
Founders' Accents - shrikant
http://paulgraham.com/accents.html
======
jasonkester
Never explain yourself to people who misunderstand you on the internet.
They'll just use it as an excuse to misunderstand you again, which is worse
because not only are you a terrible monster who said those terrible things,
but now you've had the unmitigated gall to _defend_ those terrible things.

It's a universal truth of saying things in public. No matter how clearly you
say things, somebody will take it the wrong way. The only approach that
doesn't make things worse is to simply ignore those people.

~~~
KirinDave
> Never explain yourself to people who misunderstand you on the internet.
> They'll just use it as an excuse to misunderstand you again, which is worse
> because not only are you a terrible monster who said those terrible things,
> but now you've had the unmitigated gall to defend those terrible things.

This has been the exact opposite of my experience. Usually when I approach
people directly and in a forthright manner and try and correct and clarify
(and of course, apologize if my position offends and offer to listen to a
counter-argument) then people seem to positively adjust their opinion of me.

I can't help but feel like your advice smacks of elitism. When I read your
post I get a subtext of, "Everyone else is dumb if they don't get what I'm
saying. At best, that is! Usually they're _trying_ to shoot me down! I don't
negotiate with terrorists."

I'm not sure how I could wake up every morning if I felt that way.

~~~
theorique
Well, recent events suggest that unfortunately there is a grain of truth to
that assessment.

A lot of the noise in blogs and twitter has been along the lines of "PG is an
evil monster who hates women and foreigners and people of color and doesn't
ever want to invest in their companies". None of which he said or implied, but
that doesn't seem to have stopped the attacks.

Hence, this recent article.

~~~
KirinDave
> "PG is an evil monster who hates women and foreigners and people of color
> and doesn't ever want to invest in their companies".

There are long-standing complaints with the structure and the predatory nature
of YCombinator. It is very unusual and complaints center around how HN is
essentially a very high-pressure situation designed to try and sell kids on
the value of PG & YComb as investors on very small funding events.

Personally, I don't think this article really justifies the behavior that has
been consistently (if not as high-profile) that PG has had. His reported
castigation and refusal to see people who have Indian accents is troublesome.
It's very difficult to take his claims seriously when he affects fake russian
accents while proclaiming his innocence.

~~~
theorique
There's no question that YC has benefited greatly from PG's "propaganda" \-
and vice-versa. (That is, the success and growth of YC has given PG a lot more
tangible stuff to write about, as opposed to 'thought experiments'.)

I'm far from an insider so I can't speak to whether a person or team should go
for YC funding or not. Or whether the system is biased against people with
Indian accents (your comment is the first I've heard of that, actually).

Clearly, a team with potential success ahead of them ought to consider their
options carefully and see whether applying to YC is right for them. And, if
they get in, whether doing the program is the most valuable use of their next
few months. A founding team needs to look beyond the hype and headlines and
determine what the best deal is - but that's hardly YC's fault if they present
themselves in the best possible light.

~~~
KirinDave
> Clearly, a team with potential success ahead of them ought to consider their
> options carefully and see whether applying to YC is right for them.

It seems like this step is precisely what the YCombinator process is meant to
complicate. The entire structure is designed to make it feel like a
competition for PG's attention. By structuring it this way, it makes it much
more likely that the people who "win the competition" will say yes to YComb.

And YComb moves fast! People tell me there isn't a lot of time to think.
Implicit in YComb's structure is the statement, "There are a dozen people in
line behind you that will take your place." It's all very American Idol.

~~~
theorique
_It seems like this step is precisely what the YCombinator process is meant to
complicate. The entire structure is designed to make it feel like a
competition for PG 's attention. By structuring it this way, it makes it much
more likely that the people who "win the competition" will say yes to YComb._

I suspect that vibe emerges from the scaling aspect of things - if a regular
VC firm invests in N deals a year and YC does 10N [ _], then there is no need
to 'create' a competition for the attention of PG and the other principals. It
will just emerge out of the large number of portfolio companies. (And this is
not unique to YC, but may be exaggerated - VC firms are notoriously busy for
the same reason.)

_And YComb moves fast! People tell me there isn't a lot of time to think.
Implicit in YComb's structure is the statement, "There are a dozen people in
line behind you that will take your place." It's all very American Idol.*

Again, this sounds like a scaling issue. If you're investing in fewer
companies, you can spend more time hand holding with the teams of each one.
HUman attention is the thing that doesn't scale, so it makes sense that it is
the thing in short supply.

It sounds to me like teams need to precompute their responses to lots of
possible situations. And get as much information about the downside of
participating as possible, beyond the headlines and the hype. But this is the
kind of suggestion that I'd give anybody considering YC (or a job, or the
military, or a college, or a grad school, or a training program).

[*] I don't know if these numbers are accurate, but the point is that YC is
well known to do many more, smaller deals than VC firms.

~~~
KirinDave
> Again, this sounds like a scaling issue. If you're investing in fewer
> companies, you can spend more time hand holding with the teams of each one.
> HUman attention is the thing that doesn't scale, so it makes sense that it
> is the thing in short supply.

Isn't human coaching the primary asset that YComb offers though? It's
certainly not money, HN seed rounds are not exceptionally large, and they
aren't unusually early.

------
credo
For all his discussion about "strong foreign accents" being a big weakness, it
is interesting that pg doesn't seem capable of recognizing his own huge
weaknesses (and almost all of the 200+ comments - particularly the top-ranked
ones - seem to miss that too)

1\. At best, pg badly miscommunicated what he was trying to say. He could have
just said something like 'founders who cannot communicate well' or 'founders
who can't be understood' etc. - but he chose specifically to refer to "strong
foreign accents".

Arguably, some Americans might find it easier to understand some foreign
accents (strong British accents, some Indian accents etc) than some American
accents (e.g. some rural southern accents). More to the point, some folks with
foreign accents can speak much better English and articulate their ideas (and
make themselves understood) much better than many people speaking in a
mainstream American accent. However, pg chose to use the "strong foreign
accent" criterion instead of the more correct "communicate well" criterion.

2\. imo a stubborn refusal to acknowledge mistakes/errors is a big weakness
and pg is demonstrating that weakness with passive-aggressive pushbacks like
the one on Twitter "Don't say things people want to misunderstand."

Sorry, I think pg's statement was either blatantly wrong or badly
expressed/communicated, but that doesn't amount to me being a part of the
alleged "looking-for-reasons-to-be-offended patrol" that one of the commenters
below talks about. pg (and his defenders on hn) will be better served by
trying to understand the criticism instead of making up false motives for the
critics of his statement.

 _< edit> Ten minutes after I posted the comment, it was at 3 points. Thirty
minutes later, it was at ZERO points, one hour later at -1 :) In addition to
showing the net-points for each comment, I wish HN also showed the total
number of upvotes and downvotes each comment receives._

~~~
thedufer
> He could have just said something like 'founders who cannot communicate
> well'

He could have, yes. But its certainly possible that such a statement would
have been lying. "Communicates well" can be a hard trait to pin down. It is
contingent on a lot of factors, and may vary widely between listeners.
Meanwhile, "strong foreign accents", while somewhat subjective, is something
that him and his colleagues can easily agree upon.

Since "strong foreign accent" is so much easier to measure, that's the trend
they noticed - and thus the one he mentioned. His actual statement was clear
enough that, without removing context, it is completely clear that it was not
xenophobia.

~~~
crassus
Yep. PG's advice as given is clearly more actionable than "communicate well".

The problem with people that are easily offended is that avoiding offense
forces you to use vague, non-specific language. PGs said what some founders
need to hear, and it will make them better off. Most likely, they will
appreciate the advice and use it. They probably aren't the same people getting
offended.

~~~
chetanahuja
_Yep. PG 's advice as given is clearly more actionable than "communicate
well"_

Really, do you really believe (and/or have any research to show) that "fixing"
one's accent as an adult is "actionable" advice in any meaningful way.

