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Native speakers are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation

• elmerfud 5y ago
  I agree with this totally and I am a native English speaker. English often has many confusing and ambiguous terms that can only be known by having a very well developed sense of context. Have many non-native English speaking friends, I understand their difficulty with the language. When communicating with my friends I try and choose appropriate words to avoid misunderstanding until I can grasp the level at which they understand English. It bothers me when I see other people communicate to non-english speakers and they either get irritated or they don't understand how what they said could be misunderstood. It is as if they've never evaluated the difficulty of their own language. Then it gets even worse because in casual conversation people will throw in all kinds of slang and just totally made up words. As native English speakers you can pick them apart and get an idea of what's happening even if you don't know the specific slang. A non-native speaker has no hope at all. With all communication it's important to know your audience and address them in a way they can understand.
  • sampo 5y ago
    Here is another BBC article, from which I learned that this international insurance company has organized training for native speakers to speak in a more understandable manner: > After taking an in-company e-learning course to help native English speakers communicate better with non-native speakers, Barron slowed down his pace of speaking and edited his “American speak” to avoid jargon and idioms that don’t translate globally. https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161215-you-need-to-go-back-to-school-to-relearn-english https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20161215-you-need-to-go...
    • mwcampbell 5y ago
      Thanks for linking to this article. Can anyone recommend a place to get this kind of training for those of us who don't work at a company that offers it? I'm a monoglot American living in a midwestern city where I'm mostly surrounded by other such Americans, but I want to raise my awareness of how I might be a bad communicator.
      • open-source-ux 5y ago
        In the UK, there is a campaigning organisation called the 'Plain English Campaign' which promotes clear, easy-to-understand written English suitable for any industry or profession. Although, the organisation is based in the UK, their advice is relevant for anyone who writes or reads English. Here is their clear, simple and short guide on How to write in plain English [PDF]: http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/files/howto.pdf http://www.plainenglish.co.uk/files/howto.pdf
  • narag 5y ago
    One thing that I haven't seen mentioned in any language-related discussion is that understanding is often a matter of discarding possible "neighbouring" meanings. To do that, you need to have a comprehensive knowledge of the language. In English it's particularly bad because of the proximity between some vowels. In many cases a monosyllabic word is one of six or seven almost identical. And that's for basic vocabulary. Think bird, bear, beard, bore, bar, boar, beer, birth, born, burn, bier... when someone is whispering the words or talking over a noisy medium.
    • refactor_master 5y ago
      I’ve experienced this problem for native and non-native speakers alike, where perfectly capable English speakers almost freeze up when they mishear a word, rather than try to help the conversation along. I’d usually ask the other party to spell it out, whereas some simply drop the conversation dead and awkward silence ensues.
      • teachingassist 5y ago
        > perfectly capable English speakers almost freeze up when they mishear a word, rather than try to help the conversation along. As a person who speaks a second language I learned as an adult, I find this situation incredibly difficult to negotiate. In my first language, I can get through almost any such situation by using humour. In my second language, at best, I can manage 'just one more time?' with a frowny face. I often think - why wasn't I taught this skill in any language school I attended?
  • david38 5y ago
    Have you ever been to France and tried speaking French after a few years of study? Have you ever had to deal with someone there who speaks far better English than you, but refuses to because of snobbery? This article is trash
    • teekert 5y ago
      Have you ever spoken to a French person while imitating their accent and found that they understand you much better?
      • crucialfelix 5y ago
        Yes, I thought I was being funny with my exaggerated french accent. They just found it clearer. Unfortunately this makes them think I have better french than I actually do and they speak to fast.
        • casmclas 5y ago
          I found in Paris, the easiest way to communicate was to speak English with an exaggerated French accent, and throw in the few words of French I know. In the other parts of France I've been to, English was effectively useless; I made do with broken German. This wasn't for conversation, but conveying information, buying stuff etc.
      • bsder 5y ago
        Have you ever spoken to a Glaswegian while imitating their accent and found that they understand you better? I was really worried that people would think I was making fun of them, but, in reality, they just thought that my horrible American accent had gotten a little bit better. :)
        • EdwardDiego 5y ago
          I even have to do that with Australians as a Kiwi - asking for a "pen" sounds to them like I want a "pin", so I have to stretch my vowels and ask for a "peeen" which sounds to me like I'm taking the piss, but they don't seem to take offense, and then hand me a pen.
  • hnick 5y ago
    Even English speakers sometimes miss this context. I played FFXI, and it had an auto-translate feature (hit tab to enclose certain words, to translate to the reader's language). Very useful with some care taken to understand what you're writing. A lot of people didn't put enough thought into how they used it though, and tripped over many English homonyms/colloquialisms. For example putting {cap} as a synonym for 'limit', when it meant 'hat'. So when they wanted help with the level 50 limit quest, Japanese players must have been confused why all the Americans are talking about level 50 hat quests.
• sidlls 5y ago
  I'm a native English speaker and I find the use of colloquialisms, abbreviations, and the like frustrating as well. There is no good reason to not take care in the choice of words when communicating in a professional setting, regardless of the language used or the native language(s) audience receiving the communication.
• senthil_rajasek 5y ago
  I grew up in India. I live in the U.S. now. I am a hostage to this situation and I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome.
  • shoto_io 5y ago
    Try to get an Australian passport. It helps I hear.
    • senthil_rajasek 5y ago
      Ha ha, I am learning to say mate with every sentence. Thanks Mate.
      • shoto_io 5y ago
        No worries!
• softwaredoug 5y ago
  I try to work really hard on not using too many idioms and sayings in slack. Same goes for memes specific to American culture. Or if I use one accidentally, define the meaning. OTOH sometimes other native English speakers get frustrated with this, and I’ll hear feedback like “YES WE KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS” when in reality this person is just speaking for themselves... It’s a tricky balance because if I know someone has a shared cultural context, idioms, etc can make the communication more fluid, efficient etc. So I find it’s a constant calibration.
• grawprog 5y ago
  >The message, written in English, was sent by a native speaker to a colleague for whom English was a second language. Unsure of the word, the recipient found two contradictory meanings in his dictionary. He acted on the wrong one. >When such misunderstandings happen, it’s usually the native speakers who are to blame. So...somebody got a message they felt was ambiguous and confused them, didn't ask for clarification before acting upon it, made a huge mistake but it was the person who sent the message originally's fault? Personally, having been in the opposite situation, where i'm one of the only native English speakers at a workplace. If i didn't understand something somebody wrote or said to me, i made damn sure i double checked with them before i actually did anything.
