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In continental Europe I have often been in a room with people from 10 different countries say Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, India, China, Korea,

In continental Europe I have often been in a room with people from 10 different countries say Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, India, China, Korea, England. Everyone could understand each other's broken English with the exception that half of the people couldn't understand English guy. What always puzzle me is the fact that the English doesn't consider that the room language isn't their mother tongue and they should also try to speak this universal dialect that everyone understands.

gexla 5y ago
Right, I speak a sort of broken English to Asian speakers. Just dumb it down a bit. I always smile when a friend visits and tries to speak to non-native speakers the same way he talks to me and I see they can't understand him as he's rambling away. I'll then adjust based on how the conversation flows.
dragonwriter 5y ago
I think there is a very real, uncanny valley effect (at least partially emotionally/identity grounded) with languages where it takes more experience and effort with recognizing a language (or dialect/accent) as a distinct environment requiring a code switch the more closely it resembles one you are very comfortable in, especially your native language, and especially if something about it specifically has become emotionally attached for you with your native language being spoken badly or by people of disfavored background.
- xdfgh1112 5y ago
  It may depend on personality. When I lived in Malaysia my English rapidly took on an accent and developed an unusual grammar, friends commented on it. I found it embarrassing but I couldn't easily stop myself doing it. OTOH, my friend has a long time Asian girlfriend, and speaks 100% native English regardless of whether she understands it or not. He is the type to correct your pronunciation.
  - dragonwriter 5y ago
    I think there is a difference between gradually adapting in immersion (which I think most people will do unless they actively work to avoid it, the way a number of celebrities where an accent/dialect foreign to their new home is part of their brand will literally employ a language coach to maintain it) and identifying a need to learn distinct rules and code switch to them in a particular occasional environment.
  - Veen 5y ago
    When I had a girlfriend who didn't speak English as a first language, she asked me not to simplify my English so she could improve her understanding. She'd get annoyed if she felt I was "dumbing down" to make things easier for her.
    - noisy_boy 5y ago
      I think that was a good ask. I automatically adapted my vocabulary to match my wife's as English isn't her native language (I tend to do that subconsciously in general irrespective of language or who I am speaking to). Over the years, we (again subconsciously) developed more constructs using this limited vocabulary mixed with words/phrases from her native language - so now we almost have our own dialect. However, since then her interactions with other highly proficient English speakers has increased and now she feels that my adjustments were actually a hindrance towards her English proficiency. I try to counter that by saying that this fluency of communication, as impure as it might be, has contributed to our relationship but I know that she has a valid point.
    - bradknowles 5y ago
      During the almost eight years I lived in Brussels, Belgium, I was employed for a year as a consultant by Snow BV (a Dutch consulting company), and for six months I was working on-site at Eindhoven for ASML. They told me it was actually an advantage that I didn’t speak Dutch, because this would encourage all of them to speak English around me. A few weeks later I was asked by the same manager to stop attending the standup meetings, because it was too hard for too many people to speak English instead of Dutch. That’s only one of my Snow and ASML stories.
dazc 5y ago
'...they should also try to speak this universal dialect that everyone understands.' My take on this is to speak regular English with a slight foreign accent, which sounds ridiculous, but it actually does seem to be effective. Incidentally, I am from the North of England but have lived in the South for the past ten years and people sometimes struggle to understand what I am saying. Repeating myself has become the norm.
- elboru 5y ago
  I once met someone from the North of England. I went to a college in the US as an exchange student, the first international student I met was this girl from a northern town in England. We started chatting, but I couldn’t understand a thing. I felt terrible! I didn’t understand a thing of English! How I was supposed to take college classes in English if I couldn’t understand a simple conversation! Then other students came from other countries and then I figured I just didn’t understand that particular accent. She pronounced where as “wa” or something like that I was really confused.
  - dazc 5y ago
    'She pronounced where as “wa” or something like that...' Indeed, Northern English is just regular English with random vowels and syllables missed out.
- bckr 5y ago
