
English has been my pain for 15 years - derefr
http://antirez.com/news/61
======
doomlaser
The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the
opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy:

"Dear Paul,

It's not what you are, it's what you did. At least, I hope.

I suspect this is all coming out of a desire to emphasize that communication
is important when you're starting a company. It's never just about solving
technical problems. Well, sure, that's true. But as Nitasha has covered rather
thoroughly, your "empirical evidence" isn't some blind sample - it's a walking
demonstration of confirmation bias.

The larger problem is something you've explained yourself, in your essay on
"Investor Herd Dynamics". Another name for this essay might have been,
"Venture Capital is a Cargo Cult". In that essay, you lay out several reasons
why an investment becomes more attractive when other people are already
investing in it. And here's the crux of your argument:

'But frankly the most important reason investors like you more when you've
started to raise money is that they're bad at judging startups. Judging
startups is hard even for the best investors. The mediocre ones might as well
be flipping coins. So when mediocre investors see that lots of other people
want to invest in you, they assume there must be a reason.'

Do I need to spell this out? Your bias is a cancer on your industry, because
it becomes part of the voodoo nonsense that less astute investors use to pick
their horses. Your decisions may seem rational to you — but if you talk about
how you don't like to back people with strong accents, it becomes less likely
that other people will back them as well. You can be better than this.

Look deeper."

~~~
npalli
Would PG (or his predecessor silicon valley VC) have made the same comment
about strong accents 30 years ago? I don’t think so. For one, the diffusion of
Americanisms (idioms, accent etc.) were weaker and founders had stronger
accents. It would be inconceivable to say this in public. To me this
signifies, perhaps, a shift in the valley from investing in technology heavy
companies toward more consumer branded companies. What I mean by this is if I
look at Andy Grove and Intel (30 years ago), I don’t think his accent
prevented him from being successful. However today you need someone who is
more US market oriented. Maybe in 10 years Silicon Valley turns into a modern
day Madison Avenue, where it is filled predominantly with marketing/adverting
type people who have mastered the medium of Internet and smartphones. They
spend their time trying to get people to buy ‘stuff’.

As for people who are standing behind PG’s statement, just look outside your
window. The US has had a number of immigrants who came to this country and did
not speak a single word of English. Yes, they did not speak English forget
about a strong accent – who built successful businesses. I think that is
great. Somehow lack of the right accent didn't prevent them from interacting
with customers/vendors etc. Also, most businesses are international and you
can’t expect to master the local accent and idioms everywhere. Does Tim Cook
have Chinese accent, or German accent? Last I checked the iPhone is selling
quite well in China and Germany. The idea that you need the right accent and
master the local idioms to do business makes no sense today where your major
customers are half a world away. You partner and figure things out. Having the
right accent is not the top or even important in that list. PG is a great guy
but he slipped big time this one time.

~~~
gojomo
I suspect any investor or investor group with enough data points to offer such
a judgement would have said something similar 30 years ago (1983), or 50 years
ago (1963), or 100 years ago (1913).

Long-distance communication and migration is becoming more common: native
English speakers (especially in North America) are getting _more_ chances to
hear and become familiar with the speech of people who do not have English as
their first language. (Without familiarity, it's easy to assume that flawed
grammar and pronunciation means either flawed thinking or risky cultural
differences.) So I'd surmise that the heavily-accented currently have their
_best_ opportunities ever to thrive in North American
capital/recruiting/selling markets – and earlier generations of investors
would have offered even harsher assessments about the impact of strong
accents.

One of the points I was making with the _My Fair Lady_ -themed joke in another
thread (the SayAfter.me accent training offer) was that this is an eternal
issue.

 _Look at her, a prisoner of the gutters; condemned by every syllable she
utters…_

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhninL_G3Fg)

That film came out in 1964 (winning Best Picture), based on a 1956 stage
musical, based on a 1913 play ( _Pygmalion_ ). The same ideas about accent and
career-success go back further, and easily translate to many other languages
and cultures.

Of course, an _uneducated native_ (or _disadvantaged local group dialect_ )
accent is a different thing than a _non-native_ accent. A non-native accent is
more likely to indicate someone with the education and drive to dare operating
in a non-native language environment. But, it takes a bit of familiarity to
internalize that understanding, and stronger accents still signal a risk of
slower and more error-prone communication.

When someone honestly points out that the strongest accents have been
problematic, based on significant observational experience, they haven't
"slipped", they've done the listeners a favor by sharing a perceived truth.
Even if for some reason their observation is in error (and here I doubt it),
by sharing the lesson they're helping, not hurting, the process of describing
and understanding the world.

~~~
npalli
It is interesting that you bring up examples of these Irish/English plays, to
me these are societies that turned static and frozen after the initial
dynamism went away and irrelevant affiliations dominated. Around the time my
fair lady came out, pg’s family immigrated away from England to the US. Wonder
why?

In any case, we are talking about Silicon Valley here. Not society in general.
What made it special is this ability to assimilate talent from all over the
world. As has been pointed out by others, people with strong accents are all
over the valley running businesses successfully. BTW, significant
observational experience from pg is about 100 companies in an economy that has
several million businesses. So, yeah not exactly significant if you ask me.

~~~
gojomo
When you have observed a similar number of founding teams close up, your
impressions will have similar credibility.

Until then, on the empirical issue – what _has actually been_ a predictive
indicator during the YC programs – real experience, not theory and hope,
matters.

------
decode

      hey guys, you are not understanding us, we are not
      understanding what you say as well, and it is hard to find
      people that, once your understanding limits are obvious,
      will try to slow down the peace of the conversation. Often
      even if I say I did not understood, I'll get the same
      sentence repeated the same at speed of light.
    

This is an important point. There are a number of things that native speakers
of English can do to be more understandable to non-native speakers. Some
things I've found are helpful: speaking more slowly, shifting your
pronunciation (especially of vowels) to be more standard, using different
words (e.g. if you're talking to a native speaker of a Romance language,
prefer words with Latin roots over Germanic ones), and being careful to
pronounce all consonants. Things that rarely help: speaking more loudly and
repeating the same phrase multiple times.

