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I'm a native American English speaker who is also into startups (and has lived in a lot of places, communicating with non-native speakers in English, as well as
by rdl 13y ago
I'm a native American English speaker who is also into startups (and has lived in a lot of places, communicating with non-native speakers in English, as well as my really horrible Kurdish, Pashto, Dari, French, Arabic, etc. phrases...). Observations:
1) You should fully Americanize all the spellings. It is American English people want.
2) This would be far too boring for me to stick with if it is things like "I went to the cinema yesterday". A coherent story, or even better, a domain-specific lesson, would be a much more engaging way to teach a language. I was able to learn when it was "talk to my driver about the security situation and drive plan", but never cared enough for casual conversation. I am usually happy to talk to people who speak horrible English about things I care about, which presumably for the hn audience is tech, startups, etc., but not about sports (cricket!?). If you could do a vertical-specific sayafter.me it would be awesome.
- te_chris 13y agoNot all people want American English thank you very much. Every time I'm forced to type 'color' a small part of me dies.
- indefatigable 13y agoWot wot pip pip cheerio get the torch line's engaged eat some crisps there's a good chap.
- jhome 13y agoThat's not a mature response. I've look at your other comments and you look like you've made some worthwhile contribution but this comment is not what I visit HN daily for. I agree with te_chris, it is not only arrogant but incorrect to make that assumption. I don't actually mind using 'color', but you live in a small world if you think that only a certain accent is relevant.
- indefatigable 13y agoAh well, everybody has their off days.
- lewisflude 13y agoMany people who don't speak English are outside the Americas, and so it doesn't make sense for them to learn the American variation of English. However, I agree that it should be an option.
- rdl 13y agoPretty much all non-native speakers who want to learn English that I've ever met do want to learn American English specifically, particularly those who want to work in America. (I prefer South African English, personally, but I think the commercial market is strongly in favor of American English.)
- nedwin 13y ago"Your anecdotal evidence is wrong - I want the opposite" "No, your anecdotal evidence is wrong." "My anecdotal evidence is right."
- rdl 13y agoThe context here was "people who are having a hard time working in the US tech industry/being funded by US VCs due to accents". Obviously if you intend to work in the UK or another country which uses a different accent, it makes sense to learn in that accent. IIRC the phone bank people in Asia actually train people in specific accents based on the client for this very reason. (A totally fluent UK/IE/etc English speaker probably is fine in any context, but I don't think someone learning from a webapp is starting from that point. If you are going to be a moderate speaker, it is better to be moderate in the target accent.)
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- kmfrk 13y ago