4 ms·

As an ESL I'd say it depends on the native language of who's speaking. I'll have no trouble with a thick spanish, italian or romanian language (I'm french), but

by lefra 8mo ago

As an ESL I'd say it depends on the native language of who's speaking. I'll have no trouble with a thick spanish, italian or romanian language (I'm french), but indians speaking english are completely incomprehensible to me.

VorpalWay 8mo ago
It took months of being exposed to Indian English on a regular basis for me to start to understand it (and I still find it requires significant mental effort). Context: I'm a Swede who regularly thinks and dreams in English (and when I did an English language test for exchange student purposes I got top marks in all categories).
- pavel_lishin 8mo ago
  My college had a lot of Indian & Pakistani students & instructors, and the first few semesters were rough, but by junior year, their accents were totally understandable to me. It was a very useful experience to have, as someone who became a software developer. I wonder what they thought of my Russian accent.
quadrifoliate 8mo ago
If you want to be able to understand them, you should probably stop thinking of them as a monolithic groupd of "Indians". Individual states in India are comparable in size and greater in population than Spain or Italy; and some cities and their suburbs are comparable to Romania. Overall, India's population is more than 3x that of Europe. A lot of Indians have English that's influenced by the specific region they come from and the native language. A couple examples: - Specific regions of Northwestern India have the "e-" prefixing (e.g. "stop" turns into "estop") while speaking English - Southern Indians tend to y-prefix due to their native languages having more of that sound (e.g. "LLM" can turn into "yell-ell-em").
- mistrial9 8mo ago
  as a native English speaker in California, this is funny to read. I was standing in a crowd of undergraduates at UC Berkeley, shoulder to shoulder, during a break in a movie. Two guys were talking Very Fast right next to me, I mean 0.5 meter in a crowd. I decided to run an experiment because I could not pick out any of what they said. So I turned and spoke slowly in an ever so slight British formal version of California English "excuse me, do you know what time it is?' . One stopped and answered -- almost exactly as I spoke -- the current time (around 18:00). Then they went back to their talk! it was English!

by lefra 8mo ago

VorpalWay 8mo ago

It took months of being exposed to Indian English on a regular basis for me to start to understand it (and I still find it requires significant mental effort). Context: I'm a Swede who regularly thinks and dreams in English (and when I did an English language test for exchange student purposes I got top marks in all categories).

pavel_lishin 8mo ago
My college had a lot of Indian & Pakistani students & instructors, and the first few semesters were rough, but by junior year, their accents were totally understandable to me. It was a very useful experience to have, as someone who became a software developer. I wonder what they thought of my Russian accent.

quadrifoliate 8mo ago

If you want to be able to understand them, you should probably stop thinking of them as a monolithic groupd of "Indians". Individual states in India are comparable in size and greater in population than Spain or Italy; and some cities and their suburbs are comparable to Romania. Overall, India's population is more than 3x that of Europe. A lot of Indians have English that's influenced by the specific region they come from and the native language. A couple examples: - Specific regions of Northwestern India have the "e-" prefixing (e.g. "stop" turns into "estop") while speaking English - Southern Indians tend to y-prefix due to their native languages having more of that sound (e.g. "LLM" can turn into "yell-ell-em").

mistrial9 8mo ago
as a native English speaker in California, this is funny to read. I was standing in a crowd of undergraduates at UC Berkeley, shoulder to shoulder, during a break in a movie. Two guys were talking Very Fast right next to me, I mean 0.5 meter in a crowd. I decided to run an experiment because I could not pick out any of what they said. So I turned and spoke slowly in an ever so slight British formal version of California English "excuse me, do you know what time it is?' . One stopped and answered -- almost exactly as I spoke -- the current time (around 18:00). Then they went back to their talk! it was English!