Making these changes to your speech in real time is a difficult skill that
must be cultivated and practiced. I would encourage native speakers to work at
this skill, as it can make a big difference. I was once speaking to a couple
of Russians and an American from the same region of the US as me. The Russians
said they could understand me easily, but had difficulty understanding the
other American. The difference was that I was making an effort to speak more
clearly for them.

~~~
mogrim
> Things that rarely help: speaking more loudly and repeating the same phrase
> multiple times.

The Spanish do that - and it doesn't help them much, either.

Oh, and you've forgotten the "waving your arms about" bit.

------
DanBC
This is a great post.

Here's a BBC Radio Four programme where Stephen Fry talks about spelling
reform, and it includes a little bit about pronunciation. The brokenness of
English is a problem we know about!

([http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039c5cs](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039c5cs))

> _The fact that people from different English speaking countries have issues
> communicating is already a big hint about how odd is English phonetically._

It doesn't have to be people from different countries! People in England can
have very very different accents. It can be hard to understand some of the
stronger accents.

Sometimes people keep a regional difference for some words but not others. I
say "bath" with a short a, but "path" with a longer a.

> My advice is that if you are learning English now, start listening as soon
> as possible to spoken English.

BBC used to have the _excellent_ World Service programming. It had a variety
of interesting short documentary, long news reporting, and variety of British
culture shows. Now it's just rolling news. Idiots who know the cost of
everything but the value of nothing ignored the real "soft power" benefits of
the old World Service programmes.

> I always advice people against translation efforts in the topic of
> technology, since I believe that it is much better to have a common language
> to document and comment the source code, and actually to obtain the skills
> needed to understand written technical documentation in English is a simple
> effort for most people.

I gently disagree with this part.

For creating code I strongly agree, you're right. We do need a common
language.

But if I had the money I'd set up a foundation to improve the man pages and
documentation for projects, and to then translate these documents into the big
languages - Portuguese, Spanish, French, some form of Chinese. Etc. I feel
that this is important for poor people in developing nations.

Finally, your written English is good. I knew you're not a native speaker, but
I didn't have any trouble understanding what you were saying. Many people
speak only one language.

~~~
toyg
> BBC used to have the excellent World Service programming.

BBC radio programmes were also at the receiving end of a wave of political
correctness sweeping through the Blair years. "Classist" Received
Pronunciation was out, regional accents were in (mostly so that Scottish
cronies could occupy civil-servant jobs and the likes of John Prescott could
eventually become plausible Peers of the Realm, but I digress). The result is
such that, in 2013, I struggle to find any broadcast _at all_ that might sound
like old-fashioned RP. There is now no real alternative for learning RP:
either you attend Oxbridge and/or belong to certain circles, or you'll be
stuck with a local accent forever.

Paradoxically, trying to make RP disappear, they made it even more exclusive
and desirable.

~~~
notahacker
Nah... RP is the accent all us inverse snobs snigger at. In all seriousness,
there are more "neutral" and aurally-pleasing English accents than old-
fashioned RP.

It's interesting to see the effects of varied accents in modern British
television programming on largely self-taught English speakers in relatively
isolated communities though: Burmese Cockney has to be my favourite.

~~~
fieryeagle
Burmese Cockney eh? This I hafta listen to at least once in my lifetime.

------
beloch
English isn't just the language of IT, it's become the lingua franca of
science and commerce. Very little research worth reading is published in a
language other than English these days. I wouldn't be surprised if there are
obscure, third-rate English-language scientific journals in China that have
never been seen, let alone had articles submitted to by native English
speakers!

Over the years, I've worked with a lot of people who are not native English
speakers. The one thing that trips me up is when one of them is so utterly
brilliant at speaking English that I completely forget they're not a native
speaker and start unconsciously throwing in some of the slang and colorful
idioms my redneck father has fed me over the years. I always feel bad when I
do this because it must sound like I go from perfectly understandable English
to complete and utter gibberish in nothing flat! Idioms and slang are really
horrible things to inflict upon non-native speakers. I can't imagine what it
must be like for a non-native English speaker trying to work with Cockneys or
newfies!

~~~
willyt
Cockney is relatively easy compared to some other local UK dialects/accents.
My wife's family is from Stirlingshire in Scotland and they say stuff like:

'yer wain's greetin' -> 'the baby's crying'.

'I'm away tae get woor messages' -> 'I'm going to the shops for food'

It took my a while before I could understand them :-)

~~~
mdpye
Accent and dialect are distinct. Maybe it's because I was born in Scotland,
spent my teenage years in the English midlands and north, now live in London
and watch TV from the states, but I've never met an English speaker whose
accent I had difficulty understanding. And that includes all the heavily
accented (although generally second-gen) immigrants I've met.

Dialect on the other hand means words I don't know the definition of, and
sometimes there isn't enough context to intuit it.

~~~
willyt
Exactly. But it's obviously not just the accent thats at issue here. If you
think about it, and try to do a good impersonation of someone talking in a
different accent it has to include a bit of dialect and local grammatical
idioms to make it convincing.

I assumed that the original comment about 'foreign accents' also encompassed
the grammatical tics that foreign speakers often have. Someone speaking
grammatically correct english in a strong accent is easily understood, but it
only takes a very little grammatical mistake to change to meaning of a
sentence. For example, an Italian colleague who missed out a 'to' and told me
'just a minute, I'll come over your desk' caused some admittedly slightly
childish giggling in the office...

------
malandrew
The number one rule I have taught to people who speak English as a second
language is to _always_ _always_ _always_ learn polysyllabic words, especially
those with 3+ syllables, to learn them back to front and _never_ from front to
back, which is the natural way to approach learning long words.

Instead of learning a word like onomatopeia like this:

    
    
        on...
        ono...
        onomat...
        onomato...
        onomatopei...
        onomatopeia
    

Try saying it out loud this way instead:

    
    
        ...a
        ...peia
        ...topeia
        ...matopeia
        ...nomatopeia
        onomatopeia
    

This will almost always result in learning to pronounce the word _much_
better. I say almost because there probably are words out there that violate
this rule, but I haven't come across any of them yet. The reason this approach
works is because the first syllable of almost all polysyllabic words in
English is pronounced in a more drawn out fashion than the latter syllables.
By learning from back to front, you force yourself to learn to draw out the
first syllable and shorten up the last syllable(s).

I have found that this rule is also applicable to almost all Romance languages
for English speakers learning, French, Spanish, Portuguese, etc.

If you are a speaker of a second language, I _strongly_ urge you to try this
out yourself and get feedback from a native speaker on your pronunciation.