  > My take on this is to speak regular English with a slight foreign accent It does sound ridiculous, but I do exactly this when speaking to groups of foreign colleagues. I'll slow down a bit, change my consonants and vowels ever so slightly, and use slightly "incorrect" or simplified grammar. And I think it's helped me. At least, it hasn't hindered me.
xdfgh1112 5y ago
People who have never learned a second language often have mind blindless of how difficult it is. Speaking slower, not using advanced idioms, avoiding ambiguous expressions like "I'm good" could make a world of difference but I rarely see people do it.
- emj 5y ago
  I've learnt several international languages, and what you describe is very hard for me. I'm guessing there is an built in arrogance in my mind that "everyone should understand me", I do make an effort. One thing that makes it harder is the taboo of seeming studpid, and hurting my feelings. So while I do want to agree that I am better at communicating it is not a given, the give and take of communicating is not only about languages and I've met some excellent one-language communicators. Arrogance sucks, just trying to be humble is not enough for me to shake it.
- wjholden 5y ago
  Something I find useful is to explicitly separate thoughts into small sentences. "Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?" "Yes, a little bit." "Hello. I need a passport photo. The photo is for a USA passport. The USA passport photo is a different size from the European size. The size for the USA passport photo is 2 inches by 2 inches." I live in a Francophone region and speak like this to the locals all the time. Taking short pauses between sentences also helps.
  - throwaway2037 5y ago
    This is a good example. I never saw it written about so directly: Short, simple sentences, with small pauses between. It is a very good idea. When I get stuck speaking with non-natives in my own language or another, I repeat the sentence but use synonyms where possible. That also helps sometimes. Depending upon the local culture, it may be acceptable to "gently" mix languages. Example: Maybe you can say part of what you need in French, and part in English. When I say something in English, then try to repeat another language (or vice versa), the non-native listener is much more likely to understand me.
pja 5y ago
It’s probably not obvious to the English guy that what is being spoken is not UK (or US) English, but is instead a "Global English" that is (mostly) a subset of the language they already speak. It’s very easy for a native English speaker to unknowingly step outside the boundary of what constitutes “Global English” and use constructs & vocabulary that are not taught to Global English speakers.
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  In the UK in the 80s and 90s it was unfashionable to teach formal English grammar in schools. A whole generation grew up without knowing their gerund from their past participle. (Even as I write this, I know that if put on the spot to explain those words, I’d need to check on Wikipedia). As a native (post-?)modern British English speaker I have observed that “Global English” is a truer version of the language I speak. It intimidates me a bit.
  - drcongo 5y ago
    I had to look up gerund, which very much proves you correct.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    Isn't that rather normal that foreigners have to learn grammar more explicitly? Outside of teachers and people who studied Polish, nobody remembers what "przysłówek" is.
    - james_in_the_uk 5y ago
      Good question - I'd assumed that most countries' educational systems teach the formal grammar of their native language(s)?
      - goblin89 5y ago
        The challenge is that the formal understanding of a language constantly evolves and there isn’t always even a consensus in the field itself, so perhaps UK school system has/had a point here. Unless I’m going into linguistics or some adjacent field, doubtful I’ll need it—and if I do, I might be better off learning it later when I can appreciate the nuance (rather than as a small child, liable to treat as ground truth the whatever formal model that happened to be popular at the time) and from a linguist (rather than elementary school teacher).
Causality1 5y ago
This phenomena also scales not only up to a room full of internationals but also down to within countries. For example, if you're American and have a stronger accent you'll typically use a more universal one at work, even if everyone you work with is from the same geographic area as you. That's my experience as a Southerner.
resonious 5y ago
As an American living abroad, I learned this fast when I started working in a multi-lingual environment. If I just spit out words naturally, people don't understand me. It's frustrating at first but if you want to be understood, then well, you should just speak more simply. I've found that the habit of speaking in a simple manner has helped a lot even when speaking with other English natives.
wrp 5y ago
I'm a US native and have worked many years overseas. When I'm back in the US, people tell me that my speech has the distinctive character of someone who is accustomed to speaking with non-native speakers. I think the main differences are more careful enunciation and more carefully structured utterances.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  My mother also notices the same about me when speaking on the telephone. If I have been code switching for a day with co-workers, she will mention that my accent sounds different today!