  • david38 5y ago
    This
  • phkahler 5y ago
    >> but it was the person who sent the message originally's fault? That's not what the article said at all. It seemed to place the blame on the word. I'm with you that one person should have sought clarification since they knew there were two meanings, but that's not actually the root cause. Another person may have only been aware of one of those meanings and made the "mistake" without ever thinking they needed clarification. The problem was the use of ambiguous language. I find it really amusing to see someone thinking they blamed the sender. It seems like another example of how English speakers are so used to having to interpret words.
    • grawprog 5y ago
      I understood they were blaming the word. Words don't appear out of nowhere. The word was written by the sender, the implication is the sender's choice of words caused the problem which could have been avoided by using a different word. I disagree with this premise and believe the problem could have been avoided had the receiver taken the self responsibility to make sure they fully understood the message before acting upon it and if they had doubts, such as when they found two contradictory meanings, should have just simply asked for clarification. If you don't understand something, it's on you. I've been misunderstood, i've misunderstood other people and the easiest thing anyone can do in that situation is say: 'sorry i didn't quite get that' or 'sorry could you explain what you mean' or something along those lines.
• NikolaeVarius 5y ago
  This is a terrible title and a terrible article. The claims made here are tied to the fact that English is more or less the primary language of international business. Its well known that people who learn secondary languages tend to know the "rules" around the language and tend to be more specific when using secondary languages. Its pretty weird for the article to conflate using slang/abbreviations/language tied to cultural norms from a primary speaker as being unable to communicate. Other languages have built in cultural connotations that pretty much only matter within their specific culture that doesn't really make sense outside of it. Sure when knowingly speaking to a multicultural audience, its probably for the best to not use idioms and such, but the failures of communication is not tied to the fact that English is being used.
  • teekert 5y ago
    I wonder where you are from, I for one really recognize this. N=1 but my native speaking colleague indeed dominates meetings. Of course personality is also a factor, but she also talks at incredible speeds in fancy ways that are almost hypnotic. It has made her our fall back when talking needs to be done. But in fact I sometimes feel that I should have conveyed a message myself because she gets the point I wanted to make slightly wrong in worrying ways. On a different note, we always jokingly use Dutch saying in English: * Stop stabbing the dragon with me! * Ah there comes the monkey out of the sleeve! Ah, well, the more cultures, the merrier!
  • Gravityloss 5y ago
    You're missing the point of the article. If you're Scottish, it's probably hard to not use local flavor when talking, and thus it's hard for an international audience to understand. Even if you know the audience is international. It's just the way you talk. If you're from Portugal, and you speak English, you're mostly not using some local flavor Portuguese words or expressions or jokes because they wouldn't make sense in English. So you speak simply and you're easy to understand.
  • fartcannon 5y ago
    Yeah, it gives the language ambiguity and nuance. It's pretty flipping valuable for the day to day poetry of the language. I personally derive a lot of humour from the ambiguity of the language. I do recall a colleague of mine who was trying to learn English. He said I was one of the more difficult english speakers he'd ever met. It was fun to try to reel that in to be more clear. Eventually I just directed him to the urban dictionary.
• MaxBarraclough 5y ago
  > Native English speakers are the world's worst communicators The article makes this claim, but doesn't substantiate it. The content of the article has nothing to do with a comparative study on communication. Always disappointing to see clickbait from the BBC. I suggest the title be changed to something like Native English speaker are generally bad at tuning into language variation. edit I see NikolaeVarius beat me to it.
  • jfengel 5y ago
    I'd suggest "People are generally bad at tuning into language variation." I'm not sure that native English speakers have any particular lock on that. They may get more opportunities to make that mistake, since (a) they're often monolingual, and (b) they're more likely to be speaking to a non-native speaker (what with English being the international language these days). But it's not inherent to either the language or the speakers.
  • jessaustin 5y ago
    Perhaps TFA was written by a native English speaker?
• phkahler 5y ago
  This explains a lot. I only speak English, but I've been working on communicating more clearly. I used to provide a lot of backstory/context when talking because I wanted people to know how to interpret what I was about to say. It turns out the real problem was me not speaking plainly and simply. When you use the right words people are more likely to take what you say at face value (that's probably a phrase I shouldn't use) rather than assume some interpretation of it. English is a very flexible and expressive language, but those features aren't what you want to use for precise communication.
  • vixen99 5y ago
    Insofar as efficiency equates with precision (kind of, I would have thought), here's some data that doesn't take your view. English comes out top out of seven popular languages but only just. https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/06/whats_the_most_efficient_language.html https://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2015/06/whats_the_most... I wonder which you think is a more precise language than English? As a monoglot, I can't comment.
    • medstrom 5y ago
      I know Swedish, so my comment is that English frequently feels imprecise. If you want to make sure a sentence will be interpreted unambiguously, you have to pile on a lot of extra verbiage, which people don't normally do because precision is not that important in most cases. By contrast, Swedish normally leaves less room for multiple interpretations, which makes brevity easier to achieve.
• incrudible 5y ago
  The gist here is that English needs to be dumbed down and stripped of any cultural references in order to be intelligible to an international business audience. No surprises there. To say that "native English speakers are the world's worst communicators" is quite a bold claim. Personally, I'd give that title to native French speakers.
  • snmx999 5y ago
    The statement "native English speakers are the world's worst communicators" is true because of the large number of English speakers in an international context, even when the average "badness" of an English speaker is no worse than of a French speaker.
  • toyg 5y ago
    I was going to follow up with a similar quip, but I think we're falling into old crypto-nationalistic stereotypes and maybe we should all try to be better, so... "Personally, I'd give that title to middlemanagers who were promoted beyond their abilities."
  • Timpy 5y ago
    I agree, it drives me nuts when I see bad hot takes on the English language by Anglophones. Articles in English about English are more often than not egocentric and short sighted. I heard an Englishman quip that English is the only language where you can tell a person's class by their accent. Or a lot of people think English is the hardest language to learn because of its irregularities or terrible spelling rules. Or that our slang is somehow exceptional. Most of these people don't have enough experience in other languages to have any idea how they compare to English.
  • rjsw 5y ago
    > To say that "native English speakers are the world's worst communicators" is quite a bold claim. Personally, I'd give that title to native French speakers. I'm a native English speaker with French as my second language. In my experience "Business French" doesn't have nearly as many problems as English.