~~~
phrasemix
This is a fantastic idea! Do you mind if I share that with my English
students?

~~~
malandrew
Certainly. I have another excellent trick for you that I was able to use to
teach my all my Chinese students back in the day how to pronounce the word
"usually", which is a notoriously difficult word for Chinese speakers.

Exploiting the technique above, start with a word in the language of the
audience that share phonemes with your target word. From there you essentially
play something similar to Lewis Carroll's "Doublets" game from the end to the
beginning. So for the word "usually" I would usually start with the city in
China, "Guanzhou" and proceed as follows (excuse my poor man's phonetic
spelling):

    
    
        Gwan-jo
        Gwan-jo
        Gwan-jo
        Gwan-jo
        Gwan-joooo
        Gwan-joooo
        Gwan-joooo
        Gwan-joooo
        Gwan-joooo-aaaa
        Gwan-joooo-aaaa
        Gwan-joooo-aaaa
        Gwan-joooo-aaaa
        Gwan-joo-a-lee
        Gwan-joo-a-lee
        Gwan-joo-a-lee
        Gwan-joo-a-lee
        joo-a-lee
        joo-a-lee
        joo-a-lee
        joo-a-lee
        yoo-joo-a-lee
        yoo-joo-a-lee
        yoo-joo-a-lee
        yoo-joo-a-lee
    

The repetition is performed until your student(s) ha(s|ve) properly pronounced
the current temperoary utterance.

------
nasmorn
English is so horrible because it has no discernable orthography. My favorite
example is anti thesis -> antithesis. I mean what the fuck, my mothertongue
german is the king of combined nouns but this change of pronounciation on
concatenation doesnt happen ever. Or phonetical difference based on grammtic
use as in the verb read. Horrible. I think it should be handled like the Finns
and Koreans did. Throw all the irregularities out so that the language can be
read after learning the alphabet. I was always against this in German but then
I realized most current spellings are just a snapshot in time, it all used to
be spelled differently. So now I am dor either use the original form an
pronounciation or go fully local. Computer is fine as it is still english but
will and should eventually become Kompjuter. It looks really wrong to me but
it is readable as a German word and much better to learn for children.

~~~
tragomaskhalos
There are several major problems with theoretical English spelling reform:

1\. A purely phonetic approach means that, even within the UK, I would spell
everything differently from my colleagues from Birmingham, Manchester,
Newcastle, Glasgow etc etc. Not good.

2\. English spelling tends to represent the "deep" structure of words rather
than the ("shallow") representation - your "thesis - antithesis" is an
excellent example of this. This is only frustrating for foreign learners
learning pronounciation, but otherwise has a lot to commend it.

3\. Our historical orthography creates a link with our history and our
culture; I can read Shakespeare even though Elizabethan pronounciation was
startlingly different to today's.

~~~
enimodas
1\. Every other language with such a system bases it on the "standard"
pronunciation, for English this could be for example BBC English. As a result
you'll sometimes have youths who will write the local dialect phonetically in
IM chat, but they also know how to write (and speak) the standard way.

2\. You're saying people should threat written English words like Chinese
glyphs, masquerading as a non-glyph language, and that that's somehow better?
My instincts tell me that knowing how to pronounce a word by reading it is
more advantageous than having to learn 1000's of glyph-like words, maybe
someone else has more knowledge about the tradeoffs between phonetic and glyph
like scripts.

3\. This is a gimmic. How many times do you estimate the average English
speaking person reads these texts in their life?

~~~
vacri
3\. It's not a gimmick. Shakespeare is but one example of culture; he's not
the start and finish of it.

------
dasil003
Coming from almost the opposite background, I agree very strongly with the
assertion that accent is almost beside the point. It's true that if your
accent is too thick that will harm communication, but below a certain
threshold native speakers will attune pretty quickly.

For me, American English is my native language, but I am also half Brazilian
and learned Portuguese from childhood trips to Brazil (I didn't properly learn
until I was 12). Because I was exposed to Portuguese at a young age I have
excellent pronunciation and decent grammar, but I never spent enough time
living there to pick up a broad vocabulary. So actually my expressiveness
Portuguese is quite weak even though people's first impression might be that
it is perfect until we get into a serious conversation and I struggle to come
up with the right words and expressions.

I often contrast this with my mother and father who learned the language pairs
as adults, but did so in a serious academic setting. I have less of an accent
than both of them in their opposing language, but they both have a much
stronger overall command. Sometimes I meet someone with a very thick accent
that is hard to decipher at first, but they speak very quickly and with
excellent grammar and vocabulary.

So it's clear to me that accent and language skills are orthogonal. Many
immigrants hit a wall with their accent because it's good enough, and they get
more added value from improving their grammar and vocabulary. Clearly I think
pg touched on the important point that entrepreneurs generally talk fast about
complicated and novel ideas, so an accent is more likely to get in the way as
compared to normal interactions. However it's just the tip of the iceberg, and
I think the average American lives a more sheltered life in terms of the
reality of having to learn another language than any other country.

~~~
btilly
_So it 's clear to me that accent and language skills are orthogonal. Many
immigrants hit a wall with their accent because it's good enough, and they get
more added value from improving their grammar and vocabulary._

That, in fact, is directly in line with pg's point.

His point was that you have to get to "good enough" and not doing so is a real
problem. However he went on to make it clear that if your accent does not
impede communication, then it is a non-issue.

~~~
dasil003
Yeah I don't think I disagreed with pg, more that I think he's focusing on the
much less important issue. I would hazard a guess that the number of brilliant
entrepreneurs who have perfect English but can't be understood because of
their accent is dwarfed by the number of brilliant entrepreneurs who struggle
with English at a more basic level.

------
tokenadult
I see that the submitted article, and many of the interesting comments in this
busy thread, relate to the issue of the bizarre spelling patterns of English.
As a native speaker of General American English (the dialect of English I
recommend to foreign learners of English ;) ), I have two perspectives on
this.

1) As a parent of English-speaking children, I thought it was VITAL that they
learn well the main consistent sound-symbol correspondence rules of English
spelling. (This is called "phonics" in the context of teaching reading to
native speakers of English.) My favorite book recommendation for this is _Let
's Read: A Linguistic Approach,_ by linguist Leonard Bloomfield and
lexicographer Clarence Barnhart. All four of my children learned to read well
with this book. The book is now in a second edition

[http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-A-Linguistic-
Approach/dp/081...](http://www.amazon.com/Lets-Read-A-Linguistic-
Approach/dp/0814334555)

prepared by a second generation of the Barnhart family. Learning to read with
an approach like this is dialect-friendly (the book is specifically organized
to take into account dialect differences, at least within American English)
and systematic for understanding what is consistent in English spelling and
what is not.

