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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

#261

Post by walshemj »

crassus wrote: post #233
walshemj wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought that would get modded down - guys if you went to any FTSE 100 DJA 30 HR director he would tell you exactly the same thing.

It is my observation that most hackers aren't fans of FTSE 100 DJA 30 HR directors, and they don't want to live in that world.

Its the real world mate - putting your head in the sand isn't going to help you.

And your handle is that of a roman politician an odd one to chose when your saying real world politics doesn't matter.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#262

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

#263

Post by dspeyer »

So what can we do?

As a native English speaker, I freely admit that our spelling is horrible and our grammar has some sharp edges. Furthermore I freely admit that it's unfair that the burden of making communication work lies so heavily on others and so lightly on people like me.

I could try to learn Italian, but even if a third of English-speakers did, it wouldn't really change Antirez's situation, much less that of his Chinese analogues.

I could try to write more phonetically, but at a cost of ease-of-reading for existing English speakers. And an uncoordinated effort would only produce chaos. Perhaps PG would care to serve as a schelling point?

I could try to learn to understand thick accents better. I don't know where to start. Likewise I could try to learn to read foreign-grammared English better. I actually think I'm pretty good at that.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#264

Post by prostoalex »

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…

There's obviously enormous opportunity to try on a contrarian investor suit and back startups whose founders have strong foreign accents. Someone will fill that void.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#265

Post by commandar »

btilly wrote: post #190
melipone wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, it's not which accents are strong enough. It's the baggage that an accent brings. Yes, people pattern match an accent but not just the words. For example, the content of what a woman with a strong French accent says will be diluted with thoughts of sexiness instead of being taken seriously (except Christine Lagarde :-)). In this sense, the validity of PG's claim is not cut and dry. There are other factors.

In environments outside of tech hubs like the Silicon Valley bubble, I would strongly agree. For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In Silicon Valley there are so many people from all over the USA, and from other countries, that this type of bigotry is less important. I can't promise it will en…

>For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid.

In fairness, speaking as someone from Georgia, you run into a lot of this within the south. I've lived here my entire life, and generally speak with a fairly neutral, midwestern accent, and I'd say that it's extremely common within the roughly 35 and under demographic around here.

Not commenting on whether it's fair or not, but because there is such a stigma around southern accent = stupid, many southerners, especially younger ones, make a concerted effort not to pick up the accent. Generally, the younger and better educated a southerner is, the less likely they are to sound like a southerner. That's not because the accent makes someone stupid, but because there is an awareness that it has that perception, so people avoid it.

And, I mean, I'll still fall into it in less formal settings or when I'm cranking up the charm, but in a business environment it gets switched off.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#266

Post by prostoalex »

btilly wrote: post #190
melipone wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IMHO, it's not which accents are strong enough. It's the baggage that an accent brings. Yes, people pattern match an accent but not just the words. For example, the content of what a woman with a strong French accent says will be diluted with thoughts of sexiness instead of being taken seriously (except Christine Lagarde :-)). In this sense, the validity of PG's claim is not cut and dry. There are other factors.

In environments outside of tech hubs like the Silicon Valley bubble, I would strongly agree. For instance a friend's wife moved from Georgia to San Diego as a teenager, and quickly found that as long as she kept her accent, everyone assumed she was stupid. In Silicon Valley there are so many people from all over the USA, and from other countries, that this type of bigotry is less important. I can't promise it will en…

It's not bigotry, but lack of investment in conversational English is frequently accompanied with lack of investment in vocabulary and idiomatic English expressions.

If you work at a large Silicon Valley company, there's always that one meeting where someone at the table, while obviously smart, speaks such an incomprehensible version of English, that whenever suggestions from their end are vocalized, everyone looks at one another with silent "did you get that?", nods politely and then moves on.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#268

Post by CurtMonash »

PG has been off his game in this discussion. It is important to be fluent both in understanding and in communicating, both in English and in techspeak. I threw together http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/ to spell that out, and it's the first time ever I've just banged out a post that much improved on what Paul Graham wrote.

antirez adds to the discussion further, by pointing out that there are various different kinds of language fluency. Excellent observations.

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#269

Post by Houshalter »

galawa wrote: post #235
nekopa wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still waiting for HN member ghotifish to show up, as his name is pronounced fish fish: gh as in cough o as in women ti as in nation

the internet is full of every one censorship,from government,politics and economic sanction. when do you think will the internet world be totally free for everyone?

What are you talking about?

Re: English has been my pain for 15 years

#270

Post by murrayh »

It is worth noting that the unintelligible accent issue is context dependent. A native English speaker can be the person with an unintelligible accent, and that person may need to work on their communication skills in order to have influence.

I experienced this phenomenon first hand as a native English speaker with an Australian accent. At my first hostel abroard there was a mixed group of european (non UK) people conversing in English, and I thought I'd try and join in.

me: howrya?

group: blank stares

me: how are you?

group: blank stares

me: how - are - you?

group: look of fear

me: hello?

This first experience was definitely a shock, and it took me some time to realise what it must have been like for the group.

In terms of learning to understand native speakers, travelling in their country for an extended period seems to work. My family has hosted many international guests through exchange programs, including adult guests who had never left their home country (but were taught English at school). Communication was sometimes very difficult, but universally the guests were able to pick up on the Australian accent over time. When exchanges move from blank looks to questions about particular words used, you can start having clunky conversations.

The exchange programs did give our family tips on how to converse with the guests. The only tip I can remember is to try and use different words. Often the longer and fancier word (e.g. gigantic, massive) is easier to understand for the guest than the short and simple word (e.g. big).

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