Non-native speakers navigate the world of 'good' and 'bad' English

Related discussion of this article’s sequel (556 comments): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27220433

> A group of nonnative English speakers is in a room .. then an American walks into the room .. understanding goes down.

I work in a research group with a lot of international people across Europe and elsewhere. As an American there for years, I got used to doing what they say here, speaking at the lowest common denominator, but when a new native English speaker (could be British or Australian too) enters, the same effect takes place.

Similar can be said of French (since my group is in France), all these non native speakers (myself included) exchange freely in terrible French but it all dries up with the first French person because largely they are mostly intolerant of poorly spoken French.

Still I think the skill of not judging and talking up and down the proficiency level according to the people you’re with can be learned fairly easily, if you get away from the idea that language proficiency reflects competence (in your domain of interest)

> "Professor C leaned back in his chair and repeated in a dramatic mock British accent, 'Intervene!' " The professor was drawing attention to Rodríguez's way of pronouncing the word.

> "Nowadays," Rodríguez notes, "I would have filed a grievance against [this professor] so heavy that he would have had to sell his soul to remain employed."

It must be fun to be a member of a humanities department today. I imagine everyone is surveilling everyone else for a slip up (microagression) in order to destroy them.

Something I notice as a nonnative speaker is that my fellow nonnative speakers often try really hard to sound British. They put more effort into sounding the right way than actually trying to use the language correctly and increasing their vocabulary.

Quite often people get praise for their "good" English because they've adopted a British accent even when their grammar isn't right or use words with the wrong meaning.

Personally I don't care if someone speaks English with a Spanish, German, French, Dutch, Indian, Swedish, or any other accent. Americans don't sound like Brits, Brits don't sound like Kiwis, Kiwis don't sound like Canadians, but they're all native speakers. I prefer someone who can communicate effectively in the language over someone who can fake an accent the best.

Sadly I also experienced a native (Canadian iirc) speaker mocking me for my pronunciation of 'power'. Indeed, I used heavy German accent on that specific situation, because I was excited at that moment. It shocked me quite a bit and I didn't know what to do back then. Now I can laugh it off - English was my first foreign language but only one of three in total back then. And it must have sound funny (like Arnold Schwarzenegger), which I felt unnecessarily bad for.

Edit: I posted this story mostly because it really stuck in my head. It constantly reminds me to be aware of how I pronounce things. Before that incident I was quite confident about my English pronunciation, maybe even proud.

I failed to find where this old quote came from, but I recall being taught that for practical purposes it's best to "Understand the long words but use the short ones" - even though it was intended for headlines and written communication, it's applicable to speech.

The article does seem to mix up "accent" with word use though (I was going to say "conflate" but then I'd fail the above rule!) Problems with word use seem much more legitimate to raise than accent - so long as an accent can be understood, it's rarely a problem and "correcting" it is rude and unnecessary, but in cases where word use is simply incorrect and confusing, it seems fair to try to get people on the right track (politely of course).

In my experience a number of these usage problems come from incorrectly inferring the meaning of a word commonly done by an overconfident speaker and much as being inclusive is nice if you use the wrong word that actually means something else it's not helpful for anyone's understanding, native or nonnative.

The main criticism I would have of the article is that it doesn't really support the case that nonnative understanding is undermined by the presence of native speakers - it feels like it's just taken as given because it's easily pointed to rather than having a basis in any serious evidence. It could quite easily be that without any native speakers the nonnative speakers merely think they all understand each other.

I’m not in the same boat as the folks in these articles who’ve clearly suffered much worse treatment. I had a relatively easy time. But personally, I hated it when someone complimented my English. It felt infantilising, like how it would feel if someone appreciated you for tying your shoelaces all by yourself.

The next time an American or British or Australian person tells me how good my English is, I’m telling them that “oh your English isn’t too bad either”.

As a non-native speaker, i rarely have an issue with advanced vocabulary or idioms from native speakers. The thing that is hard to me is understand heavy accents of other non-native speakers or local accents.

Also some ungrammatical constructions are hard to understand, e.g. when i first saw sentence with "your" instead of "you're" it took about minute to decode it.

Well, growing up in SJC/SV/SF, nonnative speakers were many: roommates, girlfriends, coworkers, and more. Heck, one of my first girlfriends and I could barely communicate verbally: but it wasn't really a problem when gestures, simple words, and "thought synchronization" explained ideas more efficiently and succinctly than learning each others' complex languages.

The other thing is immersion doesn't necessarily seem like a good predictor of language mastery: one roommate had trouble speaking English, despite living in the US for 10 years, while his older brother, who had never been to an English-speaking country before, sounded like he was completely American. This maybe anecdotal but there seems to be an incredible amount of variation in language and accent mastery that doesn't improve with experience (or above a fuzzy, certain age).