2) As for spelling reform in English, I think it was HN user gnosis who once
shared a very interesting link

[http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ortho.html](http://www.xibalba.demon.co.uk/jbr/ortho.html)

about English spelling reform by a commentator who knows linguistics well.
English spelling reform is often desired by native speakers of the language,
but it is a tough problem. See what the link has to say about various
proposals for spelling reform.

------
iandanforth
Concentrated learning for English accents is effective. From personal
experience (through acting) I can tell you that sitting down with a
professional accent coach 2-3x per week can have you speaking and
understanding heavy, hard accents
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZU...](https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ZUNfovLWktA#t=65))
quickly. A month of lessons will get you understanding, and fooling some
people who don't have that accent. A few months is required to fool people who
have that accent.

From this experience I learned that the process of learning a new accent is
totally separate from learning a language as most people do it. You need to
master IPA as well as carry a mirror to watch your own lips and have good
close-up reference material. As evidenced by all the mediocre accents in
movies it's not a foolproof process, but it can certainly get you much closer
to your goal.

------
murrayh
It is worth noting that the unintelligible accent issue is context dependent.
A native English speaker can be the person with an unintelligible accent, and
that person may need to work on their communication skills in order to have
influence.

I experienced this phenomenon first hand as a native English speaker with an
Australian accent. At my first hostel abroard there was a mixed group of
european (non UK) people conversing in English, and I thought I'd try and join
in.

me: howrya?

group: _blank stares_

me: how are you?

group: _blank stares_

me: how - are - you?

group: _look of fear_

me: hello?

This first experience was definitely a shock, and it took me some time to
realise what it must have been like for the group.

In terms of learning to understand native speakers, travelling in their
country for an extended period seems to work. My family has hosted many
international guests through exchange programs, including adult guests who had
never left their home country (but were taught English at school).
Communication was sometimes very difficult, but universally the guests were
able to pick up on the Australian accent over time. When exchanges move from
blank looks to questions about particular words used, you can start having
clunky conversations.

The exchange programs did give our family tips on how to converse with the
guests. The only tip I can remember is to try and use different words. Often
the longer and fancier word (e.g. gigantic, massive) is easier to understand
for the guest than the short and simple word (e.g. big).

------
nu23
Maybe, we should have an international language reform to introduce a phonetic
spelling system (WYSIWYHear) which would also lead to a somewhat standardized
accent. The local ways of pronouncing words, can still continue in each
region. There are probably many aesthetic considerations for this. But when
two people across different regions speak, they can use this system.

This would require linguists to document the phonemes, and to find a minimal
set of alterations of either the spelling or the pronounciation of a word so
that you have a phonetic system. There are already variations in spelling
(American/British English). This would be another variation which is phonetic.

Of course, even if this this work is done, it would still be yet another
standard needing popular adoption. The phonemes would also be more in number
than the current letters which means either using diacritic symbols (requiring
change in keyboards, slower typing) or mapping a phoneme to multiple letters
(longer spellings and possibly some ambiguity in detecting phoneme boundaries
in spellings).

~~~
MSexton
When I took an acting class on accents, I learned about the International
Phonetic Alphabet
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ipa)). It is
surprisingly handy, although most Americans have no idea it exists, much less
how to read it.

~~~
nu23
Interesting. This is a very detailed effort, with encyclopaedic ambitions
across different languages. The question is if there is a lightweight version
of this - someway of chosing a reasonably small set of phonemes which can
represent, most English words accurately. The second part is to represent the
phonemes by either using a small number of new letters and diacritics (which
is what the IPA already does), or to map the phonemes directly to single
letters or a string of two or three letters. With the second option, there
would still be ambiguity in reading a spelling (where are the phoneme
breaks?). But, the accent situation would improve and one can get used to the
phoneme boundaries by looking it up for each new word.

------
DasIch
Getting used to and understanding different accents is actually fairly easy,
if you watch US and UK tv series regularly.

In any case this post shows perfectly how important it is to learn languages
early on. In Germany you start learning English in 3rd grade and even before
school there are kindergartens in which multiple languages are spoken. If you
go to a Gymnasium and want to graduate with the abitur you need to be able to
speak at least one foreign language or two, if you don't want to focus on
sciences.

~~~
antirez
> Getting used to and understanding different accents is actually fairly easy,
> if you watch US and UK tv series regularly.

In TV series UK people tend to talk BBC-alike English, in my experience this
is not what is always talked in the streets in UK... so I'll get better
understanding tv series but maybe my understanding of street language may not
improve a lot.

Btw TV series definitely help a lot in general, and I used to do that, the
only problem is that it is a time consuming task.

~~~
arethuza
In one case a documentary serious about Scottish fishermen had to be subtitled
because the accents/dialect were incomprehensible to general viewers in the
UK:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29)

What I find amusing is that as someone from the area in question it appears
that most of the people being filmed are trying hard to talk "properly" \-
their real accents would be _much_ thicker.

~~~
rmc
I remember seeing a new segement on BBC about socially deprived areas of
Glasgow, and local youths were talking and it was subtitled.

~~~
shabble
If I remember rightly, this also happened in some regional releases of the
film Trainspotting.

For the opposite problem, try reading Iain Banks' _Feersum Endjinn_ [1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feersum_Endjinn)

------
robotmay
I'd actually say that the English most Europeans learn is very compatible with
British English, and I very, very rarely struggle to understand them. However
I do quite regularly cause issues when speaking with Americans, as the
difference between our dialects is quite large; the British in general have a
very diverse array of accents and colloquialisms, and we tend to speak pretty
quickly in comparison to the US (personal experience, YMMV). This I suspect
also makes us pretty unintelligible to a lot of secondary-English speakers.
While at conferences I've found that people from Germanic countries have very
little trouble understanding me (we do have a shared heritage, after all) but
anyone more eastern or southern definitely have issues when I start wittering
about something.

I don't hold it against someone if they can't understand me though; the
British can't even understand each other, so I can imagine how difficult it
can be for people from elsewhere :)

~~~
antirez
> This I suspect also makes us pretty unintelligible to a lot of secondary-
> English speakers.

That definitely can be the case, also I observed intermitting slow and very
fast speeds in the same sentence in order to put the emphasis in different
parts of the sentence.

~~~
robotmay
I suspect a lot of the problems with British English come from how many
different influences we had in the origins of the language. It doesn't really
make much sense because it's a weird bastardisation of Germanic, Latinate, and
Celtic languages (with a few choice French words for good luck). The pacing
when speaking it can be pretty wonky because the words don't really flow
together like they do in other languages.

