this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2024
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Broken english is one thing. Butchered is quite another
My personal hint for everyone learning a foreign language to be understood in another country: Pronunciation, pronunciation, pronunciation! You only need around 2000 words to get around, but no-one can understand you if you butcher each and every one of the 100k words you’ve learned. Also grammar is optional. Nouns, adjectives and verbs in their basic forms convey enough meaning.
As an American, when I learn another language I am taught to pronounce it correctly in the accent of that language. And yet when people from other countries learn English, it's so heavily accented and poorly pronounced I can barely understand wtf they're saying.
Especially looking at you, Indians.
What is the "correct accent" for English? Even within America there are so many. The southern accent is so different from the Minnesota accent. Most Americans will have difficulty understanding a Scottish or Irish person speaking with a strong accent, but I doubt anyone is going to tell them to speak differently. Given the plurality of accents, it's on the listener to adapt. Unless, of course, everyone is expected to speak with RP.
One that is understandable.
Dunno what world you live in. I have two different coworkers who specifically have been told they need to work on their accent. One is Kenyan and the other is Welsh. People from white countries don't get a pass.
It's not racism, it's understandability.
Is there a standard measure of how "understandable" an accent is? It is quite a subjective thing based on where one is from.
You mentioned India previously - there are 350 million English speakers in South Asia (with marginally varying accents) who can understand each other perfectly well. They may not, on the other hand, find it as easy to understand American accented English. Who should change?
I find German and Singaporean/Malaysian accented English easier to understand than most American accents, because they share phonemes with the languages I speak. Which is more understandable in this case?
The assertion I'm challenging is that there is a "correct accent" that is universally intelligible to all, especially for a language as widely spoken as English. I think the only way we can bridge this gap is to be better listeners. Realistically, it doesn't even take a couple of weeks to become comfortable understanding a different accent, probably much less if you pay attention. Personally, I find this issue to be very intertwined with the tolerance we have to develop to live in a multicultural society.
You said you were American (though it's not clear if you work in America, so forgive the assumption) but if this was official feedback then it seems to be in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. There seem to have been successful lawsuits (example, example - see Brown and Brown Chevrolet, 2008) for the same.
You are making this way more complicated than it needs to be. People need to be understood by the people they are talking to. There's no "correct accent", just whatever makes you understood by the other party.
Not in the fucking slightest and it's actually making me angry that you would imply "you need to be understandable" is in any way equivalent to
and
If no one knows what the fuck you're saying, it's impossible to do your job. That's all.
This tells you that Irish or Scottish is not the correct accent. However, someone who speaks Southern British English will be understood by everyone.