> The test also requires making a clear choice between British and American spelling and vocabulary. That "can trip up people whose English comes from various sources" — say, a third from British textbooks and two-thirds from American movies, Repečkaitė said.

As someone who had trouble learning English in class and ended up self-teaching using the Internet and reading English literature, I would have no hope of passing that test. Additionally I wouldn't be able to explain English grammar for the life of me.

However being multi-lingual and learning from multiple sources appears to do wonders for one's vocabulary - in pure vocabulary tests I tend to outscore native speakers.

My wife is a non-native speaker of English. I understand what they're talking about but they're mixing up two separate things--language usage and accent.

She definitely has an accent but it rarely is an issue. (There are a few words that mess her up badly, though.)

Much more of an issue is language usage. She has learned the words she needs to communicate (but will often be tripped up by uncommon words) but fares poorly with the little words that glue the language together. A recent example, "I eat myself" instead of "I'll eat it myself". The important concepts are in what she said, but with the glue missing the meaning changes greatly. Another weak speaker would probably understand it fine as the important concepts are there and they would arrange them to fit (but occasionally misarrange), but a native speaker not used to it very well might have trouble.

There's also the issue of sentence complexity. Think of books for little kids, how everything is broken up into simple thoughts. If their language uses the same sentence structure as we do it wouldn't be a problem, but if it doesn't they won't be able to properly build a mental map of what the sentence is saying without bits hanging off until the end.

I used to say that if you told my wife that if you can get to it in one minute there is a million dollars in a box on the back right of the second shelf of the refrigerator that she would have no hope of getting it, but if you told her there is a million dollars in the refrigerator, on the second shelf, in the back right in a box she would go right to it.

Note how it's easier for us to process the first way of saying it, the second feels wrong. For her, however, the second is normal, the first leaves too many hanging bits and she wouldn't be able to follow it.

> "The receptionist gave me a sheet and asked me to write down my complaint," she said. "I told her that I did not have any complaint, and she looked kind of irritated and then she insisted that I wrote down anything that I can think of."

I’m always surprised that people can’t rephrase their sentences when someone doesn’t understand. How hard is it to say “oh no, not that kind of complaint! I mean symptoms like coughing or sneezing or a headache”.

As to what is good English? Consistent pronunciation (that’s what Hansen teaches). Everything else is negotiable, but decoding an inconsistent accent is very difficult for anyone to understand. And it’s not specific to non-native speakers… plenty of native speakers don’t use consistent pronunciation and it’s sometimes difficult to decode what they’re saying.

The article assumes "best" = simplest. If you define best to mean most elegant and precise, the result would be opposite I guess.

Although among technical literature I've most enjoyed the language of The C++ Programming Language by Stroustrup, and he's not a native speaker

Sometimes people can even feel embarrassed by their own/native language in a context where English is dominant, such as tech. I wrote about that feeling here: http://code-anth.xyz/posts

This is not a native/nonnative problem, but more a high vs low content languages, with native English being at the bottom of low content.

Low content tend to stay in the abstract, and leave out the details. High content give detailed descriptions and let the abstractions to be deduced by the listener.

This often leaves low content speakers wondering how things are being communicated, while they've had the issue described in great detail earlier, but incorrectly discarded the information as meaningless small talk.

High content speakers, on the other hand may struggle to decipher something that isn't really meant to communicate anything, or they may feel being kept in the dark and made guess then punished for guessing incorrectly.

Most of the time, the non-native speakers learn English from the books instead of absorbing the local dialects/nuances since they don't hear people around them speaking English. However, depending on the quality of books / teachers, this means they pick-up a weird/artificial view of English (speaking is still difficult because you don't get to do it everyday - this is changing though). Then when one lands a job requiring English communication, they pick-up the "do the needful" type of oddities by observation/convention. So when they communicate with a native speaker, what comes across is a unique edition.

Interestingly, I can speak four languages (three fluently and one semi-fluently) and there is no equivalent of "do the needful" that is actually used in any of them - you just specify what is required - the closest non-specific equivalent I can think of is "take a look at it"/"take care of it"/"resolve it". God knows where that came from.

I don't think people should adjust themselves in their own country. They don't need to simplify their language just because there are immigrants, it is their own culture and day by day communication, requesting it will be rude. However when abroad they should adjust themselves to the other non native English speakers.

Also regarding English tests, it goes both ways, many Chinese students in Australia pass those tests but can't communicate in English to save their lives, let alone do an academic assignments.

The title is editorial. It is not the title of the article, and is actively misleading as to its content. Please change it.