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Not a native speaker but when working in an international environment, everybody has an accent, and it's rude to comment/complain about it, in the same way it w

Not a native speaker but when working in an international environment, everybody has an accent, and it's rude to comment/complain about it, in the same way it would be rude to complain about somebody's physical traits. Also English has such a variety of accents (native / non-native) that everybody is quite used to it. Also, most of the time, I understand better non-native speakers than native speakers. The hardest people to understand for me are native speaker with any accent that is not North American. When I was younger, I was very self-conscious about my foreign accent. and I noticed that people who mentioned my accent in a negative way were systematically people from my own country whose accent was just as thick as mine (and probably were as insecure about it as I was). But mostly, I found native speakers to be very patient and polite with foreign accents, I'm grateful to them.

kika 4y ago
> The hardest people to understand for me are native speaker with any accent that is not North American. Eleven!!!
hoseja 4y ago
But it's hard and exhausting to listen to! It's making my ears bleed, without any prejudice! It's like being around someone with open sores. How is that racism for christsake. That's why I'm asking, do people with native English have better time listening to this, by virtue of more skill/better brain automation?
- DonHopkins 4y ago
  You're hard and exhausting to listen to, too. People with all kinds of accents, and with and without native English, have a hell of a hard time listening to what you're saying, because of your intent and the actual meaning of your words, not just how you pronounce them, which makes our ears bleed. You sound like you have open sores and deep psychic wounds, so stop picking on them and people who speak differently than you do. And cut it out with the intentionally cruel and spectacularly unoriginal body shaming too, buddy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34257327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34257327

kika 4y ago

> The hardest people to understand for me are native speaker with any accent that is not North American. Eleven!!!

hoseja 4y ago

But it's hard and exhausting to listen to! It's making my ears bleed, without any prejudice! It's like being around someone with open sores. How is that racism for christsake. That's why I'm asking, do people with native English have better time listening to this, by virtue of more skill/better brain automation?

DonHopkins 4y ago
You're hard and exhausting to listen to, too. People with all kinds of accents, and with and without native English, have a hell of a hard time listening to what you're saying, because of your intent and the actual meaning of your words, not just how you pronounce them, which makes our ears bleed. You sound like you have open sores and deep psychic wounds, so stop picking on them and people who speak differently than you do. And cut it out with the intentionally cruel and spectacularly unoriginal body shaming too, buddy: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34257327 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34257327