tarkin2 5y ago
The English don’t notice their English accent. England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so. We understand each other nonetheless; we’re habituated to it from birth. We rarely realise others don’t experience the same.
- stordoff 5y ago
  > England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so If not less. There's been a fairly large of degree of flattening over recent years, but my grandparents could quite often differentiate between the accents of people who grew up barely more than a couple of miles apart. One thing that seems to trip up even some native speakers is that the T-V distinction[1] still exists in the Yorkshire dialect in some contexts. I seem to recall a band getting some criticism for lyric that went "I tell thee", which a few people saying it sound sounded phoney or nothing like what a young person would say, and that it was only used to make the rhyme work. It sounded perfectly natural to my Yorkshire ear - it would just a normal dialect use of "thee". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
  - tarkin2 5y ago
    I wonder if "thee" comes from "thou". Definitely distinctly Yorkshire. I wouldn't use it as I think people would accuse me of taking on a false Yorkshire accent.
forinti 5y ago
I lived in England when I was little. My parents were doing their PhDs. I suppose their English must have been good, but every time someone came over to do some job (say a plumber), my brother and I would have to translate. Nowadays, a few decades later, I find it easier to fall into my English accent instead of trying to pronounce everything clearly. My wife says it sounds chopped up.
drcongo 5y ago
I have a fairly generic, south east English accent, much like you'd hear on Radio 4, and weirdly the country where I have the most trouble with people not understanding what I'm saying is the United States.
- lebuffon 5y ago
  "Two nations separated by a common language" Winston Churchill
- prewett 5y ago
  That might not be just the accent. I noticed that British English seems to use synonyms for a lot of nouns. Sometimes this just sounds quaint (rubbish -> trash), sometimes it takes me a moment (car park -> parking lot), but sometimes the word is simply not used that way in American English (bin -> [rubbish] bin -> trash can; pavement -> sidewalk [but "pavement" in American is the road surface, so it's a valid word, just means the opposite in British]).
  - drcongo 5y ago
    Imagine coming at it from the other side and seeing "biscuits and gravy" on a menu.
    - bradknowles 5y ago
      There’s a whole line of books about the same words that take on different meanings in American versus British English. Like pants. In the US, pants are something you wear on the outside over your underwear. In the UK, pants are what you wear under your trousers. But the hysterical thing to me, is that the act of “pantsing someone” means exactly the same thing in both languages, despite the different meanings of the word themselves. Either you are pulling down someone’s pants to expose their underwear, or you are pulling down someone’s trousers to expose their pants. The French would call these words “faux amis”, or “false friends”. You think you know what you mean when you say the word legume, but you don’t understand that they have a different definition of that word. In the UK, you do NOT want to be caught selling or giving away Fanny Packs. The word Fanny in the UK is a reference to female genitalia, and not your butt. In the UK, if you want to sell or give away these things, you do so with “Bum Bags”. But the word “bum” in the US has a rather different connotation. Oh, so many hilarious things can be found in this line of books.
wmu 5y ago
> In continental Europe I have often been in a room with people from 10 different countries say Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, India, China, Korea, England. Everyone could understand each other's broken English with the exception that half of the people couldn't understand English guy. The problem is that most people are not exposed to real-life English. It's either quite artificial language during classes or well spoken lines in movies. Words are spoken slower and clearer. Native speakers speak fast, use linking, colloquial language, multitude of idioms, phrasal verbs, and tons of stuff never ever touched during classes.
- james_in_the_uk 5y ago
  Also, the economics of making a movie mean that the dialogue must be written for an audience with a very low average level of comprehension. I am not a language snob but sometimes it is so poor or obviously dumbed down that it spoils the realism of the film.
- bckr 5y ago
  > real-life English I get what you mean, but want to point out that this Global English which allows the folks to communicate is real-life English as it gets. It's just not Her Majesty's or Mr. President's.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    I would equate it more to a Pidgin English, or a lowest common denominator dialect that throws out 80% or more of the parent language. Yes, I lived in Brussels, Belgium for almost eight years. I heard plenty of Belgians who spoke English better than many native US speakers, but I also heard plenty of people speaking what I would consider a very broken English, more like what is being discussed here.
- ralferoo 5y ago