• vbezhenar 5y ago
  My weird anecdote. English is a not native language for me (Russian is my native language) and I have issues listening to native English persons, but I have almost no issues listening to English with Russian accent. So, I guess, that depends on a receiving side.
• b0b0b0b 5y ago
  Was the word “inflammable”?
  • sime2009 5y ago
    I'm guessing "infamous". You know, when someone becomes more than just famous, then become "infamous".
    • tomcooks 5y ago
      How would that lead to the industry the company works in?
      • sime2009 5y ago
        Don't take my comment too seriously. It's a scene from a movie actually.
    • hnjst 5y ago
      I shouldn't start on these but I fail to resist, since you bring one of them on the discussion. This is one of numerous "faux-amis" that are so tricky for native French speakers. While "fameux" has the meaning an English speaker would expect, "Infâme" means odious. Other examples include "éventuellement" that means possibly (and not surely in the future), "actuellement" which translates as "nowadays" (and not really) etc. It may be chauvinism, but etymological and geographical clues let be believe that most of these are french words that have been imported into English and whose meanings changed radically. Admittedly, some probably share a common latin origin and were declined into similar words but retaining a different subset of their original meanings. It is often a source of weird misunderstandings between native French and English speakers, neither of which are famous for their mastery at learning foreign languages...
  • jessaustin 5y ago
    I'm guessing "penultimate". Non-native speakers look up the dictionary definition, while the average American knows it means "really awesome".
• blunte 5y ago
  This is clickbait. Much of what is presented as evidence of how bad native English speakers are would apply to people of other languages if they were the natives and English speakers were the guests. But with respect to the one word financial loss, it sounds like the receiver is ultimately to blame because they chose to act without confirming the meaning of the original message. Sure, the writer could have considered the ambiguity and been more specific or explicit, but the receiver made a choice and ran with it.
• bogle 5y ago
  You can learn how to be better understood as a native speaker without having to go abroad or even speak to a lot of people using English as a second language. In the UK, live in a city like Birmingham, for instance, with a strong local accent and even, in some parts like the Black Country, a unique syntax, e.g. "How am ya?". Now go live for a while in, for the sake of argument, Glasgow, with their own particular patois and accent. Why does this article make me think the problem is perhaps mainly with those native English speakers who haven't been exposed much to their own language as it's spoken in the regions?
  • ARandomerDude 5y ago
    Even easier: pick up an introductory Greek or Latin textbook. I didn't know English grammar until I bought a Greek book and worked through it on my own.
    • stan_rogers 5y ago
      Greek and/or Latin will get you to "schoolbook English" grammar... which was deliberately designed to make learning Greek and Latin easier, and has only a distant relationship to the actual grammar of English.
  • leoedin 5y ago
    Conversely, I lived for a while with a Glaswegian who had moved to the South of England, having lived his whole life in Glasgow. It was interesting watching him realise that he had to moderate his speech, otherwise so much of what he said was lost. Over time, he stopped using some of the specifically regional stuff that nobody understood.
    • ska 5y ago
      This is complicated because Scots (distinct from Gaelic) is a language - with multiple dialects (you wouldn't speak Doric in Glasgow) - and people from Scotland freely intermix with English. If you've grown up there as an English speaker you may not even realized it until you move somewhere it isn't spoken, so lots of loan words etc. you are used to don't exist.
• IshKebab 5y ago
  So what was the word?? This is like those articles about photos that don't actually include the photo.
  • incrudible 5y ago
    We're looking for a word that is: - highly industry-specific - has two contradictory definitions in some dictionary - possibly identifying a multinational company
    • exceptione 5y ago
      Shell
    • IshKebab 5y ago
      The only thing I can think of is "tabling" something, which means to put on the agenda in most places but to remove from the agenda in the US.
  • bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    It's probably not this, but a native English speaker saying "That's the shit!" probably means "That thing is great" but someone who's not very fluent might think the speaker doesn't like the thing.
    • gus_massa 5y ago
      I guess it happens in all languages. Here in Argentina sometimes you can use some insults as a great compliment to a friend. [It's tricky to know when you can use them, which one, and have the correct intonation and body posture, so don't try it.] And you can use a compliment like "Muy bien. Te feliciiito." ("Very good. I congratulate you." But with a long ee sound in the middle of the last word) And it means something like "You are an idiot" / "You made a big mistake".
      • secondcoming 5y ago
        There are parts of the English speaking world where 'cunt' is used as term of endearment.
• pbourke 5y ago
  > The non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully, typical of someone speaking a second or third language. Anglophones, on the other hand, often talk too fast for others to follow, and use jokes, slang and references specific to their own culture, says Chong Isn’t this a description of native vs non-native speakers in many languages?
  • sampo 5y ago
    > Isn’t this a description of native vs non-native speakers in many languages? I'd venture to guess, that only with English you can find businesses that run in English but native speakers are a minority in the company.
    • astrange 5y ago
      There's other cultures where most people don't natively speak the business language/dialect - not all Chinese speakers are native Mandarin for instance. Actually, there's some Japanese companies that try to use English in the office even if they don't have any foreigners.
  • silicon2401 5y ago
    Yes. This is just another article trying to attack English by singling it out for scenarios that occur in every language. It's part of human communication and behavior, not a flaw inherent to English. Otherwise, what's the implication, that non-English speakers universally speak slowly and without any kind of idioms or color? That's disproven within a year of learning any new language
    • jhanschoo 5y ago
      Well, there are a lot of Americanisms in business speak that just aren't frequent in international business that the unaware US speaker, for instance, will have difficulty expressing themselves without these colloquialisms or even being aware they are using them if they are not used to it. e.g. with baseball alone, * in the ballpark of (around) * touch base (have a short chat for mutual understanding of something) * dropped the ball (fucked up on something you are responsible for) * heavy hitter (the one that brings a lot of cash, etc.) https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/M.-LAKHWANI-R.-CLAIR.pdf https://web.uri.edu/iaics/files/M.-LAKHWANI-R.-CLAIR.pdf
• kingsuper20 5y ago
  This probably should be rewritten as "Native language speakers are the world's worst communicators".
  • antonvs 5y ago
    ...which could be generalized as, non-native speakers of a language have more difficulty understanding native speakers. It's a scientific breakthrough, I tell you!
