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This is true to the bone. It's hilarious how many native speakers ignore this - even knowingly. It also goes beyond pronunciation into local slang and choice of

• tpaulin 5y ago
  This sums up my experience travelling and living abroad. To your point on vocab choice: if I use vocab not present/with different meaning in American English I would get blank stares so I often switch to the American term e.g. mobile phone vs cell phone. To your other point about local slang: I recently learned South Africans call traffic lights "robots", which I thought was fantastic.
• ed312 5y ago
  For strictly technical communication you make a great point - we probably should try to work with a "standardized" or "international" English. That said, something about your comment struck me as deeply sad: the "funny wordplay" injects some personality and novelty into communication. I don't want to live in a world where we communicate in a strict manner for utilitarian purposes only (including at work).
  • szszrk 5y ago
    It's a bit more narrow than this. Jokes, sarcasm, all kind of cheerful additions are almost always acceptable and welcomed unless you actually discuss some actual tragedy. "Foreigners" just don't joke in the same way, as it's hard to deliver a punch line, not to mention a properly timed one. I think that "personality" you talk about is still there on both sides, but is very different. The "native" one is great but hard to understand. But English speakers that I talked with (or listened to online) love actual wordplay. It's part of their culture. Tiny rhymes, replacing words with wrong ones that sound similar and "everyone knows what he meant". Anything that you could comment as "pun intended" or "pun not intended" might be super hard to grasp for a foreigner. It often requires listener to know correct pronunciation and some phrasal verbs to get it and often knowing some facts from that country. I usually understand these things when said by Americans, but lack knowledge to understand similar "puns" by other nations. I know for a fact that most of my colleagues don't understand most of those. They might get that there was a joke there, but they won't know if it's commenting the topic positively or negatively.
• Ancapistani 5y ago
  > Non native speakers tend to get to the point more easily. Interesting. I've noticed this, but have always attributed it to being a product of the British education that most of them received, being from Commonwealth countries. > It's easier for themselves. It's also much more clear. I tend to code switch into a more precise dialect when in a professional setting. The words I choose are often a bit more specific, but they're not unnecessarily "fancy" - they're just precisely what I'm trying to convey. I also speak slightly more slowly, with a more regular cadence, and consciously enunciate sounds (especially consonants) that I would otherwise abbreviate or omit entirely. > Then don't try to dazzle you with funny wordplay and jokes that make no sense outside of speakers country. I actually enjoy hearing those, but not while communicating a complex and/or abstract idea. > It takes a lot of skill for a native speaker to be pleasant for foreigners. This makes me wonder if I'm more or less difficult to understand than my peers for non-native speakers. Given that I live somewhere with a strong and distinctive accent, I would assume I'm more difficult to understand but that it's partially offset by my "professional voice". The next time I speak with a colleague who is not a native English speaker, I'll ask them.
  • szszrk 5y ago
    Thanks for your comment, it gives me a lot of insight. I had a look at your vocabulary as well. On your accent I would not care much. You should not try to change your accent for others and you don't need to. Speak slower. That's a number one hint. If you can't force yourself to simplify your vocabulary just be consistent with it - it will soon be clear from context what it means. Also feel free to rephrase and summarize once in a while as it is a way of implementing both of those hints. A lot of courses on Coursera, Pluralsight or similar platforms utilize that consistently (Udemy is a mess of different approaches). Default speakers speed is super low, vocabulary is super consistent within a course. Course is painfully summarizing every few minutes, at the start of a chapter, end of it, every few chapters. I've seen complains about that, but it I think such repetition works. I asked "cloud you please speak a bit slower" a few times when I was talking on the phone in US (calling a store, library, etc.) and people seldom complied. But that's a huge aid yet I ignored it until a pilot of a small, loud plane on my trip asked my party to "speak slower so we can understand each other". Communication was over headsets and apparently it's simply good practice regardless of the language. On your vocabulary - "us Foreigners" may have learned English from same books or Cartoon Network shows. We often have issues with same vocabulary. You in one paragraph used: convey, enunciate, consonants - I had to pause at those. I've been thought what a consonant is 25 years ago but used it maybe 10 times since then. My fault entirely, but still. Enunciate is completely new to me. Convey I figured out from context, I knew it only from context of "conveying a survey". "professional setting", cadence, abbreviate - such use of "setting" would be understood by more advanced speakers, in my opinion. Others might treat "setting" as an option to tweak in yaml file. Cadence I know as it's a "bicycle thing", but I don't think all of my colleagues would grasp that at first read. Abbreviate and omit - are one of those things I'm sure we were told in school about, but is used less often one might think. It should be clear if used consistently in a larger text.