  "The problem is that most people are not exposed to real-life English. It's either quite artificial language during classes or well spoken lines in movies." This is true of most languages. My favourite example in Mandarin Chinese that appears very often in TV shows and films, "what are you looking at?" 看什么看？ On the surface, this should be pronounced as "kan shenme kan", Chinese people like to add particles to things, in this case it gains a "-na", and the whole thing when said quickly actually reduces to something approximating "ka'me ka-a". When you've heard it a few times, you just recognise it, but unless you have a native to explain it (or good subtitles), it's impossible to guess. I should add that this example is particular to the North, especially Beijing, but other areas have similar but different effects.
timeon 5y ago
It is called Globish. It is not only about pronunciation but also grammar etc. Like word information. In Globish you have information as well as informations.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  Don’t forget “do you have a Software?” Instead of “software program” or just plain “program”. Or do you “do the Necessary”?
rahimnathwani 5y ago
Sometimes accents can make it harder. In my first job in China, I was working on a project with Chinese colleagues and an Indian software company. They teams had difficulty understanding one other. During conference calls, I often had to relay messages. Everyone could understand my English, and I could understand theirs, but the Chinese folks couldn't understand the Indians' accents, and vice versa.
lordnacho 5y ago
Ha, my British wife had the same issue on exchange to Sweden. A bunch of non-British people were speaking to each other and only after a while did she realize it was in her own language. What's weird about English is the hugely wide range of "native" English dialects. My late father asked me where my in-laws were from. Then he asked me whether I was sure, because he'd heard they speak English in Scotland. The plus side is that everyone accepts that everyone else speaks good enough English to carry a conversation. In a lot of other places, once you miss a vowel they will switch to... English.
stackedinserter 5y ago
The reason for that is obvious to me: these people from Germany, Russia and China speak dumbed-down simplified version of English. Do you really want the English guy to forget 2/3 of his native language just to please others? What I see more often is Russians and Chinese don't even try and stuck with their broken English after decades of living in USA or UK.
- bellyfullofbac 5y ago
  > Do you really want the English guy to forget 2/3 of his native language just to please others? Communication is about exchanging information. If you're this English guy and you're blabbing something and no one understands you, would you be fine with being not understood (i.e. your information being lost)? If so, why even open your mouth? GP's scenario is about people in Continental Europe. If the English knowledge is weak, an English person speaking in idioms (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUqKKEKQh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUqKKEKQh4 ) would confuse them quite easily.
  - stackedinserter 5y ago
    I prefer to not work with people that I can't communicate with.
    - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
      From your 2 responses, you seem like a difficult fellow to work with. I wish the people who do have to work with you as little hardship as they need to suffer...
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
As a foreigner you have lived a significant amount of time in England, people with little mastery of the language can be very annoying. It is frustrating to exchange with people who don’t understand slowed down conversational English. Also global english is a myth. In my experience people somewhat understand other speakers of their native language who mispronounce following similar patterns and can somewhat mimic the mistakes of other foreigners while inferring an often incorrect meaning from the context.
aasasd 5y ago
From a linguistic podcast I learned that people don't notice how mangled their pronunciation is, in their native language. With phonemic languages, most people think ‘duh, I speak like it's written’ while swallowing half the vowels and slurring all consonants together.
Symbiote 5y ago
I'm the English guy that about 1 in 50 of those people will walk up to afterwards. "Excuse me, but where are you from in England? I find your accent very easy to understand." (I'm told this around once per business trip.) It's mostly my accent (or lack of accent, if you wish to think of it that way), but I'm also used to speaking to non-natives, so avoiding idioms and slang. In the last 2 years, I've sometimes told other natives in Zoom calls to slow down, speak more clearly etc — if I have trouble understanding, non-natives probably have more trouble, but can be more reluctant to admit it.
yongjik 5y ago
The problem is: native speakers have a very warped idea about what's "difficult" about their own language. Ask English speakers about what's difficult about it, and half of the time they start talking about spelling, because that's what they feel difficult. Nobody says "When I see 'place' or 'book' how do I know if it's a noun or a verb?" because that's just blindingly obvious to a native speaker.