I don't really understand the whole uproar over people's grasp of English. If
someone's less proficient, or slower to respond; I wait patiently or simplify
my own English to make it easier to understand. I'm genuinely impressed by how
much effort everyone else puts in to learning the language that I can't hold
someone's skill in it against them. The best I can achieve in another language
is to describe how my car broke down in German.

~~~
Ecio78
_If someone 's less proficient, or slower to respond; I wait patiently or
simplify my own English to make it easier to understand. I'm genuinely
impressed by how much effort everyone else puts in to learning the language
that I can't hold someone's skill in it against them_

If all the people in the world reasoned like you we would all live in a better
place..

------
airesQ
Over the past year I have improved my spoken English immensely, here's how:

\- I took about 30 lessons of one-on-one tutoring through Skype. It really
helps to have someone who is paid to hear your bad English, and to have the
patience to point to you the mistakes that you are making. This costs about
20€ per hour, but it is worth it.

\- Read out loud. There was a period of about a month where I did this at
least one hour per day. I read books, articles, even RFCs. It does wonders.

\- Made a good use of the "pronounce feature" that most dictionaries have
nowadays.

\- Saw youtube videos on pronunciation and common mistakes.

I also wrote a lot, about 2000 words per day (I wrote a AutoHotKey script to
count number of times I hit space on any given day). Perhaps 2000 words is too
much, and it tends to favor verbosity over succinctness. But you will get a
LOT of practice.

It also helps to read/hear good writers/speakers. I don't like movies/tv so
much, as they have a low speech to time ratio.

~~~
GFischer
How did you contact your tutors? I know of some startup attempts, was it
something more prosaic like a classifieds ad?

~~~
airesQ
I got in contact with my tutors through livelingua.com. The first tutor was
excellent, the second one was reasonable. I can't say that I really recommend
the site (as the quality is somewhat inconsistent), but it did work for me.

The first lesson is free, so one can always give it a try.

~~~
GFischer
Thanks, I was asking on behalf of some friends that had a startup idea about a
language exchange community (say, I teach you Spanish, you teach me English).
But I think they abandoned it.

------
d0m
I don't understand why people are making such a big fuss about the PG article.
He gave only one example of so many red hearing. Obviously being a foreigner
with a strong accent doesn't help you when 90% of your time is spent
communicating. duh.

What makes me sad is that by being honest and wanting to help founders, PG
just got a new shit load of problems from people over-reacting. Do you really
think he'll give great, but controversial, feedback in his next
interviews/articles?

~~~
kome
The problem of PG (and yours) it's the lack on empathy, simply as that. Like
"antirez" says, English is not a hobby: English is pushed down the throat of a
growing share of people around the world today. And they need English to live
a normal life, not for fancy careers.

Imagine yourself to be forced to speak Japanese to gain your money, because
you have no alternatives. How you would feel if all your efforts will be
worthless just because you're born in the wrong side of the world, and you
sound funny.

The problem is that many English speaker have no idea how is like to learn
another language, hence they lack of empathy.

~~~
d0m
First of all, I'm a foreigner, English is clearly not my native language and I
have problems every day because of it. So yeah, native english speakers have
it easier. But so what? Nobody said life was supposed to be easy and that
everyone was created with the same skills and weaknesses. Some people are
prettier, others are taller, other speak better english. Not acknowledging
this is only hypocrisy. What PG said is that if you want to put the chance on
your side, learning to speak a better english is a very important skill.

    
    
        Imagine yourself to be forced to speak Japanese to gain your money, because you have no alternatives.
    

That's life. Learn it, move on. Or I can, you know, not learn it correctly,
gain less money and have it even harder.

I can understand having empathy for some people where _English is pushed down
their throat_. But, for founders applying to YC and going to the Valley?
Please. Why would anyone invest any money or take seriously a CEO that doesn't
take his/her work seriously. (Yes, communicating well for a CEO is very
important. What about a programmer that can't code?)

Imagine a Steve Jobs explaining to the world how Apple is great with a foreign
accent that nobody can't understand.

The school you went to matters. Your height matters. Your appearance matters.
Your family matters. Where you live matters. The amount of money you have
matters. It always been and will always be. Faster you understand it and start
putting the chances on your side, the better you will be.

~~~
Oletros
And how to show a totally lack of empathy and missing the point

------
thinkersilver
The author mentions that he spent a lot of time using English without ever
listening to it. A big problem is the way English( or languages) are taught or
learnt that causes these problems.

One trick/method that I used while perfecting my German accent was shadowing
that I found in a lanaguage forum somewhere. I took a book that I understood
in the target language, in this case it was Agatha Christie's Murder on the
Links; bought the audio book ( Mord auf dem Links), then repeated after the
reader at pace without looking at the text. It was tiring mentally sometimes,
but it helped greatly in pronunciation and aural comprehension of the target
langauge.

I did the same for movies. I remember getting the Matrix in German. Technical
writing is different I guess but I hope this helps someone, at the very least,
in acquiring an idiomatic proficiency.

------
drtse4
The main issue with the the usual approach of language learning is the focus
on grammar, like if doing useless grammar exercises would improve your grasp
of grammar and sentence construction rules. It doesn't help much actually.

I've learned more grammar watching tv series than actually studying grammar
for years in school, and my pronunciation improved too. Now many things just
come naturally.

And i can understand the issues he's having with pronunciation, without a
constant reference to how something should be pronounced you tend to ignore
the correct pronunciation of words you don't know (but you can deduce the
meaning while reading) an build up a collection of words with completely
broken pronunciation that you will end up using in actual conversation. With
hideous results...

~~~
gedrap
I agree regarding the grammar. After living in England for a couple of years,
mainly surrounded by native English speakers, things just either sound 'right'
or 'broken'.

Although opportunity of living here is somewhat luxurious for many. So I would
say that listening to as much native English as possible is really good for
grammar :)

~~~
drtse4
Exactly, you can get that right/broken gut feeling just being immersed in that
language for thousand of hours.

Regarding real immersion (both listening and speaking) maybe personal tutors
via skype or language learning communities could be a cheap alternative, i've
never really tried this approach (lazyness) but i've thought for years it
could have been worth the price.

------
opminion
Antirez is spot on describing the problems of English as a foreign language in
Europe (although I don't think it has much to do with PG's remarks and I
wouldn't draw any conclusions from it).

My favourite example is the pronunciation of the math symbol Pi in a European
meeting in which everyone and their dog would be tempted to say something like
"pih" except a native speaker. Or try asking for the nearest Ikea.