Pg just fucked up communicating what he wanted to communicate. Everybody does
once in a while. No big deal there. But this blind defense of everything done
by one human being is more disturbing by far.

~~~
langgeek123
Yes, seriously improving your accent as an adult is possible. See
[http://olle-kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/ProcLP98.html](http://olle-
kjellin.com/SpeechDoctor/ProcLP98.html) for instance.

------
ignostic
Don't worry about it, PG, you just had a run-in with the looking-for-reasons-
to-be-offended patrol. I actually thought this would happen when I read the
post, but I also understood what you mean. It's a fairly benign point if we're
honest and give you the benefit of the doubt: communication is important for a
startup. Heavy accents are a barrier to effective communication.

I speak a foreign language that I learned later in life, so I speak it with an
ugly American accent. People sometimes have trouble understanding me when I
speak, and even though I know all the words native speakers use, I know I'm
missing the subtleties and undercurrents in language. We take these things for
granted in our native language, but understanding the associations with common
phrases and subtle connotations of words takes many years to learn. Many
native speakers miss these subtleties from time to time.

I would never (at my current skill level) try to start a company where I'd
have to rely on my foreign language skill. I'm fluent in the language, but
nowhere close to native skill. I wouldn't trust myself to explain a product -
especially a technical product - in a clear and convincing manner.

"Offending people is a necessary and healthy act. Every time you say something
that's offensive to another person, you just caused a discussion. You just
forced them to have to think." Louis C.K.

~~~
ngoel36
I'm the American-born son of Indian parents, so I don't have any hint of an
accent (although I did when I was very young). Three years ago, I tried to
start a company in India, and my "American-accent" Hindi was indeed a
hindrance to my communication and, by effect, our success.

------
tokenadult
Learning foreign languages to high levels of communication proficiency was the
first adult learning challenge I took on. I majored in Chinese at university
and worked for quite a few years as a Chinese-English interpreter and
translator. I'll back up what pg said with a data point from academic
research. The online article "How to Become a Good Theoretical Physicist,"

[http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html](http://www.staff.science.uu.nl/~hooft101/theorist.html)

by a Nobel laureate in physics who is a native speaker of Dutch, makes clear
what the key learning task is to be a good physicist: "English is a
prerequisite. If you haven't mastered it yet, learn it. You must be able to
read, write, speak and understand English." On his list of things to learn for
physics, that even comes before mathematics.

I like to share advice on language learning, because this topic comes up on
Hacker News frequently. I hope the FAQ information below helps hackers achieve
their dreams. As I learned Mandarin Chinese up to the level that I was able to
support my family for several years as a Chinese-English translator and
interpreter, I had to tackle several problems for which there is not yet a
one-stop-shopping software solution. For ANY pair of languages, even closely
cognate pairs of West Germanic languages like English and Dutch, or Wu Chinese
dialects like those of Shanghai and Suzhou, the two languages differ in sound
system, so that what is a phoneme in one language is not a phoneme in the
other language.

[http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/Wha...](http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPhoneme.htm)

But a speaker of one language who is past the age of puberty will simply not
perceive many of the phonemic distinctions in sounds in the target language
(the language to be learned) without very careful training, as disregard of
those distinctions below the level of conscious attention is part of having
the sound system of the speaker's native language fully in mind. Attention to
target language phonemes has to be developed through pains-taking practice.

[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032](http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10442032)

It is brutally hard for most people (after the age of puberty, and perhaps
especially for males) to learn to attend to sound distinctions that don't
exist in the learner's native language. That is especially hard when the sound
distinction signifies a grammatical distinction that also doesn't exist in the
learner's native language. For example, the distinction between "I speak" and
"he speaks" in English involves a consonant cluster at the end of a syllable,
and no such consonant clusters exist in the Mandarin sound system at all.
Worse than that, no such grammatical distinction as "first person singular"
and "third person singular" for inflecting verbs exists in Mandarin, so it is
remarkably difficult for Mandarin-speaking learners of English to learn to
distinguish "speaks" from "speak" and to say "he speaks Chinese" rather than *
"he speak Chinese" (not a grammatical phrase in spoken English).

Most software materials for learning foreign languages could be much improved
simply by including a complete chart of the sound system of the target
language (in the dialect form being taught in the software materials) with
explicit description of sounds in the terminology of articulatory phonetics

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Articulatory_phonetics)

with full use of notation from the International Phonetic Alphabet.

[http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html](http://www.langsci.ucl.ac.uk/ipa/ipachart.html)

Good language-learning materials always include a lot of focused drills on
sound distinctions (contrasting minimal pairs in the language) in the target
language, and no software program for language learning should be without
those. It is still an art of software writing to try to automate listening to
a learner's pronunciation for appropriate feedback on accuracy of
pronunciation. That is not an easy problem.

After phonology, another huge task for any language learner is acquiring
vocabulary, and this is the task on which most language-learning materials are
most focused. But often the focus on vocabulary is not very thoughtful.

The classic software approach to helping vocabulary acquisition is essentially
to automate flipping flash cards. But flash cards have ALWAYS been overrated
for vocabulary acquisition. Words don't match one-to-one between languages,
not even between closely cognate languages. The map is not the territory, and
every language on earth divides the world of lived experience into a different
set of words, with different boundaries between words of similar meaning.

The royal road to learning vocabulary in a target language is massive exposure
to actual texts (dialogs, stories, songs, personal letters, articles, etc.)
written or spoken by native speakers of the language. I'll quote a master
language teacher here, the late John DeFrancis. A few years ago, I reread the
section "Suggestions for Study" in the front matter of John DeFrancis's book
Beginning Chinese Reader, Part I, which I first used to learn Chinese back in
1975. In that section of that book, I found this passage, "Fluency in reading
can only be achieved by extensive practice on all the interrelated aspects of
the reading process. To accomplish this we must READ, READ, READ"
(capitalization as in original). In other words, vocabulary can only be well
acquired in context (an argument he develops in detail with regard to Chinese
in the writing I have just cited) and the context must be a genuine context
produced by native speakers of the language.

I have been giving free advice on language learning since the 1990s on my
personal website,

[http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html](http://learninfreedom.org/languagebooks.html)

and the one advice I can give every language learner reading this thread is to
take advantage of radio broadcasting in your target language. Spoken-word
broadcasting (here I'm especially focusing on radio rather than on TV) gives
you an opportunity to listen and to hear words used in context. In the 1970s,
I used to have to use an expensive short-wave radio to pick up Chinese-
language radio programs in North America. Now we who have Internet access can
gain endless listening opportunities from Internet radio stations in dozens of
unlikely languages. Listen early and listen often while learning a language.
That will help with phonology (as above) and it will help crucially with
vocabulary.

The third big task of a language learner is learning grammar and syntax, which
is often woefully neglected in software language-learning materials. Every
language has hundreds of tacit grammar rules, many of which are not known
explicitly even to native speakers, but which reveal a language-learner as a
foreigner when the rules are broken. The foreign language-learner needs to
understand grammar not just to produce speech or writing that is less jarring
and foreign to native speakers, but also to better understand what native
speakers are speaking or writing. Any widely spoken modern language has thick
books reporting the grammatical rules of the language,

[http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-
Reference-...](http://www.amazon.com/Mandarin-Chinese-Functional-Reference-
Grammar/dp/0520066103/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars...](http://www.amazon.com/Chinese-Comprehensive-Grammar-
Grammars/dp/0415150329/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language...](http://www.amazon.com/Comprehensive-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0582517346/)

[http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Cambridge-Grammar-English-
Language/dp/0521431468/)

and it is well worth your while to study books like that both about your
native language(s) and about any language you are studying.

~~~
msoad
The cold truth about learning another language is that you will not learn much
when you are not living in a community(country) that speaks that language.

I started learning English when I moved to the U.S. three years ago but I
speak better than those who spent 10 years learning English in my home
country.

