-forth to assess you and your company, then they are not able to minimize their risk as much as they can, in an already incredibly risky endeavor. I'll also say again that had PG discovered that there was a correlation between risk of failure and stammering CEOs, he would've mentioned it.

Anyway, I'd like to think that instead of sparking an entire racist investing trend, that PG's advice has motivated a considerable number of foreign entrepreneurs to improve their English-speaking capabilities -- a skill that will certainly help them in every part of their lives (if they hope to plan to move to America to pursue a startup).

[0] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/05/magazine/y-combinator-sili...

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#259

Post by dspeyer »

DanBC wrote: post #126
nbouscal wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent comment wasn't prescriptive, it was descriptive. You can argue all you'd like that it isn't fair or optimal or good, but you're hard pressed to argue that it isn't true.

> but you're hard pressed to argue that it isn't true. But it's only true (if it is true, and I haven't seen anything to show that it is) because it's a self-fulfilling prophecy. There's nothing about it that needs it to be true. "The world needs a common language; you lazy thickos need to speak English (which, coincidentally, is what I speak) otherwise you only have yourselves to blame" is the language of fascists a…

Are you saying the world doesn't need a common language? Or that there's a better choice than English?

Yes it sucks a lot for some people, and no it isn't fair, but that doesn't change it.

What would you have us do?

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#260

Post by dmourati »

We all need to practice tolerance and grace. Identifying that there are non-native speakers means we all share a bit of the burden. Antirez mentions slowing down, this is one easy way to make conversations better understood. Also, we should avoid idioms or turns of phrase. These are quite difficult even for some native speakers. Finally, we need to make a genuine effort to make ourselves understood. This is the sign of effective communication.

I think the whole "accent" controversy misses the mark. Having grown up with an immigrant parent, I know how frequently he was mocked for his accent. Of course, I could always understand and act as the mediator. This has served me well in the rest of my life. If only we all had the same benefit.

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