~~~
pja
To be fair (ish) Ikea is a Swedish brand, so the pronunciation was always
likely to be a bit odd.

Pi is pronounced the way it is because a bunch of people in the C16th decided
to reconstruct classical Greek pronunciation & teach that to students in
England. Mix with the great vowel shift (some of which was later reversed for
Greek letters in the C19th, but in different ways in the US and the UK) and
you end up with the odd mix of pronunciations we have today, with UK and US
English disagreeing. At least according to this stackexchange post anyway:
[http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/why-are-
gre...](http://english.stackexchange.com/questions/11363/why-are-greek-
letters-pronounced-incorrectly-in-scientific-english)

------
nmeofthestate
I have a French colleague with the strangest attitude to his strong accent
when speaking English. His accent is strong enough that it makes understanding
him a bit tricky sometimes, and when I mentioned it, he said that this accent
was part of his identity and he wouldn't be trying to improve it. He was
weirdly taken aback when I said something in a 'good' French accent.

This attitude was really surprising to me.

For me, when speaking your non-native language, the aim should be to sound
like a native (or with the accent of some subset of the native-speaking
population).

I wonder how widespread this "X is my native tongue, so I'm going to speak
English in a strong X accent, because otherwise I'd be submerging my identity"
attitude is?

~~~
jablan
> I wonder how widespread this "X is my native tongue, so I'm going to speak
> English in a strong X accent, because otherwise I'd be submerging my
> identity" attitude is?

I hope you understand that hiding own accent is not the easiest thing and
requires some effort even after lots of training. Our vocal apparatus is
adapted to our mother tongue, so even if we are capable of speaking all
English phonemes, not all of them are "natural" for us.

~~~
nmeofthestate
Yes, but the anecdote I wrote about was a situation where someone was
deliberately not making any effort to improve their accent. It wasn't about
trying but failing.

------
sker
Spoken English has been the major barrier for me. All these articles from this
and last week resonate with me, but this one hits the nail on so many heads.

It's especially discouraging when so many job ads require hyper-ultra-mega-
puts-Bill-Clinton-to-shame communication skills for software development
positions. I understand the value of communication, but I've successfully done
remote gigs for companies where we don't even talk to each other. Just hand me
the spec and I'll build it. If I have any doubts I'll write you an email, with
the added benefit of having everything in writing and being able to re-read it
later.

------
siong1987
Not just Italian, same applies to Mandarin too.

Mandarin speakers from different regions (Hong Kong, Taiwan, different parts
of China, Malaysia, Singapore) speak in different accents but we usually don't
have problem understanding each other (yeah, sometimes we make fun of the
different accents).

~~~
guspe
It's awkward to compare Italian and Mandarin to the state of English in the
world. English is a language that was "exported" to America by the British
Empire. It was also "exported" to Australia and many other former colonies.
It's no surprise, really, that these people have difficulties understanding
each other. While China and Italy inhabitants share common borders, native
English speakers share only the relationship to their former colonizer.

There are other languages that suffer from the same problem. Brazilian
Portuguese differs greatly from Portugal's, which is also different from East
Timor's. I don't know much about Spanish and French but I assume the situation
is analogous.

It's important to note that such differences between colonies and their
colonizers were once a strong argument towards independence.

------
mbesto
I was born in America, raised learning English, and to this day, my written
skills are nowhere near perfect. Nor are my verbal skills. I am constantly
writing and rewriting sentences because the intangibles of communications,
such as tone, style, prose, format, are _extremely_ important and often
overlooked. Not to mention, my grammar after 29 years is still far from
perfect.

I've attempted and now partially understand, read, write, and speak Spanish,
Swedish, German. Having experienced all of the intricacies of other languages,
I don't envy those who are far behind me trying to make it in an English.

That being said, what's the lesson learned, or probably more apt - what's the
solution? This is _why_ firms like YC exist, is to provide support to founders
that lack all of the acumen (and trust me, there's a lot) that is required for
21st century business leaders. There's often a meta discussion here on HN
about the "technical co-founder vs business co-founder". This is one area
where having a business co-founder with great communication skills is a great
reason to partner up with that person. Unfortunately those who do lack
communication skills often find it difficult to understand those who do have
good communication skills.

I wish I could help somehow...

~~~
argumentum
I don't think a "business" co-founder is any more likely to have good
communication skills than a "technical" co-founder.

------
brownbat
Most of English's "problems" come from a sort of natural drift that all
languages experience all the time. There's no way to freeze a language in its
"most useful" form, because a billion different speakers are simultaneously
pulling it in different directions. It either ends up as a sort of democratic
consensus, or eventually fractures into mutually unintelligible dialects.

1\. Shakespearean pronunciation:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s)

2\. Problems that would be caused by simplifying spelling:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-
language_spelling_refo...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English-
language_spelling_reform#Obstacles_and_criticisms)

3\. Power of Babel: [http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Babel-Natural-
Language/dp/00...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Power-Babel-Natural-
Language/dp/006052085X)

4\. Toastmasters speech about "Manglish":
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDanVi6byKo](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDanVi6byKo)
(Toastmasters has its own version of English, full of over the top gestures.
Also recommended, search for Singlish on Youtube.)

~~~
EdiX
Most of English's problems come from this:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift)

------
ludoo
Your English has improved tremendously since I've known you.

You only need to launch another successful project which will in time develop
a strong international community like redis, then you'll speak and write
English like a native. :)