~~~
purplelobster
This is commonly "known", but actually, I don't agree. It's all about
exposure. I learned English in class, but most of my learning came from
watching TV/movies and reading books in English, and posting on online forums.
By the time I came to the US, some people confused me with being a native once
in a while, even though I had never actually spoken English to a native, or
spoken it much at all really. Of course my vocabulary is/was not as great as
natives, but I made a concerted effort to try to sound American from the
start. Most people in my country don't try to sound American, partly because
it probably feels silly/fake to them, and partly because British English was
what was taught in school.

My point is, if it's not true for English, then it's not necessarily true for
other languages either. You just have to be interested in the culture, and
expose yourself to media during and after taking classes.

~~~
bad_user
When learning English, the easiness with which one learns also depends on your
native language. For example, speakers of latin languages learn English much
easier than speakers of slavic languages.

Also, many languages leave their mark on their native speakers in many cases
being very hard to get rid of your native accent.

I was lucky to have Romanian as my native language, as it doesn't leave such a
big scar on your pronunciation. I almost speak American English correctly, in
spite of not living in an English-speaking country and I've got friends that
speak perfect British English, French or Spanish (giving these as examples, as
these have thick accents). True story - Microsoft has a support center in
Bucharest, with one reason being our linguistic abilities.

~~~
sergiosgc
What you describe as a "scar" is the same effect the top comment refers to.
Romanian, much like my native language (Portuguese) is a peripheral language.
Those don't evolve as much and so have not simplified as much as languages
from central countries (think central Europe for comparison). The end result
is that they are more complex and, to our advantage, use many more phonemes,
easing native speakers learning of foreign languages.

To this day, I'm still baffled that Spanish does not distinguish between 'v'
and 'b'.

~~~
glogla
Really? I thought that Spanish does distinguish between 'b' and 'v', but the
South American Spanish has the sounds the other way around than continental
Spanish?

Interestingly, my native language is Czech, and it makes it rather easy to
learn English and Spanish, because the only sound that's missing is English
'th' in three or think, which people here pronounce like 't' or 'f' and "I
fink" sounds pretty horrible :)

I understand that Spanish has to be really hard for English speakers, because
of things like words changing shape because of gender, and stuff, but the
usual English/American pronunciation of Spanish 'j' (or 'x') is terrible. I
had to laugh at Lady Gaga singing about some Alexandro, making up about three
different ways to pronounce it, not a single one correct. It's not difficult
sound!

Talking about difficult sounds, try this one: [1] it's fun :)

[1]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C5%98)

~~~
gngeal
_Interestingly, my native language is Czech, and it makes it rather easy to
learn English and Spanish, because the only sound that 's missing is English
'th' in three or think, which people here pronounce like 't' or 'f' and "I
fink" sounds pretty horrible :)_

You forgot people mixing up v/w, and being funny with r. ;-)

------
kyro
Maybe I can offer a viewpoint that'll really drive this message home.

I work at a hospital full of the most brilliant foreign doctors, but many of
them have accents too, too thick to accurately relay and discuss very complex
and critical medical information. That is not in any way a reflection of their
intelligence or work ethic in the least. They are smart, and they've proven
that with numerous tests and years of training. But when effective
communication is hindered, there is damage to confidence, mutual
understanding, and progress. Confusion amongst doctors and nurses hurt patient
management. Families who don't understand what they're being told feel less
confident in the physician caring for their loved one because no clear
direction or assessment is articulated.

And PG here is saying _no_ different. Communication is just as essential in
running a startup as it is in managing a patient. Your investors rely on your
communication abilities to accurately assess the state of your company.
Cofounders need to understand you for decisions to be made. Employees need to
feel confident in their leader and the direction they're moving in.

This isn't xenophobic _at all_. Foreign accents, here in America, probably
make up the majority of communication issues. I'm sure PG would've mentioned
stammering and stuttering if it were significant in his data, but it likely
wasn't. How many people do you know with thick foreign accents and how many
with other communication hindrances?

------
ovoxo
Look, I respect PG as much as the next person so this is not a slight against
him since I feel HN far too often comes to his defence as if protecting their
newborn. Having said that ...

I don't understand how a man of his stature and someone in his position can
allow himself to make those statements about accents (or anything that sounds
remotely xenophobic). I say that because even his blog post says the
following:

"A startup founder is always selling. Not just literally to customers, but to
current and potential employees, partners, investors, and the press as well
... there is little room for misunderstanding."

That statement doesn't just hold for startups but for anyone in business. His
initial statements left plenty of room for misunderstanding. Furthermore, I
would also find it very difficult to believe that his inclination towards
avoiding "excessive" accents does not also subconsciously lead him to have a
slight bias against founders with a "slight" accent. That's how biases work -
the threshold for when your brain decides to evoke that bias is not black-and-
white.

~~~
makomk
Read the rest of the comments in this discussion on HN and you should quite
easily be able to see how he can allow himself to make this kind of statement.
There's a huge amount of people willing to portray anyone who interpreted his
statement differently from how he said it should be interpreted as malevolent,
as part of "the looking-for-reasons-to-be-offended patrol", of only caring
because it's in their "business model to generate politically correct
controversies".

~~~
ovoxo
I have read a fair amount of this thread and I still stand by what I said.
Furthermore, for obvious reasons, I don't believe HN is an objective place to
discuss the merits of PG's statements past & present.

~~~
makomk
Oh, HN's definitely not even close to objective when discussing the merits of
PG's statements, but in a way that's beside the point. So long as HN comments
represent the subjective viewpoints of the kinds of people that can affect PG
- startup founders and employees, venture capitalists, etc - they're a good
demonstration of why PG will have no problems making these kinds of
statements. I suspect HN is probably a good representation of their
viewpoints, at least on this topic.

He's getting some slight blowback from the press, but sadly they have a short
attention span.

------
bonaldi
I think the problem really arose because he said _foreign_ accent. So if it
was someone American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent
that would be fine? It wouldn't, if what he really cares about is
comprehension.

> I'd thought of just letting this controversy blow over.

A common PG tactic, this (see also the "HN mods wilfully ruin submission
titles" storm). But probably not a great one to emulate: time and again here
we've seen startups badly burnt by the "fuck up in public and don't say or
post anything hoping it will blow over" stance.

Even if it does blow over, you've damaged your image. People might treat you
the same, but they'll long remember that time you ran away and hid when people
expected better of you.

~~~
ignostic
A thick southern accent is far easier for Americans to understand than a thick
foreign accent. I've never heard a native English speaker that I had a hard
time understanding.

~~~
gruseom
I occasionally have—some Newfoundlanders, people from certain parts of the UK,
and so on. There's a whole lot of variation in the English-speaking world, and
the line between dialect and accent isn't well-defined. There's even an island
off the coast of Virginia (I think) where people speak 18th-century English!

~~~
ignostic
I don't know what island you're referring to, but there are a lot of claims
out there like this - a lot of people claiming they speak the "Queen's
English". Every claim I've heard, much like Eskimos and snow, turns out to be
a myth:

[http://streaming.ohio.edu/cas/lingCALL/ling270/myth9.pdf](http://streaming.ohio.edu/cas/lingCALL/ling270/myth9.pdf)

~~~
gruseom
(Replying to both you and dylangs1030 here)

The "18th century" thing stuck in my mind from some media piece, and now that
you mention it, does sound rather obviously like a myth. But the place
exists—I think it was probably Tangier Island [1], and the accent there is
indeed archaic:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E#t=0m33s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E#t=0m33s)

Some of that sounds like a Monty Python sketch! It's definitely an example of
one native English speaker (me) finding another (them) hard to understand.

I also second the commenter who brought up the Glaswegian accent. I love how
it sounds but damned if I can make out half of what they're saying.

Maybe you're just gifted with dialects :)

[1] [http://goo.gl/maps/Brbtr](http://goo.gl/maps/Brbtr)

~~~
dylangs1030
Wow. I can't make out half of that either, and I'm a native English speaker
too. Thanks for this, that was fun.

------
bambax
Here's a startup idea: help people speak English well. I live in France, my
kids don't speak English at all. I send them to the "American School of Paris"
on weekends for a so-called "immersion program" where most kids are French.
Results are a little disappointing, and the thing is quite expensive. Yet the
waiting list to get in is immense, people are willing to fight to get in.