• dvh 5y ago
  In one episode of Black Books, main character Manny finds out he can play piano. Other character Bernard wants to use it to impress a woman, so he forces Manny to hide inside the piano and play using spoons. Manny does it but later refuses to do it again. To convince him to do it one more time, Bernard offers him one whole week of vacation. Manny looks at Bernard, then extend his arms forwards, palms open up, and says: "spoon me". In my native language we use declension everywhere. I could awkwardly say the same in my language, something like "olyžicujte ma" (o=equip/cover, lyžica=spoon, ujte=keep doing something, me=ma) - it is technically correct, but english didn't need to change any of those words, it just worked. English can convey the same meaning without unnecessary complexity. I like this simplicity in language, it feels somehow superior. Simpler is better.
  • tmp538394722 5y ago
    If someone without context had walked into the room and heard him say “spoon me”, they’d likely think something very different were going on. “Spoon” as a verb usually means something like “cuddle me” - as in “let’s be like spoons and fit all our curves really close together”. It seems like the “o” in “olyžicujte ma” clarified that you’re talking about equipping. I haven’t seen the show, but that double entendre on “spoon” might have been one layer of the joke.
  • klodolph 5y ago
    I think what you are talking about is really analytic vs synthetic languages. English is more analytic than most European languages, but there are other languages which are also analytic, like Mandarin, Swedish, and Maori. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analytic_language In analytic languages, speakers use word order and additional words to convey relationships. However, this does not mean that analytic languages are simpler, it just means that the complexity is different. For example, English usually requires that you use the correct word order, correct articles, and correct prepositions. "A customer is angry about the movie." You cannot change word order. You must use the correct article ("a" customer, "the" movie), and correct preposition ("angry about", not "angry at"). In some other languages, these details like "a" / "the" are not important. Sentences like "Spoon me" or "beer me" rely on the fact that English uses word order instead of declension. The sentence must have a verb, and "me" is not a verb, so the word before "me" is treated as a verb. The words are simple and flexible, but the word order is very strict.
• franciscop 5y ago
  When English is your second or third language in the beginning the difficult bits are the pronunciation, and then all the cultural differences. For example, university debt or debt in general is just not a topic in most of EU for those under-25. Hospital runs or calling an ambulance are also a no-brainer because that's free. One of the major shocks for me was when I heard the story of someone who broke a leg, and stopped a friend from calling an ambulance because it'd be too expensive and instead called a taxi to get to the hospital. A combination of me being younger and naive, and not knowing the US so well back then, so I literally thought they were joking while they were telling it.
• MereInterest 5y ago
  I think the point of avoiding acronyms and abbreviations isn't strong enough, because it doesn't explain how much they can creep into most conversation. As an example, here's how something can become gradually less specific, and gradually shortened. (I have an American Midwest accent, so not all of these shortenings will be applicable to all accents.) > I'm hungry. Would you like to get lunch and continue discussing this as we eat? Good clear statement, motivation, question, and proposed action. But there's some repetition. If I'm the one suggesting lunch, it can be assumed that I am hungry, so that doesn't need to be mentioned. > Would you like to get lunch and continue discussing this as we eat? Now we add in some cultural context, that people generally eat lunch around noon, and that it is generally a social affair. Asking if somebody wants to get lunch implicitly includes the question of having lunch as a group. > Would you like to get lunch? In the same manner, rather than asking about the intended action of "having lunch", one can instead ask about previous actions, with the assumption that somebody will join in on a social activity. > Have you eaten yet? Depending on the level of formality, both the choice of words and the level of diction can be chosen to progressively shorten the phrase. > Did you eat yet? > Didja eat yet? > Djeet yet? The last one, when spoken and in the context of a co-worker asking shortly before noon, is understandable as a social request by a native speaker with a similar accent, even though it's missing over half of the syllables needed to even be grammatically correct.
  • solatic 5y ago
    To be fair, "Did you eat yet?" in this context seems to be universal across languages and cultures for office workers. The "Djeet yet?" will naturally be different depending on language and accent, but my point is that this is not exclusive to the English language. Someone who is familiar with the practice of asking if a coworker has eaten their midday meal in their native tongue will recognize the same nuance if they know the literal English translation.
    • jjgreen 5y ago
      In French: à la soupe !
    • deleted 5y ago
• lebuffon 5y ago
  Two thoughts come to mind. 1. At one time in human history, not long ago, it was mandatory to have some facility in at least a 2nd language to claim you had a higher education. Partial mastery of a 2nd language would help native English speakers "get" what it's like for the non-native people and might help them adjust there speaking style. IMHO we have allowed "higher" education in English speaking countries to devolve in this regard. 2. We might be entering an era where English begins to morph into new dialects as did Latin when it was the "Lingua Franca" of the time. The 2nd language population will overwhelm the native English speakers and so control the language. ( "Lingua Franca" is probably one of those terms that one should not use internationally, unless you are in Italy, Spain, France, Portugal or Romania) :)
  • xdennis 5y ago
    > "Lingua Franca" is probably one of those terms that one should not use internationally, unless you are in Italy, Spain, France, Portugal or Romania I'm not sure what you mean. Are you perhaps confusing lingua franca with romance language?
    • lebuffon 5y ago
      I was implying that due to its Latin origin (?) it might be less familiar to non-native speakers.
  • User23 5y ago
    “Lingua franca” is English[1]. [1] https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lingua-franca https://www.dictionary.com/browse/lingua-franca
  • not_knuth 5y ago
    Regarding your second point, this might be of interest to you: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_English-based_pidgins
  • jogjayr 5y ago
    Until today I thought "Lingua Franca" just meant "French language" and the usage of the phrase signified how commonplace French was in international diplomacy. Glad to learn something new.
• okareaman 5y ago
  As an older person who probably needs a hearing aid, I have the most problem with native English speakers not enunciating words. They go fast and run words together or mumble like Noam Chomsky. I have sympathy for ESL people trying to parse it. I always turn on subtitles if available. Also, a Brazilian friend says the don't use much sarcasm, so it gets difficult understand when English speakers use it so much to mean the opposite of what they say.
  • wirrbel 5y ago
    MTV Europe used non-native speakers in the 90ies, they would be understood across Europe. Native speakers pronounced 'better' but less pronounced.
  • _delirium 5y ago
    I definitely have had this issue. I'm a native English speaker and taught in Europe for a few years, where a subset of students had trouble understanding me, mostly because I would just drop too many consonants and run words together. E.g. if speaking quickly, I tend to pronounce "because" as one syllable, something like "biz". I've moved towards much more consciously enunciating words in mixed-nationality settings. Americans now sometimes think I sound foreign though!