~~~
antirez
Thanks Ludo, I hope this time I'll be able to fix my English before the next
project ;-)

~~~
hisham_hm
A bit ironically, I do have a hard time figuring out how to pronounce "redis"!

------
samscully
> Often even if I say I did not understood, I'll get the same sentence
> repeated the same at speed of light.

I'm a native English speaker and I don't understand why people do this. If you
are trying to have a conversation with someone, surely you want to do what is
necessary for everyone to be understood as well as possible. It is only a
little effort for you to slow down and simplify your speech, but it is
impossible for the other person to learn better English on the spot. I lived
in Hong Kong for a while and some US/UK people still wouldn't adapt their
accent, even though the locals were humouring them by speaking English to them
in the first place.

Perhaps it is easier for me to empathise given I have a (now very mild)
Yorkshire accent, which was consistently mocked when I moved to London, and is
reasonably slow paced anyway.

------
dmourati
We all need to practice tolerance and grace. Identifying that there are non-
native speakers means we all share a bit of the burden. Antirez mentions
slowing down, this is one easy way to make conversations better understood.
Also, we should avoid idioms or turns of phrase. These are quite difficult
even for some native speakers. Finally, we need to make a genuine effort to
make ourselves understood. This is the sign of effective communication.

I think the whole "accent" controversy misses the mark. Having grown up with
an immigrant parent, I know how frequently he was mocked for his accent. Of
course, I could always understand and act as the mediator. This has served me
well in the rest of my life. If only we all had the same benefit.

------
tszyn
I think any geek interested in improving their English should check out my
website: [http://www.antimoon.com](http://www.antimoon.com) especially the
"How to learn English" section, which is a guide based on my own experiences
and some language acquisition theory.
[http://www.antimoon.com/how/howtolearn.htm](http://www.antimoon.com/how/howtolearn.htm)

I've been writing about effective language learning techniques since 2000,
with an emphasis on pronunciation (which is an oft-neglected topic in English
classrooms). The site is written in simple English, so if you're a native
speaker of English, don't be put off by the spartan writing style.

------
blumentopf
English is a Germanic language and I would argue that it is particularly
difficult for Native speakers of Romanic languages to pick it up.

I'm German and my experience has always been that English is a very simple
language and yet versatile enough to allow for very nuanced expression.

~~~
forinti
English is, as far as I can tell, the most Latin of the Germanic languages. I
sometimes like to see how close I can build two sentences, one in Portuguese
(my native tongue) and one in English. For example:

    
    
      I redacted a  text, removing the froufrou.
      Eu redigi um texto, removendo o frufru.
    

French also helps a lot in bridging the gaps.

~~~
felxh
English is the 'most Latin' of the Germanic languages because of the norman
conquest
([http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norman_conquest_of_England)).
Since then, you could almost say that english has a double vocabulary; one
anglo-saxon (germanic) and one norman-french (romanic). This is why english
has so many synonyms and allows for very nuanced expressions (as mentioned by
the parent post).

~~~
forinti
I know, I receive Webster's Word of the Day and most of them are Latin words:
really easy for anyone who speaks a Romance language. The last five were:
incipient; indissoluble, indoctrinate, infantilize, inscrutable. So maybe
Webster should have two mailing lists. One for anglo-saxons and one for
speakers of Romance languages.

~~~
felxh
Funny, I was just googling for that :). The best I could find:
[http://www.quora.com/English-language/Is-there-a-
thesaurus-t...](http://www.quora.com/English-language/Is-there-a-thesaurus-
that-includes-only-Anglo-Saxon-synonyms)

------
dsego
Ed Rondthaler on English spelling (video)
[http://vimeo.com/17561068](http://vimeo.com/17561068)

------
moondowner
"If you don't know English, get a teacher and learn it, if you don't do that
you won't succeed."

This is one of the first things one professor said to us at his first lecture
when I went to faculty.

------
timthorn
Broadcast this morning on BBC Radio 4, and quite pertinent:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039c5cs](http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b039c5cs)

------
jgg
Technical comment, ignoring the Paul Graham drama (which seems like a non-
controversy to me):

English is definitely phonetically-inconsistent (it's almost funny how many
different sounds vowels, diphthongs, etc. can make). I realized this a while
ago, and suddenly felt sorry for people learning English.

However, to dismiss the difference between spoken English and "textbook
English" as some problem endemic to the English language is superficial.
Colloquial versions of languages are almost always different than what is
taught in standard coursework.

Further, arrogantly claiming that English is broken because he, a non-native
speaker, can't understand UK English is idiotic - I can barely understand a
Caribbean Spanish accent, compared to a "textbook" Latin American one, but
that doesn't mean Spanish is "broken." I can understand a UK accent pretty
well, as can most native speakers.

Most languages have really weird problems and seem completely illogical (just
from what I know personally, Russian has a phonology which can get
complicated, due to the stress system), and mastering any of them is very
difficult and usually sucks. It's been my experience that many people who tout
the number of languages they know or claim to be a "polyglot" are actually
very unskilled in day-to-day use of the language. No matter what you see in
movies, a character who could intuitively speak, read and write 6 diverse
languages on a colloquial level would be an exceptional human being.

------
kneisley
A need that I can see is for a class (or at least a few videos) for native
English speakers to effectively communicate with non-native speakers, and a
way to practice.

The crux of the issue is that by repeating themselves a little louder and at
the same speed, a native speaker is treating the (non-native) listener as a
linguistic equal. If my brother doesn't understand what I said, it is almost
certainly due to the volume of my speech relative to our listening
environment, not my content. To assume otherwise would insult his
intelligence. If I'm speaking to a non-native speaker, my natural instinct is
to extend the same courtesy. It isn't laziness or a lack of empathy. (You
could argue it was lazy to speak that way in the first place, but to rephrase
it after the fact would be condescending)

I used to work for a company based in Tokyo and, through practice and
frustration, learned how to modulate my idiom-laden, Missouri-accented, high-
speed, low-volume drawl into something at least partially intelligible to my
Japanese colleagues. It required a lot of effort and still sounds strange out
of context. If I spoke to my father the same way, he'd laugh at me.

As an American, I think it would be really helpful if part of our education
included speaking (and listening to) English as it is spoken by non-natives.
We should have to practice listening to and understanding various common
accents (South Asian, Chinese, Nigerian, etc), practice making ourselves
understood, and learn how to graciously ask for (or give) re-phrasing or
clarification.

------
ximeng
Offer three days ago for people to improve their accent:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304783](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6304783)

(I'm not affiliated.)

------
Fuxy
I don't know about US English but I know how to speak "TV English" perfectly
however when I came to the UK I had a hard time adjusting to the different
accents around London for a couple of months.

Scottish, Irish or just about every accent out there sound like weird sounds
the first time you hear them and you actually have to focus hard to figure out
what the f __k that person just said.

Written English may be the same everywhere but spoken English varies greatly
from region to region.

------
pagles
This sentence is so true "My brain is full of associations between written
words and funny sounds that really don't exist in the actual language."

~~~
precisioncoder
Heh, I grew up speaking English and still had that problem just because my
reading vocabulary surpassed the vocabulary in usage in the country where I
was.

~~~
girvo
I'm 23 and a native Australian English speaker and I still run into this
problem for the same reason.

------
ajuc
I have the same problem. I've learnt English from programming manuals and old
CRPG games pronouncing words in my mind like it was Polish (it has regular
phonetics too). It's very hard to undo the damage now.

I watch a lot of English movies without subtitles, so I can understand (at
least American English), but I'm afraid of speaking, and I have troubles with
pronouncing even basic words.