I'd pay a very high price for an app or a program that young kids would love /
do willingly, that would result in them becoming fluent in English.

~~~
pg
We funded one: [http://verbling.com](http://verbling.com).

~~~
bambax
Okay, but this seems to make the same mistake as the French education system,
who talks about foreign "languages" in general.

But most non-English-speaking people don't want to learn "languageS" as if
those were all equivalent and there was some general quality to be gained by
speaking different tongues. They want to learn English, as the only
international language.

I want my kids to speak English not because they'll have a better mind if they
do, like I try to have them learn music, but because not speaking English in
today's world is like missing an eye (or more probably both).

As for why English-speaking people want to learn a foreign language, I have no
idea, but I suspect their motivations are wholly different. It's interesting
to speak Spanish, it's mind-opening to learn Chinese, but it's not vital.

So what I'm looking for is a "system" aimed at young / very young kids,
specialized in teaching English (and only English).

To succeed it needs to be playful, maybe addictive, not require one to already
know how to read -- and in general not look or sound like anything "school-y".

Somebody (was it John Holt?) said "if we taught kids how to speak, they would
never learn". Yet that's exactly what we're doing with foreign languages.

~~~
bostonvaulter2
I'm guessing you speak french inside the home? Have you thought about
switching that over the english? That would probably be really good immersion
for them.

------
noonespecial
There are "things you can't say". _[1]_ You can be right, and your message can
be harmless but the way you communicate it comes so close to a cultural taboo
button that it requires too much extra effort not to be misunderstood. You
just probably shouldn't go there. It will cause misunderstanding. Its kind of
like having a thick "cultural accent".

For example, I used to, but do not now, ever use the word "niggle". Its just
too much work.

[1][http://paulgraham.com/say.html](http://paulgraham.com/say.html)

~~~
rdl
Niggardly is even worse.
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%2...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22)

~~~
dsimms
A friend of mine got hung up by a vendor because the friend said they were
being ``asinine''. (No, it wasn't because they offended at being called
stupid, but rather they thought it was a naughty, posterior related word...)
Good times.

------
tpatke
So the message is, 'It helps if people can understand you'.

Um. Ok. ...and I appreciate that PG wanted to make this clear as the press
loves to make a story where there isn't one. But do we really need to vote
this up like crazy to guarentee it is the top story for the next 48 hours? Are
there really that many people here who will benefit from this lesson?

~~~
fs111
Next week on hackernews:

* Eat food daily.

* Take a shower.

* Continue breathing.

~~~
unimpressive
>Take a shower.

I don't know, if PG took on Lisp Machines Inc. that might have been a problem
with Greenblatt.

~~~
evadne
…TIL. [http://maimonideanangst.com/2011/10/31/i-never-knew-steve-
jo...](http://maimonideanangst.com/2011/10/31/i-never-knew-steve-jobs-or-
richard-greenblatt/)

------
codegeek
I am not a native english speaker (indian) even though I moved to the US at
the age of 16. I am 32 now. I have a fairly "neutralized" accent according to
my native speaker friends. How did I get there ? Over 16 years of practice by
listening to music, watching movies and most importantly, how my co-
workers/colleagues communicate and express themselves. I still do that today
when I can. Just a habit.

I am not interested in commenting whether PG should have said what he said or
not but I do think that if you have a thick accent, you need to work on it and
not just assume that people understand what you are saying even if your
grammar is great.

My advice as a non native speaker.

-Talk slow. Lot of foreign languages are spoken fastly and hence when they switch to english, they go at the same pace. Don't do that. Try and space out the words.

\- Ensure that the each word is spoken clearly and not mixed together. Instead
of saying "how'r you", start with "How are you" ? Once you get a hang of it,
you can switch to the faster version.

\- Just working on specific letters can make a lot of difference. For example,
the letter 'T'. In Indian languages, people hit that letter really hard. So
when they pronounce something like "want", it sounds like "wantttt". The
tongue rolling should be minimal here.

\- Watch english shows, movies, listen to music, radio whatever. Dont just
stick to your own language. Socialize with people who don't speak your native
language. Observe them and learn.

\- Most importantly, understand that just being able to speak english with
perfect grammar is not enough. You need to do more. Nothing wrong with
admitting this fact and working on it. Just my 2 cents.

~~~
bbgm
I am a native English speaker from India (for all practical purposes I am
monolingual). I also have what you would probably term as a "neutral" accent,
but it's definitely Indian.

The tips above are not unique to non-native speakers, but to anyone who cares
about proper public communication. The recommendations might make it easier
for non-native speakers, but I feel that PG would put someone like me (who has
always spoken English) into a convenient bucket just because I sound
different.

------
tokenizer
I don't see how this is a discussion. His point is completely valid, and holds
true for many things.

If you were to become a public speaker/motivational speaker in Canada, then
not being able to be understood in either English or French would affect your
career.

It seems to me like everybody is caught up in the semantics of whether
pointing this out is politically correct or not. I personally think it doesn't
matter, and if you're truly committed on creating a startup in the US, you'll
have to just persevere regardless of the opinions, as this is just a remark on
data.

------
EdwardCoffin
I'm reminded of this quotation: "Where misunderstanding serves others as an
advantage, one is helpless to make oneself understood" \- Lionel Trilling

[http://thinkexist.com/quotation/where_misunderstanding_serve...](http://thinkexist.com/quotation/where_misunderstanding_serves_others_as_an/189017.html)

What if this misunderstanding regarding accents is just a standard attempt at
stirring up controversy?

------
unimpressive
Pronunciation is absolutely a part of spoken language. You could probably make
a decent argument that somebody who can't pronounce the spoken word in such a
way that other people understand them doesn't completely know the language.

~~~
cafard
The range of accents between native speakers of English even in the US is
large now. Sixty and seventy years ago before radio and TV had had time to do
their work, the range was even larger.

~~~
unimpressive
>The range of accents between native speakers of English even in the US is
large now.

Sure, if I plot all the accents in the United States on a graph there's
probably a lot of divergence. I would think that the accents that impede
understanding are outliers though. (At least among native speakers.)

~~~
btilly
I can say, from experience, that native Texans and Australians can have
difficulties understanding each other.

See
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8)
for an example that I enjoy of a song, in English by native English speakers,
than many English speaking people have trouble understanding. After you've
seen the words written down, native English speakers usually can then
understand. But if English is a second or third language, then good luck!

~~~
unimpressive
>I can say, from experience, that native Texans and Australians can have
difficulties understanding each other.

(On a pedantic note, I did specifically say US accents.)

I have to wonder if this is purely caused by pronunciation or other aspects of
dialect. After all, the stereotypical Australian 'accent' (Ex. "Shrimp on the
barbie") is usually accompanied by more than just a change in pronunciation.
Obviously the international case is different than the local one. It's
probably more accurate to say that somebody who has trouble getting people who
speak a dialect of English to understand them doesn't know the dialect.

>See
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fChqXqvvmg8)
for an example that I enjoy of a song, in English by native English speakers,
than many English speaking people have trouble understanding.

Music is something of a special case. If it weren't, there wouldn't be so many
lyrics sites out there to help people who have trouble understanding.

~~~
btilly
Some dialects are more understandable than others. I miss the Canadian accent
that I grew up with. That one is very easy for people all over the world to
understand.

As for the song, even if you heard it recited, you'd have trouble
understanding it. It is in a strong Scots dialect.

------
nadam
My fellow Hungarian Paul Erdos had so strong accent that his speeches are
subtitled on Youtube:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my0L2icGooU](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my0L2icGooU)

And he was successful in the USA. (Edward Teller was similar they say.)

But it is different than it is for most people: 1\. They were so good that
they could not ignore them. 2\. Science is different than business.