gexla 5y ago

Right, I speak a sort of broken English to Asian speakers. Just dumb it down a bit. I always smile when a friend visits and tries to speak to non-native speakers the same way he talks to me and I see they can't understand him as he's rambling away. I'll then adjust based on how the conversation flows.

dragonwriter 5y ago

I think there is a very real, uncanny valley effect (at least partially emotionally/identity grounded) with languages where it takes more experience and effort with recognizing a language (or dialect/accent) as a distinct environment requiring a code switch the more closely it resembles one you are very comfortable in, especially your native language, and especially if something about it specifically has become emotionally attached for you with your native language being spoken badly or by people of disfavored background.

xdfgh1112 5y ago
It may depend on personality. When I lived in Malaysia my English rapidly took on an accent and developed an unusual grammar, friends commented on it. I found it embarrassing but I couldn't easily stop myself doing it. OTOH, my friend has a long time Asian girlfriend, and speaks 100% native English regardless of whether she understands it or not. He is the type to correct your pronunciation.
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  I think there is a difference between gradually adapting in immersion (which I think most people will do unless they actively work to avoid it, the way a number of celebrities where an accent/dialect foreign to their new home is part of their brand will literally employ a language coach to maintain it) and identifying a need to learn distinct rules and code switch to them in a particular occasional environment.
- Veen 5y ago
  When I had a girlfriend who didn't speak English as a first language, she asked me not to simplify my English so she could improve her understanding. She'd get annoyed if she felt I was "dumbing down" to make things easier for her.
  - noisy_boy 5y ago
    I think that was a good ask. I automatically adapted my vocabulary to match my wife's as English isn't her native language (I tend to do that subconsciously in general irrespective of language or who I am speaking to). Over the years, we (again subconsciously) developed more constructs using this limited vocabulary mixed with words/phrases from her native language - so now we almost have our own dialect. However, since then her interactions with other highly proficient English speakers has increased and now she feels that my adjustments were actually a hindrance towards her English proficiency. I try to counter that by saying that this fluency of communication, as impure as it might be, has contributed to our relationship but I know that she has a valid point.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    During the almost eight years I lived in Brussels, Belgium, I was employed for a year as a consultant by Snow BV (a Dutch consulting company), and for six months I was working on-site at Eindhoven for ASML. They told me it was actually an advantage that I didn’t speak Dutch, because this would encourage all of them to speak English around me. A few weeks later I was asked by the same manager to stop attending the standup meetings, because it was too hard for too many people to speak English instead of Dutch. That’s only one of my Snow and ASML stories.

dazc 5y ago

'...they should also try to speak this universal dialect that everyone understands.' My take on this is to speak regular English with a slight foreign accent, which sounds ridiculous, but it actually does seem to be effective. Incidentally, I am from the North of England but have lived in the South for the past ten years and people sometimes struggle to understand what I am saying. Repeating myself has become the norm.

elboru 5y ago
I once met someone from the North of England. I went to a college in the US as an exchange student, the first international student I met was this girl from a northern town in England. We started chatting, but I couldn’t understand a thing. I felt terrible! I didn’t understand a thing of English! How I was supposed to take college classes in English if I couldn’t understand a simple conversation! Then other students came from other countries and then I figured I just didn’t understand that particular accent. She pronounced where as “wa” or something like that I was really confused.
- dazc 5y ago
  'She pronounced where as “wa” or something like that...' Indeed, Northern English is just regular English with random vowels and syllables missed out.
bckr 5y ago
> My take on this is to speak regular English with a slight foreign accent It does sound ridiculous, but I do exactly this when speaking to groups of foreign colleagues. I'll slow down a bit, change my consonants and vowels ever so slightly, and use slightly "incorrect" or simplified grammar. And I think it's helped me. At least, it hasn't hindered me.

xdfgh1112 5y ago

People who have never learned a second language often have mind blindless of how difficult it is. Speaking slower, not using advanced idioms, avoiding ambiguous expressions like "I'm good" could make a world of difference but I rarely see people do it.

