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'...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,
by 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 agoI 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.