So for the rest of us it is extremely important to learn English well. I am
sometimes almost fustrated that I cannot express myself in a sophisticated way
in english.:( And I know that it never will be perfect. A Hungarian writer
Sandor Marai only wrote in Hungarian despite speaking fluently in several
languages (English, German, French and who knows in what other languages), and
living as an emigrant in at least half of his life. (He emigrated from
communism at the half of his life) He said he cannot 'write' (as a writer) in
other languages (by his extremely high standards).

~~~
theorique
The key difference is that the majority of math research is communicated in
writing (journals, etc). Erdos wrote and co-wrote so many excellent papers
that his reputation was off the charts. He was unique.

Beacause of this, most working mathematicians would have walked through fire
to collaborate with Erdos. (He also made it easy for others by randomly
turning up at their houses to work long days on math.) His quirky and accented
English was a small barrier compared to his singular reputation in his
community.

Compare this to two competing and somewhat interchangeable startups, both
trying to do "the Youtube for Cats". In this case, you're not selling to a
market that already knows you - you need to speak and communicate to build
credibility and reputation fast.

------
loceng
Why not just narrow it down to communication barriers? It has really nothing
specifically to do with accents. Two people with the same heavy accents may
perfectly understand the other - or maybe not at all. That still comes down to
issue with communication. How about making the statement that 3 year olds are
terrible CEOs - they're terrible at conveying a story, and I'm not even sure
they're speaking English when they make sounds!

~~~
jt2190
Spoken language is an strong indicator of education and class. I'm guessing
that native english speakers with poor communication were hardly ever accepted
to YC, while non-native english speakers with good educations were. That would
explain pg's data, at any rate.

~~~
loceng
"Communication skills is an strong indicator of education and class." is
probably what you meant to say - though I'd disagree, and say it's more
experienced based. You last sentence suggests that the non-native English
speakers were accepted only because they had good educations, though again I'd
imagine that someone could have a strong accent - and still be highly
educated.

~~~
jt2190

      > "Communication skills is an strong indicator of 
      > education and class." is probably what you meant to 
      > say...
    

No, actually, I said exactly what I meant to say: The accent you speak with is
a social (class) marker. I refer you to Oscar Wilde's Pygmalion [1] for a
humorous introduction to the concept. Those with "low class" accents are often
presumed to be uneducated, whether they're brilliant or not.

    
    
      > You last sentence suggests that the non-native 
      > English speakers were accepted only because they had 
      > good educations, though again I'd imagine that someone 
      > could have a strong accent - and still be highly 
      > educated.
    

Not quite... I'm suggesting that _despite_ their strong accent (and their
difficulty in making themselves understood), their other credentials,
education included, gained them acceptance to YC, whereas the native speakers
with "low class" accents weren't accepted in the first place. Hence the data
makes it _look_ like this is about strong foreign accents when in fact it's
just about poor english communication skills. (The non-native speakers may be
William bloody [2] Shakespeare in their native language.) Again, this is just
_my_ hypothesis about why pg's data looks like it does. Feel free to make up
your own.

    
    
        [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pygmalion_(play)
        [2] For the humourless pedants: This is a joke. I know
            that Shakespeare's middle name was't "bloody."

------
protothomas
I think the reason people got slightly sniffy about it was the use of the word
'foreign' in a negative context, which, whether or not it is intended, will be
interpreted by some as xenophobic. Had it been stated as '...having
unintelligible accents...' it would probably have passed without note.

------
dllthomas
I recall working in a lab with a lot of foreign grad students from different
backgrounds (under a professor with a bit of an accent). There were definitely
times the accents interacted in interesting ways, where some would understand
completely and others would have no clue what was said (even after several
repetitions) until someone else said it.

------
sriramk
I think some of the folks here are casting aspersions on the folks arguing
with PG - there are some reasonable arguments in there.

PG's stance (my interpretation) is - (1) Founders need to sell to be effective
and (2) Having a strong accent makes it hard to communicate effectively and in
turn, sell.

I _get_ that (I have an accent myself).

People are objecting to the underlying assumption that this causation is
something we deem acceptable. Here's a counter example. (1) Founders need to
sell (2) Part of selling is to make the audience identify with you, so
founders who look/act like their audience do better. This suddenly becomes a
slippery slope, even if that's a perfectly logical argument.

tldr: (Correlation or causation) != acceptable.

~~~
ekanes
It's an interesting point, what you're saying is that theoretically "be more
white" is something that would make logical sense (while being repulsive). A
big difference though is you can't change what you look like (which is why
racism is so disgusting) -- but you can change how you speak. So his advice is
quite practical: Work on your English.

~~~
wildgift
I grew up in a part of California where many Chinese businesspersons entered
and started businesses. Many of these businesses would hire a white man to do
some sales. This was generally within communities where white people rarely
exceeded 30% of the population. In many, whites made up less than 10%. It was
mostly a Mexican American and Asian area.

The reason why was obvious. The local business operators, who were mostly
older white people, didn't want to buy from a Chinese person.

Asian guys I knew were resentful. Not only was it racist to do that, but the
whole situation was racist. It was a racist response to a racist situation,
and it made racism seem hopeless.

As far as accents went, we didn't have them, by and large, unless one was an
immigrant. The most common accent was a Chicano English accent.

------
websirnik
I'm Russian and was running an ed tech company for the last 2 years. Even
thought I rate my English skills reasonably high and I've finished one of the
top universities in London with the top grade, once we were at the stage when
we need to sell our product, I was completely lost. While talking to native
people I was kept noticing how bad my accent was and I think because I've been
critical to myself, I felt over time even worse about my accent and ability to
fluently communicate what I was doing. It's definitely affected our sales
numbers and ability to raise capital. Our company was losing credibility in
front of the customers eyes, because of inability to keep up with the
conversation pace. After hiring native sales and bizdev people our numbers
have grown up. I would advice non-native speakers to keep improving there
accent and ability to fluently communicate by getting English tutor or
personal-dev trainer or by any other means that I would be happy to hear.

~~~
LiweiZ
I'm a native Mandarin speaker. I think the most important part is to figure
out which part of the business is interface-heavy and their priority and
allocate the finite resource to the most necessary. As you mentioned, channels
with high local customer communication demands. Founders' time is finite. We
second language learners all know how difficult it is to improve language
skills from the current level. While keeping practice for a long term gain, a
thoughtful resource allocation is a good thing to do to face up the short term
challenges.

------
jusben1369
Oddly enough this is a re-hash of the same types of arguments used for why
engineers could never be CEO's and run startups. They didn't speak the
language of business, weren't good communicators. "Go hire a 6'3" white sales
guy CEO if you are really serious about this startup and raising money from
VC's"

Is this the proper definition of irony?

~~~
seiji
_bzzt_

You fail the analogy-off. He's not talking about stares-at-feet aspies who
can't say hello to save their lives. He's talking about neurotypicals who
don't see their own lingual deficiencies and how it impacts how they are
viewed, understood, and accepted by others.

There's nothing more draining than being a listener trying to constantly
adjust to understanding somebody who isn't quite able to communicate what they
want to say.

~~~
jusben1369
You're missing the point. Many capable engineers, who could have led, were
dismissed simply because they were engineers.

------
_greim_
The crazy thing is I used to have a boss who was native to India until late
childhood, and (so the story went) had taught himself English, largely by
watching American TV. The guy now has zero accent. So I was somewhat
skeptical. But maybe some people as part of their personality just pick up on
pronunciation faster than others?

~~~
asciimo
And some people don't even try. I'm fascinated when I listen to someone who
speaks English with excellent syntax and vocabulary, but with consistently
poor pronunciation. Sometimes it comes off as a mark of pride, like "I'll
deign to speak to you, but I'm not going to put forth the effort to sound like
you."

~~~
DrJokepu
This happens because English as Second Language teachers are often non-native
speakers and speak with an accent themselves. They are able to teach grammar
or vocabulary but they cannot teach pronunciation. Often non-native speakers
are only exposed to a native speaking environment as grown-ups. By that time
your brain is already stuck in its ways and it is frustratingly tough to learn
new vowels and consonants.

As a non-native speaker myself I can often hear myself pronouncing English
poorly yet I find it excruciatingly difficult to pronounce some vowels the way
I intend to pronounce them, even though I have been living in a native-
speaking environment for a long time. Similarly, my native English-speaking
(American) wife finds it very difficult to pronounce some vowels and
consonants of my own native language. It took her fairly long to learn how to
pronounce my name correctly. (Ironically, now that we're married it is her
name as well.)

All I am saying is that I would not attribute this to pride or laziness.
Pronunciation is a genuinely difficult thing to learn as an adult.