    • okareaman 5y ago
      All of us with hearing loss in the human speech frequency range appreciate your efforts!
• nottorp 5y ago
  Article seems to be selling the Globbish thing mentioned in the middle? IMO if you get an ambiguous phrase in any language, ask for clarification. Especially if it's work related. What's more annoying is the cultural differences, mainly anglo saxons always being in a hurry and almost never considering the long term consequences.
• gryfft 5y ago
  I work with teams across the globe and I can say this has been true in my experience. The experience of communicating with others for whom English is not only a second language, but a lingua franca used to communicate across other language boundaries, is distinctly not one where I am the advantaged communicator, because I am the less versed speaker of the lingua franca version of the dialect. (Imagine switching from a BSD to Ubuntu with no Linux experience. Lots rhymes and sounds the same, but might trip up an experienced user who has built up years of expectations.) My wife has been showing me Twogether, a show about two celebrities from different countries whose only common language is English, and who are made to travel and perform tasks together in countries whose languages they don't speak. It's fascinating to hear the version of English they speak to each other. It's not US or UK English, it's a combination of English, Korean, Chinese, intonation, facial expression, and gesture to communicate what they need in a given moment. It was odd for me to that they were actually able to use English to communicate with each other better than I, a native English speaker, could use to communicate with either of them. Built up context and the tendency of language to take the shape of its container resulted in a patois better suited to their purposes than the language I use every day, and in a business context, pretending this doesn't happen is a recipe for failure, I believe.
  • developer93 5y ago
    I work in a multinational company in a non English speaking country, and we use English officially. I'm not trying to be snobby when I say the English we speak is different from what I would speak in UK, and I've found myself adapting to the special grammar that we use. I've come to the conclusion that there are many equally valid "Englishes", e.g. American, Aussie, Indian, south African etc and being snooty because their particular grammatical styles or pronunciations don't match the ones you grew up with just makes you a prick. Lots of my compatriots still do though.
• deleted 5y ago
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• lebuffon 5y ago
  Amusing anecdote. I was in a class with a Japanese instructor. I had a great deal of trouble understanding him. A hand was raised and a person began talking with a very different accent (Finnish) and I understood very little of that. The Japanese instructor understood the question and replied. I however understood almost nothing of the entire exchange. This may be the future for native English language speakers or perhaps is already the norm in some parts of the world.
  • trainsplanes 5y ago
    As a non-native speaker of a non-English language, I'm often the "translator" for other non-native speakers, helping native speakers understand them. Really all I'm doing is repeating what the non-native speaker said verbatim, but with an accent that the native speaker is more familiar with.
  • astrange 5y ago
    If they were speaking Japanese, Finnish (and Spanish) have very similar phonetics, to the point a lot of Finnish words also mean totally unrelated things in Japanese.
• ajford 5y ago
  This article blames English specifically for what is ultimately a cultural difference. This goes for a native speaker in any language. I speak passable Spanish, and have encountered the same "cultural dissonance" when dealing with a native speaker in a room full of non-native speakers. When you grow up embedded in a language and culture, you don't realize when you slip into colloquialisms and culture references that don't translate well. That whole business deal the article opens with is a joke. It's not the native speaker's fault, nor the word's fault. It was the recipient who picked randomly when faced with an unclear choice. If you're unclear, as for clarification. I worked with an international collaboration of scientists during college and that was one of things you learned quickly. No one has the same frame of reference you do, so make sure you're all on the same page. Hell, simply rephrasing your understanding in a reply before you take action can clear this up in a single message. "So you wanted us to X? Got it!". Then the other party has the opportunity to step in and say, "No, do Y".
  • kotrunga 5y ago
    this ^
  • js2 5y ago
    Yes, of course, but it's an article for English language speakers published by the BBC, so it's written in terms of English being the native language. Perhaps there's an analogous article written in some Spanish publication for Spanish speakers. In any case, English is the most popular second-language in 55 countries, so it's not a bad guess to write this article in terms of English.
    • ajford 5y ago
      So the HN title has been changed, but the original article specifically calls out Native English speakers as "the world's worst communicators". The author could have couched the entire article from the point of view that a native speaker is difficult for non-native speakers to understand. I was simply pointing out that the article points an accusing finger at a particular group, when the issue at hand isn't a particular language, but the situation in question. This is definitely something that communicators and collaborators need to be aware of, but the article, at least to me, demonizes a particular group even though the issue isn't inherent to that group.
• laurieg 5y ago
  I think the article touches on a few interesting points, but only at a fairly shallow. What I have noticed working with various levels of bilinguals is that native vs non-native often have different misunderstandings. A native person firing something off to another native will make too many assumptions. "I understand what 'it' is. No need to elaborate" is the feeling. Non-natives tend to lean on a smaller set of vocabulary and grammar. This tends to serve them well in slower, written communication but can give them trouble in speaking when there is a miscommunication and they don't have the skills to correct it. Over- or under-applying a rule past it's breaking point. They also have to contend with false friends(words to be related across languages but actually have different meanings), which can sometimes cause very hard to spot miscommunications as both speaker and listener have separate but consistent ideas in their heads. When it comes to accents, in general it can be considered rude to ask someone to modify their accent. I know that if I affect a general American accent I will be understood better, but should I?
• deleted 5y ago
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• dang 5y ago
  All: please let's not react to the title, and certainly not just with an indignant reflex [1]. There's more interesting material here. We've edited the title now to be more neutral and accurate, using representative language from the article. [1] https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=reflective%20reflex%20by:dang https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
• js2 5y ago
  I think some commenters are taking issue with this article for singling out English. Yes, the larger issue is native vs non-native speakers in any language. But this article is specifically addressed to native English speakers because English often serves as the common language in a room of mixed-language speakers. I'm a native English speaker. I don't find the article offensive, and I appreciate it pointing out how I can be a more effective communicator.
  • II2II 5y ago
    > I'm a native English speaker. I don't find the article offensive, and I appreciate it pointing out how I can be a more effective communicator. If you want people to communicate more effectively, then you state how to communicate more effectively. It is best to avoid criticism since the recipient is liable to take it poorly. Trying to be provocative will only result in the intent of the message being ignored.
