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Comment by freehunter | Hacker News Reader

I know you're probably not looking for advice with this post, but hiring an accent trainer or even taking some advanced English lessons would probably help your career (and your quality of life) quite a bit. When I see someone writing "speak more worst" and "living here in US from last 7.5 years", I don't think of someone who has been in the US for seven and a half years, I think of someone who may never have visited the US at all. That sounds very unnatural, and it does throw a lot of people off. It makes a lot of people (unfortunately, myself included) uncomfortable to admit that we didn't understand what you said. I don't talk to people with strong accents on a daily basis, so I'm bad at hearing them. People tend to shy away from awkward encounters, and being unable to understand the person you're talking to is about as awkward as it gets.

It's not malice, it's not racism, it's just really uncomfortable.

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"It's not malice, it's not racism, it's just really uncomfortable."

Being "uncomfortable" is one kind of feelings racism stems from, being uncomfortable around people you don't really understand. Not saying your feelings are bad or you are bad, just that people are emotional rather than logical beings. There were definitely some subset of racists who were racists not because they logically analysed the science of race, concluded that their own race was "superior", but rather, they felt uncomfortable being around those they assume is from a particular race. There were establishments that were "whites-only", I assume it's because the owners were afraid its patrons would be uncomfortable eating with "blacks".

While I agree with what you say, I wouldn't draw the same parallel. Its more along the lines of ending a phone call when the other person is in a low-service area. The point of talking is to communicate, and communication only happens when the people understand each other.

I get the same thing with my sometimes spotty grasp on the German language. While, for the most part, I can be understood just fine from Berlin to Munich, eventually people get frustrated and ask me to switch to English. Not because I'm American, but because I'm terrible at speaking German. It just takes too long for me to understand them or to make myself understood.

So I agree that racism sometimes stems from being uncomfortable around people who are different, but I wouldn't go as far as to say being uncomfortable around people who are different is necessarily similar to being racist.

I get this all the time with russian, I can understand basically all russian but my ability to speak it, sucks. So Russians will tell me to just say it in English bec most have a better grasp of English than I have of Russian, they'll speak to me in Russian, and I to them in English.

About the Phone thing: When I get someone from South East Asia for customer support, I ask them to speak phonetically in the most courteous way possible, this was after yelling at a few reps who just didn't understand a word I was saying, nor I them. I felt there had to be a better way than to berate someone for just trying to do his job (somehow the women were easier to understand, probably just the luck of the draw). Anyway I highly recommend it to everyone who complains about bad customer rep phone calls, learn the Phonetic Alphabet (I have a copy taped to my wall for easy access) (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, Delta, Echo, etc). It may be a little slower but if they don't like it they'll just transfer you to their supervisor or to someone with a better grasp and no one feels bad at the end of the call.

Not trying to disagree with you:

As far as I know racism stems from one race thinking they're more human than the other, which occurs, I think, due to the perception of differences in intelligence when the perceived inferior race is trying to communicate, in a sub-optimal way, to the perceived superior race, and being constantly made fun off in the process.

I imagine a typical racist comment in 18th century America: "There's no point telling the slave, he's not gonna understand anyway.".

It also stems from potential gain, you only have to look to former colonies to see this. It's much harder to subjugate a people if you view them as equals.

There's a practicality aspect to it too. The last team I worked on had 3 brits, 4 indians, 2 pakistanis, 1 greek, 1 portuguese, 1 french, 1 australian, 1 kazakh. The misunderstandings and arguments were incessant and no one was particularly happy.

> hiring an accent trainer or even taking some advanced English lessons would probably help your career

Hiring a reading trainer might help your career. Re-read the post you replied to more carefully.

I saw that he had hired someone. He didn't stick with it, because he was too busy. It's easy to make that excuse, but my point was to do it again, for real this time. The reason being, he's limiting his career opportunities by working in a country where he's only making minimal effort to be understood.

And I didn't know Hacker News was a career for me. Jackass.

I am really sorry that you feel that way. May be truth is just harsh.

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