~~~
asciimo
Thanks for that perspective. I certainly didn't mean that all ESL speakers
exhibit wanton mispronunciation. Perhaps none do. In fact, your eloquent
rebuttal has left me sympathizing with even Arnold Schwarzenegger.

------
zavulon
ValleyWag and the whole of Gawker Media are just fucking WORST. They have a
long record of doing scummy things just to generate views. I've lost all
respect for them when their editor published the Brett Favre dick picks story,
which was told to him by Jenn Sterger in a private, friendly, off-the-record
conversation, after she specifically asked him not to publish it.
Unsurprisingly, that resulted in her career being completely destroyed after
that.

------
ilamont
Stephen Hawking and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston (aka "Mumbles") are examples
of people who have experienced difficulty making themselves understood (either
through medical conditions or strong accents), yet are leaders in their
respective domains. In entrepreneurship, one example that springs to mind is
Charles Pfizer, who started a successful chemical company a year after
arriving in the United States from Germany in the 1840s. I assume he spoke
with a heavy accent which may have been difficult for some employees and
customers to understand, yet his company flourished.

Let's not equate "poor English" with "likely to fail at X". There are other
factors, ranging from domain knowledge to soft skills, that come into play as
well.

~~~
ecopoesis
I don't think Mayor Menino is hard to understand for native Bostonians: he
speaks with their accent. If anything, it's probably helped him in what has
traditionally very xenophobic city.

Hawking was famous in physics circles before he could no speak.

------
unono
It's funny, the communication difficulty applies to PG as well. PG could be
much more prominent if he had a better speaking ability. His speeches are
really bad, he reads of the paper and 'ums' all the way through. I've never
managed to sit one through. If it wasn't for that he could've gotten the press
coverage of a major tech CEO.

------
clamprecht
Back around 1997 when I was fighting my Internet ban on First Amendment
grounds[1], one honest journalist told me the deal. He told me that
journalists are not my PR agent. They have their own agenda, and their own
angle. Their goal is to get readers, not to spread the message you want them
to spread.

tl;dr - Remember, journalists are not your PR agent.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Lamprecht)

------
dlitwak
Totally agree. I've been at demo days and I just tune out the foreigners who I
can't understand. It's hard enough having to listen to 40+ startups in a day,
and try to understand what someone is doing, why they are doing it, and how it
can make money, throw in a thick accent and you are likely to give your brain
a rest and just tune out. I notice that these founders are the ones with no
one visiting their demo table, etc.

------
danso
Much respect to Paul here. I've been impressed with his willingness to engage
the press in rebuttals and elaborations (and in a polite, clear way). I've
made it a personal rule not to be quoted in anything controversial just
because, even if the reporter is well-meaning, the editor may not be. I
suspect Paul is even more aware of this and so his willingness to communicate
is a sign of how important he believes his message is.

------
georgemcbay
I still have nightmares about the accent of the TA running the linear algebra
class I took in college 20ish years ago. He was a Vietnamese man speaking
"perfect" English, but not in a way that could be understood by virtually
anyone, and I'm usually pretty good with understanding strong accents.

I have nothing against people with accents, I'm friends with and co-worker
with quite a few people who have significant accents but are still
understandable. However, there are certainly cases where accents are so strong
that the person is arguably not really speaking the language even if their
grammer is impeccable. And I say that fully understanding that the same
applies if I find myself for any reason butchering the French language or
Mandarin Chinese verbally.

------
Lucadg
Having learned English, French, German, Polish, Spanish and Portoguese I am
ready to share my secret to the world: read comics. They are the only written
form of the colloquial language, the one you'll need mostly. Literally 100% of
what you learn in a comic will be useful in your daily life. Read a novel and
this drops to probably 50%, read a newspaper and it's even worse. Nobody
speaks like a book or a newspaper. We speak like comics.

P.S. I learned those while living in those countries, so I was exposed to the
spoken language too. Plus, comics worked for me, they won't work for
everybody. At the end the real trick is to try several methods and find the
one which suits you best.

------
bthomas
One theory for the "why" \- I find it takes a higher cognitive load to
understand someone with a strong accent. As a result, I don't digest the
message as well and I'm subconsciously biased against complex conversations. I
wonder if there is any cognitive psych literature on this?

Advice to those with a strong accent: find a way to communicate your message
so it takes minimal effort for a receiver to understand. That could be
improved English, but there might be easier ways for you to hack this -
concise language, use concrete metaphors, keep printed slides in your
briefcase, etc.

------
karapu2
Having lived abroad for 17 years as an American, I have found a very strong
correlation between those who can not understand a thick accent, and those who
can not communicate well with non-native English speakers. No idea if this is
the case with Paul, but if you have actually spent the time communicating with
a wide range of non-native speakers, you are much better at understanding
_and_ making yourself understood. I think all you non-native English speakers
know exactly what I mean.

Communication - a two-way street. That is why Paul's comments strike many as
tone deaf!

------
nobodysfool
I think the NYT reporter Nathaniel Rich hit on something when he commented
that PG made an 'evil Soviet henchman' voice. I don't think he was intending
to sound evil, but only to imitate a Russian accent. The 'evilness' comes from
the NYT reporter's mind. And I think the failure of start-ups with foreigners
with bad English language skills is also likely due to their recruitment
efforts - you'd tend to hire only people who speak your native language if you
can't speak English very well, thus your hiring pool is quite small.

------
nraynaud
I'm French and I speak english everyday since 5 years (foreign girlfriends) I
just can't pronounce this language correctly, the mouth positions required are
simply to far from my native tongue. And in the morning it's even worse. I
think there is an elocution max level for each of us that's very hard to pass
(I suppose that would involve some kind of specific elocution training),
whereas the vocabulary always grow. I've met people living in the same foreign
country for 20 years and still have a very strong native accent.

~~~
dougk7
I'm originally bilingual (French and Lingala). I've been living in an English
speaking country for the last 10 years, moved here as a teen. It still takes
me a lot of effort to pronounce some sounds. e.g some words borrowed straight
from French and words containing 'r' when it follows a consonant as in
'brother', 'prescribe', 'degrade'.

~~~
nraynaud
Funny, my brother in law is also from RDC.

------
rbourke
100% agree with pg on this (and no I don't always agree with everything)...

Most problems in life are as a result of miscommunications and associated
false assumptions, whether they be in business, marriages, or friendships.

Anything you can do to increase the fidelity of communication quite simply:
must be done.

Before I read the news about this I was about to write my first ever blog post
about the symbiosis between DNA health and pair programming - the link between
the two... have a guess?! Quality of communication.

You see there is ongoing debate amongst the Agile software development
community as to what methodologies are most helpful; test-driven-development,
refactoring, code reviews, static code analysis...

I maintain that that start-ups have the edge mainly because there is more
pairing (pair-programming / pair-design / pair-refactoring / pair-testing)
than there currently is in most software shops - and the reason this is so
effective is the boost it gives to communication...

Now the DNA angle you ask, well in 2009 a team won the Nobel Prize for
Medicine for proving that chronic stress inhibits the brain from releasing
Telomerase that repairs the Telomeres that protect the end of your chromosomes
during cell-division (crossing over). Guess what causes most workplace stress
- miscommunication... and in software also the fact that you are often
unfortunately forced to work alone. Start-ups force you to work together and
that is why you are healthier and live longer and, incidentally, write better
software ;-)

------
buro9
It's a shame that pg felt he had to write that, and it's also a shame that it
was presented the way it was.

It could've been shorter, more positive, and to the point:

CEOs need to inspire, lead, manage, hire, sell. All of these things have one
thing in common: Effective communication. If an accent is so thick that it
prevents effective communication, then you have a major issue.

That it had to be any longer than that says far more about the people who read
it than the one that wrote it.

------
eksith
Am I the only one who feels that it's ridiculous PG even had to make this
post? I mean the original story was such a bag of hot air and insinuation.

It's objectively better for entrepreneurs to communicate as clearly as
possible. That's the whole point of the message.

Good grief, people there's _real_ bigotry out there that needs defeating. If
anyone has spare energy for baseless accusations, we could sure use a few
extra hands over on more productive ground.

------
13hours
There are many reasons for a speaker to not communicate in an understandable
way : heavy accent, speech impediment, lack of articulation, inability to
articulate thoughts, etc. Why focus on the cultural accent to make your point,
rather than stating the root cause : lack of sufficient verbal communication
skills? The fact that you seemed to put a heavy foreign accent as the main
cause of bad communication does seem a little xenophobic.

------
subsystem
Maybe I'm alone in this, but for me the controversial bit wasn't about accents
and communication, but correlating a strong accents to intelligence.

"Or, it could be that anyone with half a brain would realize you're going to
be more successful if you speak idiomatic English, so they must just be
clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent."

It's very similar to what you would hear about geeks ten years ago.

------
glesica
I wonder if general tests of written and verbal communication skills would
show the same correlation. I often notice poor word choices, confusing
sentence structure, and pretty obvious typos in many of the blog posts that
show up on HN. Some of these people are founders. I wonder if their companies
suffer due to these sorts of errors (or perhaps they just proofread business
communications better).