    • lazide 5y ago
      Unless they’re German or Eastern European, in which case if you don’t point out exactly where they personally are wrong they might think you’re complimenting them, seeking help in figuring out who IS doing something wrong, or don’t have any actual issues, and everything is ok. Speaking of cultural differences.
    • efaref 5y ago
      For an article about communicating clearly, it was pretty poor at communicating clearly.
    • js2 5y ago
      FWIW, I don't take this article poorly because I don't see it as being critical of some immutable characteristic of either me or of English. It's simply pointing out a blind spot that native speakers are unlikely to realize when speaking to non-native speakers. As to the headline, like not judging a book by its cover, I also don't judge an article by its crappy clickbait provocative headline.
    • 5y ago
• hnedeotes 5y ago
  Is this another case of worse is better? Dammit. (also funny that the title is native speakers are hard to understand in an honest language situation, I would say it's natural)
• secondcoming 5y ago
  Misused English words and expressions in EU publications [0] > Over the years, the European institutions have developed a vocabulary that differs from that of any recognised form of English. It includes words that do not exist or are relatively unknown to native English speakers outside the EU institutions and often even to standard spellcheckers/grammar checkers (‘planification’, ‘to precise’ or ‘telematics’ for example) and words that are used with a meaning, often derived from other languages, that is not usually found in English dictionaries (‘coherent’ being a case in point). [0] https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION/EN_TERMINOLOGY_PUBLICATION.pdf https://www.eca.europa.eu/Other%20publications/EN_TERMINOLOG...
  • robocat 5y ago
    Interesting - similar to many institutions of course. Bovine, Ovine, Caprine, Porcine and Asinine animals Comitology, Decommitted, Negative evolution Unfortunately the list seems to concentrate on British English usage - for example “Hierarchical superior” makes perfect sense to me. There are some very surprising examples of EU English where I would read the exact opposite meaning (however New Zealand English is my mother tongue, so perhaps that is my own bias). And after brexit, what use does the EU have for English anyway?
    • frosted-flakes 5y ago
      It's a lingua franca.
    • nickkell 5y ago
      Ireland is still a member state. Plus, they'd have to decide on another common language. Would they rather it be German?
• Agingcoder 5y ago
  There is another aspect beyond raw vocabulary and grammar, and that's unspoken cultural assumptions :not abbreviations and slang, but real misunderstandings caused by different understandings of what seems to be a set of perfectly obvious sentences to both sides . A branch of my company went through a merger with another branch in a different country, and with a different language. Needless to say, it was difficult, and people didn't all take it well. The interesting part was that both sides thought the other side was being actively hostile, and were brandishing emails as 'proof'. I was eventually asked to do something to reconcile both sides of the new merged team, since I am a native speaker of both languages and understand both cultures. I read the emails, and was flabbergasted. Side A could read email from B as hostile, but side B had genuinely sent something they thought was perfectly ok, and I could see why. The other way round was the same. To be more specific, some cultures are far more direct than others, and what seems offensive to one is perfectly acceptable to the other. The other way round would be saying something 'forcefully' but very indirectly, and the other side understanding it as 'no' when it meant 'yes'. I ended up solving the problem by organizing a very nice lunch, where everyone realized the 'others' were actually nice and friendly human beings, and that email was not always the best way to communicate.
  • jakub_g 5y ago
    Meeting in person and regularly is extremely underrated. This can happen also within a single culture. When two companies do some business together but instead of meeting often and talking directly (or zoom), spend weeks to carefully craft emails and never talk face to face.
    • ezoe 5y ago
      It is exploited. There are so many evil politicians who order to murder people or made the laws which restrict human rights. But if you meet them in person, you will definitely feel they are nice person.
      • behythoyg 5y ago
        This is a really interesting point. Malcolm Gladwell: "The people who got Hitler right were those who never met him, and the people who got him wrong were those who did spend time with him." Here's a clip from an interview with Gladwell on this subject: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvOilwY0yOQ&t=178s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uvOilwY0yOQ&t=178s
• fnord77 5y ago
  is there any hard evidence of this or is this just from anecdotes? I have my own anecdote - my swedish coworkers use more english slang and speaking shortcuts than many native speakers I know.
• hodgesrm 5y ago
  Misunderstandings like the "one word" issue cited at the beginning of the article are common among native speakers. I'm sure everyone has been to meetings where parties walked out the door having agreed to diametrically opposite things. It is not necessarily a matter of English vs. non-English speakers but whether you have empathy with your audience. (Plus a bit of project management to ensure everyone understands decisions.)
  • lazide 5y ago
    Also everyone dancing around discussing/bringing up concrete objective milestones because it’s hard! Hah. If the details never come up and need to be agreed up (including dates or hard deliveries), it’s easy to not realize you don’t agree at all.
• jakub_g 5y ago
  On the subject: I highly recommend "The culture map" book. It provides a dozen of dimensions on communication and compares on real world examples how American, German, French, Chinese, Japanese and several other nationalities approach certain situations, and summarizes each dimension with a scale and puts each country in the left/middle/right. https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/ https://erinmeyer.com/books/the-culture-map/ It talks things like "why X are so aggressive and direct" and "why Y are so $adjective".
• bernardv 5y ago
  Yes, I can definitely relate to this. English is not my native tongue. I’m acutely aware of the presence of other non-native speakers in the room and instinctively switch to simple terms and avoid the use of colloquialisms. Native speakers generally do not have that instinct.
• jokethrowaway 5y ago
  Accent is another sore point, I find understanding non-native speakers' accent to be way easier than understanding what some native speakers say. Probably if you're a native speaker you've been exposed in your life to the different dialects and accents - as a non-native speaker the chances of you knowing how the different dialects influence words and pronunciation are much slimmer.
• dynm 5y ago
  I'm interested in the minimal "Globish" subset of English this article mentions. It would be an interesting idea to have a variant of hemmingwayapp or grammarly that tries to automatically test if a bit of text conforms to it. This doesn't seem all that technically difficult, and would be the kind of thing some organizations would pay for if there's proof that it makes a bit of writing harder to misinterpret.
• tuxie_ 5y ago
  Now I'm curious what the old title was.
  • frosted-flakes 5y ago
    Probably the title of the article.
    • tuxie_ 5y ago
      LOL yeah, that makes sense. Thanks :)
• throwaway-8c93 5y ago
  The article echoes what General Jim Mattis commented on the topic of leadership in one of his interviews - (paraphrasing) decisions take an hour to make, the rest of the day is spent crafting the message to ensure there's no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding.