emj 5y ago
I've learnt several international languages, and what you describe is very hard for me. I'm guessing there is an built in arrogance in my mind that "everyone should understand me", I do make an effort. One thing that makes it harder is the taboo of seeming studpid, and hurting my feelings. So while I do want to agree that I am better at communicating it is not a given, the give and take of communicating is not only about languages and I've met some excellent one-language communicators. Arrogance sucks, just trying to be humble is not enough for me to shake it.
wjholden 5y ago
Something I find useful is to explicitly separate thoughts into small sentences. "Bonjour. Parlez-vous anglais?" "Yes, a little bit." "Hello. I need a passport photo. The photo is for a USA passport. The USA passport photo is a different size from the European size. The size for the USA passport photo is 2 inches by 2 inches." I live in a Francophone region and speak like this to the locals all the time. Taking short pauses between sentences also helps.
- throwaway2037 5y ago
  This is a good example. I never saw it written about so directly: Short, simple sentences, with small pauses between. It is a very good idea. When I get stuck speaking with non-natives in my own language or another, I repeat the sentence but use synonyms where possible. That also helps sometimes. Depending upon the local culture, it may be acceptable to "gently" mix languages. Example: Maybe you can say part of what you need in French, and part in English. When I say something in English, then try to repeat another language (or vice versa), the non-native listener is much more likely to understand me.

pja 5y ago

It’s probably not obvious to the English guy that what is being spoken is not UK (or US) English, but is instead a "Global English" that is (mostly) a subset of the language they already speak. It’s very easy for a native English speaker to unknowingly step outside the boundary of what constitutes “Global English” and use constructs & vocabulary that are not taught to Global English speakers.

james_in_the_uk 5y ago
In the UK in the 80s and 90s it was unfashionable to teach formal English grammar in schools. A whole generation grew up without knowing their gerund from their past participle. (Even as I write this, I know that if put on the spot to explain those words, I’d need to check on Wikipedia). As a native (post-?)modern British English speaker I have observed that “Global English” is a truer version of the language I speak. It intimidates me a bit.
- drcongo 5y ago
  I had to look up gerund, which very much proves you correct.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  Isn't that rather normal that foreigners have to learn grammar more explicitly? Outside of teachers and people who studied Polish, nobody remembers what "przysłówek" is.
  - james_in_the_uk 5y ago
    Good question - I'd assumed that most countries' educational systems teach the formal grammar of their native language(s)?
    - goblin89 5y ago
      The challenge is that the formal understanding of a language constantly evolves and there isn’t always even a consensus in the field itself, so perhaps UK school system has/had a point here. Unless I’m going into linguistics or some adjacent field, doubtful I’ll need it—and if I do, I might be better off learning it later when I can appreciate the nuance (rather than as a small child, liable to treat as ground truth the whatever formal model that happened to be popular at the time) and from a linguist (rather than elementary school teacher).

Causality1 5y ago

This phenomena also scales not only up to a room full of internationals but also down to within countries. For example, if you're American and have a stronger accent you'll typically use a more universal one at work, even if everyone you work with is from the same geographic area as you. That's my experience as a Southerner.

resonious 5y ago

As an American living abroad, I learned this fast when I started working in a multi-lingual environment. If I just spit out words naturally, people don't understand me. It's frustrating at first but if you want to be understood, then well, you should just speak more simply. I've found that the habit of speaking in a simple manner has helped a lot even when speaking with other English natives.

wrp 5y ago

I'm a US native and have worked many years overseas. When I'm back in the US, people tell me that my speech has the distinctive character of someone who is accustomed to speaking with non-native speakers. I think the main differences are more careful enunciation and more carefully structured utterances.

throwaway2037 5y ago
My mother also notices the same about me when speaking on the telephone. If I have been code switching for a day with co-workers, she will mention that my accent sounds different today!

tarkin2 5y ago

The English don’t notice their English accent. England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so. We understand each other nonetheless; we’re habituated to it from birth. We rarely realise others don’t experience the same.