~~~
KirinDave
This implies that every founder is a frontman. That is a false statement and
an opinionated interjection by Paul Graham. There are plenty of successful
companies that have founders who have pronounced accents.

------
tarun_anand
Paul, the point is that you looked at a metric that has "correlation" (your
words, emphasis mine) So I am not sure how you inferred "causation" from it?
You could have easily looked at metrics like founders who wear hoodies are
more likely to succeed.

I think that somewhere there is sublime conscious at work that is not aligned
correctly.

People expected higher standards from you on this front!

------
hollerith
People underestimate the level of skill required to speak a language well
enough so that it is not a chore for a native speaker to listen.

The chairman of the English Department of my local community college (College
of Marin in California) told me that it takes an immigrant an average of 7
years to get good enough at speaking English for native speakers to actually
want to listen to them talk.

~~~
msoad
I am an immigrant and have lots of immigrant friends with various lengths of
being at in the U.S. I can confirm that it takes 7 years to speak English well
enough so people really want to socialize with you.

------
doubledub
It's unfortunate such an explanation is necessary. People with difficulty
speaking have a harder time successfully communicating ideas. Not sure how
that is misunderstood.

Anyone claiming racism or xenophobia is, ironically, only confirming their
potential shortcomings.

~~~
13hours
Except that there are many root causes for bad communication. Why choose to
fixate on a foreign accent as the only or at least largest cause?

~~~
tsax
There is no 'fixation.' PG noted stuff in his data that was screaming to be
retold. That was one thing he found. A correlation between strong foreign
accents and lack of success. Blame reality, not him.

------
lifeisstillgood
I cannot find it now, but I listened to a podcast (possibly four thought) with
a discussion on disappearing languages. The professor had been approached by a
woman asking how she could help her children, who were losing the native
language as it died out. He replied if she really wanted to help her children
she should encourage them to learn English and not the native language - they
will benefiot more from communicating with nearly 2 bn people than with a few
thousand in the locale.

(I seem to remember that Papua New Guinea has a language every mile along its
northern coast - mainly it seemed to piss off the neighbouring tribes)

------
photorized
There's another problem.

When you have a thick accent, poor grammar, and generally have trouble
expressing your thoughts in English, people will perceive you as less smart -
no matter how eloquent you sound in your native language.

------
pitchups
It is ironic that a statement about the importance of being understood clearly
by others , was itself not understood clearly by others, although the
conversation was presumably between native speakers with no accents. My point
is that foreign accents are just one manifestation of the larger problem of
communication that occurs far more frequently than any of us supposes. My
favorite quote about this problem is from George Bernard Shaw : "The biggest
problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place."

------
torrenegra
As a founder with a very strong Latino accent, I would like to share my
success with other entrepreneurs who speak English as a second language: If
you want a professionally recorded voice over for your demo video, pitch, or
whatever, can get one for FREE from VoiceBunny here:
[http://blog.voicebunny.com/2013/08/30/no-startup-left-
behind...](http://blog.voicebunny.com/2013/08/30/no-startup-left-behind-
calling-entrepreneurs-with-strong-accents/)

------
peterjs
And that's the reason I am packing my stuff and heading to London. At this
very moment. I was just about to remove the legs from the table I am writing
these lines on (well, I am writing them on a computer, but thats not the
point). And surprise, surprise, I am moving from Central Europe. And yes, I
can speak with a thick Slovak, Czech, and Hungarian (Andy Grove style) accent.
If anyone had a job available for a fresh CS graduate, please let me know
(email is in my profile)!

------
GigabyteCoin
Don't we all technically speak with an accent?

I'm from Canada, and I have been to areas of the USA where I could not
understand almost anything being said by the local population.

------
bigdipper
Is there a study to show

A) How many founders of YC's funded companies were native English speakers vs
the rest of the population? B) Does the size of the round correlate to whether
they are native English speakers or not?

My theory to test - the more you look like the people judging you, the
likelier you are to succeed. It's statistically possible to show this pretty
easily.

If there is astringent correlation, get a tall blonde, who can speak well to
present to YC next time!

------
tsax
Look, it's the online click-generating, culture-destroying media firms'
business model to generate politically correct controversies especially on the
words of famous or successful people. ValleyWag is the latest monster to grow
out of the repulsive Gawker empire. They will do what they have to do. The
joke is on everyone else who even cares what is published there.

------
31reasons
If you have thick accent don't get discouraged, all you have to do is speak
numbers. No one can ignore numbers if they are really good.

------
gojomo
If you have a team with many different accents, a CEO who speaks with
excellent "transatlantic English" (international/mixed-British-American
English) will also likely be easiest for all the other team members to
understand. It's about being a more central node in mutual
communication/intelligibility networks, rather than a leaf node.

------
igorsyl
This is a case where the founder has an American accent yet people did not
understand what he tried to convey correctly. I think PG should have referred
to founders' elocution, diction, communication skills, etc. instead of only
their accents. As we've seen here one can have no foreign accent at all and
you may still be misunderstood.

------
hnriot
I was hoping for some statistics. Rather than trying to convince people, it
would be a far more compelling rebuttal if there was some data to backup the
comment. Without data, it's just opinion, and that reflects on the one with
the opinion. With data, it's stops being personal, and in the domain of
science.

~~~
cruise02
> But after ranking every Y.C. company by its valuation, Graham discovered a
> more significant correlation. "You have to go far down the list to find a
> C.E.O. with a strong foreign accent," Graham told me. "Alarmingly far
> down—like 100th place."

------
fnord123
I wonder if those with [Tourette
Syndrome]([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9ITLdmfdLI))
fit into 'accents'. While one can understand someone with Tourette Syndrome,
it's very distracting to the discourse at hand.

------
ErikAugust
People go to Pitch Nights just to work on the quality of their communication.

The reason is, if you have ever waded through a large round of pitches - you
understand that it only takes a couple hard to understand sentences before you
lose interest.

This doesn't just apply to foreign accents, it applies to volume, pace, etc.

------
CurtMonash
It's not just pitching in English. It's both listening and pitching, in both
English and techspeak.

[http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/](http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/)

------
junktest
"Traveling With an Accent" \-
[https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/travel/traveling-with-
an-...](https://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/08/travel/traveling-with-an-
accent.html?pagewanted=all)

------
arbuge
Such is life. This is a requirement not just for startups, but for success in
pretty much any field which isn't solitary by nature. That encompasses most
businesses, including climbing the corporate ladder if that's your thing.

