3 ms·
Tolerance of different pronunciations is helpful for people learning to speak English, but not so much for following what they're saying. Plus of course we have
by notahacker 4y ago
Tolerance of different pronunciations is helpful for people learning to speak English, but not so much for following what they're saying. Plus of course we have a significant number of words where an attempted phonetic pronunciation might not be a bit unusual so much as completely unintelligible.
At least we're not that fussy about stress and apart from implied questions don't really convey much important meaning with tone.
- xhevahir 4y agoI don't know about you, but I have a very hard time understanding a lot of Indian accents specifically because of the unfamiliar stress patterns. (That, and their avoidance of aspirated consonants, which drives me crazy.)
- notahacker 4y agotbh I find the unfamiliar stress patterns of reasonably fluent Indian English speakers a lot less problematic than some of the quirks my fellow Brits' stronger regional accents! The tendency to enunciate syllables we often mash together actually tends to be clearer
- BuckRogers 4y agoYeah I do decent with Indian accents as well. And I have more trouble with Chinese accents and many British accents. But I mostly can’t stand the southern English and their inability to pronounce the letter R. It sounds like someone with a speech impediment. As an American I greatly prefer speaking to a Scot or Irishman. And the closer you get to London the more the English have a French culture. By that I mean an inferiority/superiority complex. They’re always better than everyone else.