stordoff 5y ago
> England is a country of a new accent every 40 miles or so If not less. There's been a fairly large of degree of flattening over recent years, but my grandparents could quite often differentiate between the accents of people who grew up barely more than a couple of miles apart. One thing that seems to trip up even some native speakers is that the T-V distinction[1] still exists in the Yorkshire dialect in some contexts. I seem to recall a band getting some criticism for lyric that went "I tell thee", which a few people saying it sound sounded phoney or nothing like what a young person would say, and that it was only used to make the rhyme work. It sounded perfectly natural to my Yorkshire ear - it would just a normal dialect use of "thee". [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T%E2%80%93V_distinction
- tarkin2 5y ago
  I wonder if "thee" comes from "thou". Definitely distinctly Yorkshire. I wouldn't use it as I think people would accuse me of taking on a false Yorkshire accent.

forinti 5y ago

I lived in England when I was little. My parents were doing their PhDs. I suppose their English must have been good, but every time someone came over to do some job (say a plumber), my brother and I would have to translate. Nowadays, a few decades later, I find it easier to fall into my English accent instead of trying to pronounce everything clearly. My wife says it sounds chopped up.

drcongo 5y ago

I have a fairly generic, south east English accent, much like you'd hear on Radio 4, and weirdly the country where I have the most trouble with people not understanding what I'm saying is the United States.

lebuffon 5y ago
"Two nations separated by a common language" Winston Churchill
prewett 5y ago
That might not be just the accent. I noticed that British English seems to use synonyms for a lot of nouns. Sometimes this just sounds quaint (rubbish -> trash), sometimes it takes me a moment (car park -> parking lot), but sometimes the word is simply not used that way in American English (bin -> [rubbish] bin -> trash can; pavement -> sidewalk [but "pavement" in American is the road surface, so it's a valid word, just means the opposite in British]).
- drcongo 5y ago
  Imagine coming at it from the other side and seeing "biscuits and gravy" on a menu.
  - bradknowles 5y ago
    There’s a whole line of books about the same words that take on different meanings in American versus British English. Like pants. In the US, pants are something you wear on the outside over your underwear. In the UK, pants are what you wear under your trousers. But the hysterical thing to me, is that the act of “pantsing someone” means exactly the same thing in both languages, despite the different meanings of the word themselves. Either you are pulling down someone’s pants to expose their underwear, or you are pulling down someone’s trousers to expose their pants. The French would call these words “faux amis”, or “false friends”. You think you know what you mean when you say the word legume, but you don’t understand that they have a different definition of that word. In the UK, you do NOT want to be caught selling or giving away Fanny Packs. The word Fanny in the UK is a reference to female genitalia, and not your butt. In the UK, if you want to sell or give away these things, you do so with “Bum Bags”. But the word “bum” in the US has a rather different connotation. Oh, so many hilarious things can be found in this line of books.

wmu 5y ago

> In continental Europe I have often been in a room with people from 10 different countries say Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, India, China, Korea, England. Everyone could understand each other's broken English with the exception that half of the people couldn't understand English guy. The problem is that most people are not exposed to real-life English. It's either quite artificial language during classes or well spoken lines in movies. Words are spoken slower and clearer. Native speakers speak fast, use linking, colloquial language, multitude of idioms, phrasal verbs, and tons of stuff never ever touched during classes.

james_in_the_uk 5y ago
Also, the economics of making a movie mean that the dialogue must be written for an audience with a very low average level of comprehension. I am not a language snob but sometimes it is so poor or obviously dumbed down that it spoils the realism of the film.
bckr 5y ago
> real-life English I get what you mean, but want to point out that this Global English which allows the folks to communicate is real-life English as it gets. It's just not Her Majesty's or Mr. President's.
- bradknowles 5y ago
  I would equate it more to a Pidgin English, or a lowest common denominator dialect that throws out 80% or more of the parent language. Yes, I lived in Brussels, Belgium for almost eight years. I heard plenty of Belgians who spoke English better than many native US speakers, but I also heard plenty of people speaking what I would consider a very broken English, more like what is being discussed here.
ralferoo 5y ago
"The problem is that most people are not exposed to real-life English. It's either quite artificial language during classes or well spoken lines in movies." This is true of most languages. My favourite example in Mandarin Chinese that appears very often in TV shows and films, "what are you looking at?" 看什么看？ On the surface, this should be pronounced as "kan shenme kan", Chinese people like to add particles to things, in this case it gains a "-na", and the whole thing when said quickly actually reduces to something approximating "ka'me ka-a". When you've heard it a few times, you just recognise it, but unless you have a native to explain it (or good subtitles), it's impossible to guess. I should add that this example is particular to the North, especially Beijing, but other areas have similar but different effects.