------
dazzla
Everybody has an accent! There is not a single person in the world that has
"no accent"!

This may seam like nit picking but it is in fact very important. When someone
in the US says they think someone speaks English "with an accent" it's
actually the fact that they are not speaking English with an American accent.
Who's to say that speaking English with an American accent is the correct way?

The English language is used in many parts of the world and has diverged
immensely. Pronunciation has changed, spelling has changed, words have been
added, etc.

So bear that in mind when you say someone speaks bad English or wonder why
don't they make the effort to speak it "correctly".

Also remember communication is 2 way. If you can't understand someone due to
their accent most likely they cannot understand you due to your accent.

~~~
yannyu
"Who's to say that speaking English with an American accent is the correct
way?"

If you're trying to found a company and get venture funding from Americans,
you need to be able to communicate well with Americans. No one is saying
there's a correct way to speak anything, but it's obvious Paul Graham is
talking about founders going for an American market.

"Also remember communication is 2 way. If you can't understand someone due to
their accent most likely they cannot understand you due to your accent."

That's just straight out wrong, sorry to say. There are plenty of cases of one
way unintelligibility in ALL parts of the world, in many languages. English is
no exception, just consider the stereotype of American tourists being
confounded by Australian or England-English.

~~~
dazzla
Absolutely.

"If you're trying to found a company and get venture funding from Americans,
you need to be able to communicate well with Americans. No one is saying
there's a correct way to speak anything, but it's obvious Paul Graham is
talking about founders going for an American market."

However a big part of startup accelerator is about helping the founders gain
the skills needed to be successful. No reason communicating well with
Americans shouldn't be one of those skills that help is given for.

"That's just straight out wrong, sorry to say. There are plenty of cases of
one way unintelligibility in ALL parts of the world, in many languages.
English is no exception, just consider the stereotype of American tourists
being confounded by Australian or England-English."

Yes it can be mostly a one way problem but there will always be subtle
problems in both directions. I'm a UK native and have been living in the US
for many years married to an American wife. We still come across words or
phrases that confuse each other.

------
ojbyrne
This makes me curious about non-foreign (or english as a first language)
accents, I've met at least one person in Boston who was nearly unintelligible.
I guess there wouldn't be enough data.

------
indubitably
Well. This is consistent with pg's policy on ascii-only in Arc.

------
rvivek
Added similar thoughts yesterday
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297740](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6297740))

------
newsign
i guess there are 2 things here :

1\. having accent is ok as far as you can make others understand your point in
english ... 2\. bad english (i mean really bad) will be turn-off anyway with
or without accent .... so it is not accent but its all about english as a
language i guess ...

I've seen people with english and no bad accent but still having trouble in
making other people understand :) and they are either Dumb OR they're P.hd
holders (not generalizing though)...

------
EGreg
[http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/leaveme.htm](http://www.languageimpact.com/articles/gt/leaveme.htm)

------
gdilla
You can certainly be incomprehensible in your native language. See Sarah
Palin. It wasn't the accent that made her hard to understand.

------
CurtMonash
It's not just pitching; it's also listening.

Some of the most obstinate, unimpressed-by-reality founders I've known have
had thick accents.

------
rule30
Useful guide for Italians: [http://urli.st/q2t/2dt](http://urli.st/q2t/2dt)

------
Fuzzwah
It is difficult to have empirical evidence for a subjective thing like the
understandability of someone's accent.

~~~
asolove
What? Listening comprehension is absolutely measurable. Take the same passage,
have subjects in different groups listen to it as read by various speakers,
and test them on how much of the content (and its implications) they
understood. Of course there is an extreme where the passage isn't
understandable at all. But what we're talking about is the point where the
words are comprehensible, but the mental effort to decode them is quite high.
That effort pushes out the higher-level thoughts that would otherwise be going
along with the surface-level listening. So listeners will know what was said,
but have thought and abstracted less about it.

This kind of thing is commonly done in linguistics research when trying to,
for example, differentiate dialects.

~~~
tarre
You should not forget, that the result depends heavily also on the listener.
Probably the hardest to understand English I have ever heard has been spoken
by two native Englishmen who I met last year at a hostel in Spain. Similarly
in my opinion the most clear English is spoken in Germany and the Nordic
countries. It's just a matter of what you are used to.

------
cllns
I found a typo:

>A startup founder is alway selling.

(edit: has been fixed)

------
bra-ket
just make something people would pay for, accent be damned, on internet nobody
knows you're a dog

~~~
bdcravens
Most bootstrappers spend a lot of time in customer development. If you build
something without spending time talking to customers, your likelihood of
success goes way down. You can only go so far in email-only discussions.
Eventually you'll need to talk to potential users.

VC-based companies: obvious need for verbal communication.

------
meangeme
As soon as I read that Inc article I saw this coming.

------
johnnuy
Damage control time.

------
FD3SA
This is one of the few cases where this is worth repeating: correlation is not
causation.

PG is definitely one of the foremost researchers in the realm of
entrepreneurial success factors, but it is important to step back for a moment
when analyzing such things as verbal accents and "Zuckerberg likeness"
correlating with failure and success, respectively.

Just as Noam Chomsky criticized Peter Norvig because of his focus on
statistical methods versus fundamental models, I would suggest that inferring
success based on statistical observation without an underlying model can
become a confusing and unrewarding process.

Statistics is a tool to test fundamental models, not a model to explain
phenomena all in itself. As such, I would guess that founder success is more
likely based upon mundane traits such as intrinsic motivation, intellect,
experience, access to capital and key personnel, and most importantly, luck.
We see this time and time again in superstars such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos,
John Carmack, Bill Gates, etc.

Extremely smart people are more prone to analyzing every tiny variable, which
sometimes causes them to give additional weight to trivial factors in a
complex equation.

~~~
jonkelly
PG offered a clear underlying model in this essay. His model is that a)
founders need to sell well to succeed and that b) it's hard to sell well if
you can't be easily understood. You have a "guess" that mundane traits are
more important for success. He has a theory and data that support his theory.

~~~
vasilipupkin
That's fine just as long as what he did wasn't the following:

see some small number of founders with a fairly strong accent, say < 30 or <
50 or < 60, then observe that those startups happened to do poorly and then
extrapolate a theory from those observations to explain what is happening. I
am not necessarily disagreeing with his thesis, but in statistical data
analysis you have to be very careful about drawing conclusions from small
samples when the underlying distribution is non-normal, with fat tails

~~~
tlb
This is an epidemiological observation, and those rarely indicate a particular
mechanism. Even with giant populations and teams of scientists we have only
tentative and shifting theories for why, for example, Americans are fatter
than Europeans.

Controlled studies of startup founders are not practical.

------
beachstartup
at university i had an EE professor with such a strong russian accent i
dropped the class. couldn't understand a damn thing he was saying.

my parents are foreigners - it's not that i'm not used to it.

sorry folks, but it's true.

~~~
bitwize
Same here. Circuits class, Chinese prof with accent. Also he sort of muttered,
making a bad problem even worse. If you are in a position of giving
information or instructions to others then you are responsible for clarity of
communication. An obtrusive accent can hinder that.

What PG talks about is also why Linus acquired a North American accent since
moving to the United States. His accent used to be strongly Finnish (Swedish?)
but now he speaks American English like a native.

------
DannoHung
Can I talk about this from the other direction? One of the things that I got
drilled on in school was that in the real world, good communication skills are
critical. However, after a bit less than a decade in financial services, I
have come to the conclusion that the real take away is that understanding poor
communication is critical, more critical than any other skill in your entire
life (I suppose, unless you are at the absolute top of the hill from which
shit rolls down).

I think we do children a disservice by asking them to read great works of
modern literature. They should probably spend their time reading Chaucer in
the original middle english and puzzling out half translated foreign language
classics. Basically anything Shakespeare and up is too easy to understand if
you really want to hone your abilities.