• buescher 5y ago
  Ah yes, less fluency makes for better communication, and more fluency makes for worse communication, but only for English speakers. There has got to be a meme in here somewhere.
• corpMaverick 5y ago
  As a non native speaker I struggle with this. I work with some native speakers which are more articulate, use a more complex sentence structure, speak faster and speak a lot longer. I often loose track of what they are saying and it is very hard to argue against them. I feel like a three year old.
  • jmercouris 5y ago
    I have the same problem when arguing in foreign languages. It is very frustrating. You feel powerless.
  • labster 5y ago
    You’ve managed to confuse “loose” and “lose” exactly like a native speaker! The goal of communication is understanding. The native speakers you speak with need to work harder, the same as you do.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• riffraff 5y ago
  Many years ago I had the chance to work in a research institute in Ireland. A common line for newcomers who worried about their ability to speak was that we had 25 or 35 different nationalities, and the Irish were the only ones having problems communicating in English. It is pretty obvious if you think about it, and not specific to any language: native speakers of X have to make an effort to speak "international basic X" and they are generally not used to do that.
  • tomcooks 5y ago
    The Anglosphere covers more than half of the world, being used to deal with other cultures and adapting to that should be taken for granted.
    • CGamesPlay 5y ago
      You're assuming that all people who speak English are fungible. Someone who's spent their whole life talking to Americans in Ohio is absolutely not going to have experience "toning down" their English to the same degree that someone who grew up speaking with Americans and Latinos in San Diego. So sure, the Anglosphere covers half the globe, but the only relevant part of it is the part that actually interfaces with other languages.
    • fomine3 5y ago
      Not more than half. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglosphere
• domano 5y ago
  I see this happening regurarily and i have to say that it heavily depends on the native speakers nationality. Americans (at least if they don't speak some thick dialect) are easy to understand due to movies etc. Brits are ok enough, but some dialects get tricky. Irish and scottish usually are not understood by the absolute majority of participants. I pride myself in my ability to understand spoken english (relative to my peers here in germany at least) but even for me it is nearly impossible to understand an irishman talking over zoom etc. with some random headset.
  • xxpor 5y ago
    That's fascinating. I know there's a lot of variation in how "strong" Irish accents can be, but when listening to someone from Dublin, sometimes it takes me, as a native English speaker with a slight Philadelphia accent, multiple sentences to realize they're not American. The giveaway will usually be a word beginning with voiceless th, like "three", which most Irish people pronounce like "tree". For example, the housing expert here: https://youtu.be/UwmxehOidaY?t=73 https://youtu.be/UwmxehOidaY?t=73 Edit: Ha, turns out that guy lived in LA until he was 11: http://www.karldeeter.com/about/ http://www.karldeeter.com/about/
• shkkmo 5y ago
  I think there is a fundemental misattribution where the author talks about monolingual speakers. Speaking to non-native speakers in a language is a seperate skill that can be learned without proficiency in a second language. It takes skill and care to keep your sentence structure simple and independent of semantic nuance or idiom. People for whom English is a lingua franca have almost exclusively used English to speak to other non-native speakers and have lots of practice doing this.
  • ncpa-cpl 5y ago
    At work we need to speak on a day to day basis with Spanish speakers from other countries. Spanish is our native language. We share with every new hire a list of words that can be misunderstood and that they shouldnt use, and also list of words of the other countries so they can understand them better.
• Kreotiko 5y ago
  It doesn’t help that native English speakers are less inclined to learn another language and don’t get to understand the experience of being at the other end
  • angry_octet 5y ago
    Less inclined, or with less incentive, and fewer opportunities? Whereas English is omnipresent. Finding good teachers is always tough in a monolingual environment. I'm reminded of visiting China in the 2000s, many Chinese languages, rarely foreign languages, but a hunger to learn English from native speakers.
    • Kreotiko 5y ago
      I believe it to be a cultural thing. Sure, you don’t necessarily have the incentive to learn a language for work but the education system does not promote it either. I know a lot mainland European who speak languages other than English just out of interest for other cultures with no real use in their daily job.
  • heurisko 5y ago
    There isn't the same motivation if you already speak the lingua franca. My experience learning a foreign language as a native English speaker, is that people in the target country are sometimes puzzled as to why you want to learn it. They also then have a strong preference to practice English with you instead, which is understandable, if not frustrating.
• anon43534908 5y ago
  I lived in France for 9 years and worked extensively with non-native speakers in English. My accent and word choice definitely shifted to a more international, neutral English at work. However if I started chatting 1:1 with a native speaker at lunch my speed and word choice would immediately shift and the other coworkers couldn't follow a damn thing.
• freeflight 5y ago
  Reminds me about how the EU has kinda created its own version of English loaning from the other European languages; Euro English [0] [0] https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/23/world-language-day-do-you-speak-euro-english https://www.euronews.com/2020/04/23/world-language-day-do-yo...
• why55 5y ago
  American English is to English as a Second Lanaguage as Typescript is to Javascript. We claim it is a superset, but the rules are different and it is unnecessarily verbose in all the wrong places.
• dejj 5y ago
  I'm German. I've had an Arabic colleague translate (=dumb down) my English to another German colleague. Vocabulary was the issue. "I think I spider."[1] It felt like having to rewrite a map-reduce to a loop in order to pass code review. [1] http://ithinkispider.com/ http://ithinkispider.com/
• mbgerring 5y ago
  I spent a semester in college in the Czech Republic with international students from all over Europe, all of whom spoke English. All the Americans learned to speak “European English” — slowed down, more verbose, without slang — because we were frequently told that we could not be understood otherwise. It became pronounced enough that people I would talk to back home would notice it. And for what it’s worth I couldn’t understand the students from the UK when they were speaking to each other either.
  • syrrim 5y ago
    I was on the bus on time, a cute family was ahead of me, speaking some incomprehensible babble. "I wonder what part of scandinavia they're from", thought I. Then the father turns to me and asks some pleasantry with his british accent. I think those types recognize the degree to which they're dialect can't be broadly understood, and tune it appropriately. Perhaps americans are less aware of the need because accents are locally much more homogeneous.
• Iv 5y ago
  Ya ain sayin mat'! We English non-native speaker typically do not know colloquial English well. Another thing that was not taught to me is how important intonations, which are unwritten, are and how much natives rely on it.
