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Pro tip: If you don't want to come off as negative, don't start your post with the words "I get really irritated" ;) I'm still confused about what you really me

by scbrg 7y ago

Pro tip: If you don't want to come off as negative, don't start your post with the words "I get really irritated" ;) I'm still confused about what you really meant, since your first and second paragraphs really were at odds with each other. As a non native, but still fluent English speaker I always use subtitles when I can. It just helps to fill in the odd word I miss due to local noise or unexpected pronunciation (English has a lot of dialects!). FWIW, I tend to do this for content in my native language as well. Turns out ~ten million people is enough to produce a lot of incomprehensible dialects as well...

asveikau 7y ago
Maybe next time I will say I get "positively irritated". The thing is, two statements can be seemingly at odds in sentiment and also simultaneously true. The "aggressive subtitles for foreign accent" phenomenon is real. I wanted to acknowledge I had seen the same in other places. It is irritating when it happens. It is disrespectful where it occurs. But the second paragraph establishes that it is not always the reason. I did not think it was here.
- 2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
  I have been in the same room with other people, listening to a person speak in English with a heavy accent from wherever, and I will be the only person who understood what was said. “What did they about X, I couldn’t understand the accent?” I have also seen native English speakers, turn on subs on English movies, with the volume at a perfectly normal level to understand things. The only thing going on is that people really like their subtitles.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    Sometimes there will be a movie or TV program where nobody is subbed, except the one person with a completely understandable foreign accent. That is a phenomenon I have seen. Usually in media for an American audience, from what I've seen. (A lot of Americans have trouble even with native speakers from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc. We as a nation seem to have very little patience or habituation for accents.) It's the broadcast equivalent of your first scenario.

by scbrg 7y ago

asveikau 7y ago

Maybe next time I will say I get "positively irritated". The thing is, two statements can be seemingly at odds in sentiment and also simultaneously true. The "aggressive subtitles for foreign accent" phenomenon is real. I wanted to acknowledge I had seen the same in other places. It is irritating when it happens. It is disrespectful where it occurs. But the second paragraph establishes that it is not always the reason. I did not think it was here.

2muchcoffeeman 7y ago
I have been in the same room with other people, listening to a person speak in English with a heavy accent from wherever, and I will be the only person who understood what was said. “What did they about X, I couldn’t understand the accent?” I have also seen native English speakers, turn on subs on English movies, with the volume at a perfectly normal level to understand things. The only thing going on is that people really like their subtitles.
- asveikau 7y ago
  Sometimes there will be a movie or TV program where nobody is subbed, except the one person with a completely understandable foreign accent. That is a phenomenon I have seen. Usually in media for an American audience, from what I've seen. (A lot of Americans have trouble even with native speakers from the UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, etc. We as a nation seem to have very little patience or habituation for accents.) It's the broadcast equivalent of your first scenario.