timeon 5y ago

It is called Globish. It is not only about pronunciation but also grammar etc. Like word information. In Globish you have information as well as informations.

bradknowles 5y ago
Don’t forget “do you have a Software?” Instead of “software program” or just plain “program”. Or do you “do the Necessary”?

rahimnathwani 5y ago

Sometimes accents can make it harder. In my first job in China, I was working on a project with Chinese colleagues and an Indian software company. They teams had difficulty understanding one other. During conference calls, I often had to relay messages. Everyone could understand my English, and I could understand theirs, but the Chinese folks couldn't understand the Indians' accents, and vice versa.

lordnacho 5y ago

Ha, my British wife had the same issue on exchange to Sweden. A bunch of non-British people were speaking to each other and only after a while did she realize it was in her own language. What's weird about English is the hugely wide range of "native" English dialects. My late father asked me where my in-laws were from. Then he asked me whether I was sure, because he'd heard they speak English in Scotland. The plus side is that everyone accepts that everyone else speaks good enough English to carry a conversation. In a lot of other places, once you miss a vowel they will switch to... English.

stackedinserter 5y ago

The reason for that is obvious to me: these people from Germany, Russia and China speak dumbed-down simplified version of English. Do you really want the English guy to forget 2/3 of his native language just to please others? What I see more often is Russians and Chinese don't even try and stuck with their broken English after decades of living in USA or UK.

bellyfullofbac 5y ago
> Do you really want the English guy to forget 2/3 of his native language just to please others? Communication is about exchanging information. If you're this English guy and you're blabbing something and no one understands you, would you be fine with being not understood (i.e. your information being lost)? If so, why even open your mouth? GP's scenario is about people in Continental Europe. If the English knowledge is weak, an English person speaking in idioms (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUqKKEKQh4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awUqKKEKQh4 ) would confuse them quite easily.
- stackedinserter 5y ago
  I prefer to not work with people that I can't communicate with.
  - bellyfullofbac 5y ago
    From your 2 responses, you seem like a difficult fellow to work with. I wish the people who do have to work with you as little hardship as they need to suffer...

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

As a foreigner you have lived a significant amount of time in England, people with little mastery of the language can be very annoying. It is frustrating to exchange with people who don’t understand slowed down conversational English. Also global english is a myth. In my experience people somewhat understand other speakers of their native language who mispronounce following similar patterns and can somewhat mimic the mistakes of other foreigners while inferring an often incorrect meaning from the context.

aasasd 5y ago

From a linguistic podcast I learned that people don't notice how mangled their pronunciation is, in their native language. With phonemic languages, most people think ‘duh, I speak like it's written’ while swallowing half the vowels and slurring all consonants together.

Symbiote 5y ago

I'm the English guy that about 1 in 50 of those people will walk up to afterwards. "Excuse me, but where are you from in England? I find your accent very easy to understand." (I'm told this around once per business trip.) It's mostly my accent (or lack of accent, if you wish to think of it that way), but I'm also used to speaking to non-natives, so avoiding idioms and slang. In the last 2 years, I've sometimes told other natives in Zoom calls to slow down, speak more clearly etc — if I have trouble understanding, non-natives probably have more trouble, but can be more reluctant to admit it.

yongjik 5y ago

The problem is: native speakers have a very warped idea about what's "difficult" about their own language. Ask English speakers about what's difficult about it, and half of the time they start talking about spelling, because that's what they feel difficult. Nobody says "When I see 'place' or 'book' how do I know if it's a noun or a verb?" because that's just blindingly obvious to a native speaker.