• hardwaregeek 5y ago
  Funnily enough I’ve had to explain this to my friends when ordering in Chinese or other ethic restaurants. Something like “hi, how are you? I’d like the roast duck with rice please, oh and with a Diet Coke too?” is actually quite confusing and a lot to parse when you’re a native Cantonese speaker rushing to serve 30 people. Instead “roast duck with rice, Diet Coke”, while rude sounding, is much preferable. It may seem a little condescending but learning to speak broken English is a rather useful skill.
  • poglet 5y ago
    I ended up with the prawn burger (KFC Japan) because I made the mistake of mentioning that I dont want the prawn burger.
    • megablast 5y ago
      You started to list the things you didn’t want?? That’s odd.
      • YeGoblynQueenne 5y ago
        Not at all, it's similar to a proof by refutation. Assuming there was a finite number of dishes that could be ordered, it should be easy to prove it a sound and complete ordering rule.
    • bonoboTP 5y ago
      I once had a sore throat and tried to order a drink that wasn't cold in a language I could barely speak, but I really tried to emphasize the not, and I ended up with an extra cold drink. It's difficult to communicate effectively and you need the experience of failing several times in order to learn.
  • phreack 5y ago
    If you're in, say, Japan, where most people know a bit of English, it's important to be able to break yours so they understand you better. Even more so, being able to speak broken Japan-flavored English would be perfect if your goal is to convey a simple message by any means. Most tourists don't realize accent and pronunciation could make a word unrecognizable to non native speakers.
• lightgreen 5y ago
  > didn't reveal the tricky word because it is highly industry-specific and possibly identifiable I suspect this article (or at this part of the article) is bs. Non-native speakers know highly industry-specific words very well, because it is the words they are using every day. Moreover, industry-specific words in business correspondence rarely have double meaning unlike everyday words. > Chia Suan Chong, a UK-based communications skills and intercultural trainer likely made up this story to get some publicity, but could not find a good simple example.
• ab111111111 5y ago
  I think it may be more a "monolinguals are hard to understand in a lingua franca situation" issue. It just happens that a lot of English speakers are monolingual compared to speakers of most other languages. When you learn a new language, particularly as an adult, you learn that you have limitations in its use and to be able to accept and work around them. You learn that that's nothing to be ashamed of, because you put in a hell of a lot of work and can now function in what used to sound like complete nonsense to you. You learn to prioritize keeping things short and simple to minimize the chance of your being miss understood. In your native language, amongst native speakers, everyone's so skillful at communication that there's often more of a focus on how something is said than what is said. I.e. it's so clear that other speakers will understand a speaker's basic "I want to have this done by tomorrow" message - however they formulate it - that they often put more focus on other issues, such adding jokes or word-play, ensuring the correct level of politeness is used or communicating the nuisances of their current emotional situation. To other native speakers, that results in a richer signal, one containing more information which costs them no effort to understand and which they can filter out or pay attention to as they wish. To a non-native speaker, that additional information is just noise: like listening to a message over a bad radio signal. It costs them a lot of effort to attempt to understand it, they often fail in doing so and it gets in the way of their comprehendig the core message. They just want to hear "I need it by tomorrow morning", not "If it isn't too much trouble, is there any chance we could get this done by tomorrow?" A monolingual can get this in the abstract, but it's easy for them to forget. Someone who's gone through the millions of minor embarrassments, humiliations and triumphs it takes to master a second language is far better disposed to remember it and act on it in practice.
• irjustin 5y ago
  Ismo, the comedian sums it up in great style[0] [1]. "I've got shit to do" means anything but actually going to the bathroom. [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igh9iO5BxBo [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGcDi0DRtU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAGcDi0DRtU
• PopePompus 5y ago
  This is somewhat off-topic, but as a native English speaker who has spent a lot of time conversing in English with non-native speakers, I've been struck by how many times non-native speakers will come up with a phrase that is perfectly proper English, but nothing a native speaker would ever have said, and quite poetic. It's often a charming surprise.
  • k_sze 5y ago
    I'm glad you appreciate that. My mother tongue is Cantonese and for a long time I spoke French better than English because I moved to Montreal when I was a kid. I still say weird things in English, even though, like you said, they are perfectly proper English; mostly just because I don't know the native idioms.
• MandieD 5y ago
  Teaching English to adults for three months here in Germany was excellent preparation for working with non-native English speakers. I learned how to aim my own word choices and pronunciation, how to extract meaning from garbled sentences, and how to find non-disruptive ways to rephrase things to confirm that I understood them the way the speaker intended and to help them confirm that they understood me correctly.
  • bonoboTP 5y ago
    Yes, but it's not really understood by most people (not just English). People think they are an expert at their own language in every aspect and can teach it well, but it's not so. For example when there's a non native Hungarian speaker, many of my fellow Hungarians are really bad at helping out with a difficulty, they don't understand what the person is actually asking, they go on a tangent and explain something totally unrelated, explain it wrong etc. But they are convinced they know what they are talking about.
• gxonatano 5y ago
  Esperantists have been pointing this out for over a century now. As others have noted, this isn't just a problem with English, but the choice of any national language as a lingua franca. If we choose Esperanto instead of English as our language for international communication, we are all second-language learners, and no one has the advantage of being the native speaker. Plus, since Esperanto has so few idioms, we'll all be better understood.
• Shorel 5y ago
  The same happens in other languages, of course to a lesser degree. I now know how to speak in very standard and slang free Spanish, very different to the Spanish I use with friends.
• chris_j 5y ago
  I'm a native English speaker who ironically first encountered the use of English as a lingua franca when I moved to London for the first time. London turned out to be a much more cosmopolitan place than anywhere that I'd lived before and I'd say that around 50% of my colleagues at work were non-native English speakers, as were a similar percentage of the new friends that I made. I quite quickly learned to change the way that I spoke in order to be understood, and I learned that certain words that I'd used all my life were not even recognised internationally. The example that I remember vividly: a Polish colleague had to ask me why I kept saying "ta". Where my family comes from, "ta" is short for "thanks" and I had used it all my life without even thinking about it. It was one small example of the things that I had to try to un-learn in order to be understood in the more international environment that I found myself in. As the article states, many English speakers are monolingual and probably have a hard time empathising with the struggles that non-native speakers can have with a language. I worry that the situation will only get worse. English is now spoken by so many people in so many places and the incentives (and opportunities) for English speakers to learn other languages are consequently increasingly small.