~~~
kutakbash
This, pretty much. "Cancel" is always going to stay [kuh-ntseh-l], "OK" [oh-k]
and "Delete" [deh-leh-t].

------
sergeykish
My mother tongue is russian.

At childhood I was astonished by spelling scene in translated american film:

    
    
      - Как пишется "кот" # How to spell cat?
      - К О Т # C A T
    

It's quite a dumb question on russian. There is no difference between spelling
and pronunciation. Yet repeating word character by character shown as a mark
of intelligence.

Later on I've learned english by reading. Direct mapping to known phonemes
gives very rough accent. To change it one has to be aware: things are not as
they seem. Reading hidden language helps a lot:

    
    
      $ curl http://www.i18nguy.com/chaos.html | htmlfmt | espeak --ipa -q
      dˈiəɹəst kɹˈiːtʃəɹ ɪn kɹiːˈeɪʃən
      stˈʌdɪ ˈɪŋɡlɪʃ pɹənˌʌnsɪˈeɪʃən
      aɪ wɪl tˈiːtʃ juː ɪn maɪ vˈɜːs
      sˈaʊndz lˈaɪk kˈɔːps
      kˈɔː
      hˈɔːs
      and wˈɜːs
      aɪ wɪl kˈiːp juː
      sˈuːzɪ
      bˈɪzɪ
      mˌeɪk jɔː hˈɛd wɪð hˈiːt ɡɹˈəʊ dˈɪzɪ
      tˈiəɹ ɪn ˈaɪ
      jɔː dɹˈɛs wɪl tˈeə
      sˌəʊ ʃˌal ˈaɪ
      ˈəʊ hˈiə maɪ pɹˈeə

~~~
userulluipeste
Another opinion here. I've had to learn Russian and the pronunciation was
presented easy only at the beginning. Russian has:

\- Diacritics that do not usually appear in the broad case writing. One
example that I happen to remember now is «ё», which most of the time is
written only as a plain «е» (but is still pronounced differently).

\- Broad range of similar pronounced letters, like the group «и, й, ь, ъ»
(Ukrainian also adds «і» and «ї» to those), which becomes very complicated and
even ambiguous when someone has to write on dictation. I still didn't get it
to distinguish «ь» from «ъ» case other than just learning parrot-fashion how
the words are written.

\- Unregulated accents. There is no universal rule for which vowel receives
the accent in a given word. You have to just remember the words. Learning to
read the alphabet is not enough.

\- Different pronunciation for the same letter. One example is «о» which is
pronounced sometimes like "o̞" and other times like "ɐ", but there are lots of
other cases. So try «Как пишется...» providing only phonetic transcription to
a learning-Russian person and see what comes out.

~~~
citrin_ru
Accents is not big problem in Russian - even with wrong accent other people
will understand you in most cases, but it will sound a bit odd. In some cases
in different regions (or even social groups) accent for same word will be
different (and a few native speakers know which variant is officially proper).

------
darklajid
Regarding the problems to pronounce words easily: These two poems resonate
strongly with me and seem to be related to what the author describes:

1:
[http://www.futilitycloset.com/2007/08/30/ough/](http://www.futilitycloset.com/2007/08/30/ough/)

2: [http://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/09/19/o-u-
g-h/](http://www.futilitycloset.com/2009/09/19/o-u-g-h/)

Yes, english between non-english speakers works quite well. Listening to UK
english (especially accents. The TV series Misfits was funny not only because
of the weird story..) is hard, following people from the US is easier but
still full of traps.

I'm confident that I have a huge number of 'english' words in my vocabulary
that I never pronounced right (only read them, trying to pronounce them by
guessing. See the poems..) in my whole life.

------
stkni
Why would anyone even think about learning 'British' English instead of 'US'
English? We Brits do talk a tad funny at times.

Indeed, the OP mentions that US English is somewhat easier to follow and
that's what we should be listening to, the Brits are just a distraction.

The key is that I think it's important to know the language in which most
publication is done. Which for IT issues is currently US English. So more ABC
and less BBC is my advice.

This book by John Honey from 1997 is an interesting read on the subject but
it's a long time since I read it so might be a little dated now:
[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Power-Professor-John-
Honey/...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Language-Power-Professor-John-
Honey/dp/0571190472/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1378135820&sr=8-1&keywords=john+honey)

------
Jacqued
I think this is especially true for native speakers of languages derived from
latin. Why ? Because in classical latin to pronounce a word you just pronounce
every letter in the standard way. So you tend to associate the written word
strongly with the way it is spoken. However in the real world languages are
spoken first, and the way words are written only follows later (or does not
always, which can cause a whole lot of problems, like in French).

Now I don't know about Italian, but a non-native speaker who has learned
French as spoken in Paris will more than likely not understand a native French
speaker from Québec or Côte d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). So I don't think this
problem is specific to English.

Although it is true that if you learn English from the Internet, you'll be
very surprised the first time you hear an Englishman :)

~~~
antirez
> but a non-native speaker who has learned French as spoken in Paris will more
> than likely not understand a native French speaker from Québec or Côte
> d'Ivoire (Ivory Coast). So I don't think this problem is specific to
> English.

That's true but French is kind on an exception among latin languages, it is a
phonetically complex language compared to Italian or Spanish.

~~~
cwp
Yeah. Spanish does have regional phonetic differences, but they don't tend to
be hard to understand. Vocabulary is much more likely to cause
misunderstanding.

------
dspeyer
So what can we do?

As a native English speaker, I freely admit that our spelling is horrible and
our grammar has some sharp edges. Furthermore I freely admit that it's unfair
that the burden of making communication work lies so heavily on others and so
lightly on people like me.

I could try to learn Italian, but even if a third of English-speakers did, it
wouldn't really change Antirez's situation, much less that of his Chinese
analogues.

I could try to write more phonetically, but at a cost of ease-of-reading for
existing English speakers. And an uncoordinated effort would only produce
chaos. Perhaps PG would care to serve as a schelling point?

I could try to learn to understand thick accents better. I don't know where to
start. Likewise I could try to learn to read foreign-grammared English better.
I actually think I'm pretty good at that.

~~~
therealunreal
Simply try to avoid this: "Often even if I say I did not understood, I'll get
the same sentence repeated the same at speed of light."

------
Quarrelsome
Its worth noting though that the grammar is a piece of piss. It works well as
an international language because its easy to learn yet hard to master.

(for the record, I'm trying to learn Icelandic and that language has crazy
rules)

If anything we just need to be cautious of judging people who don't have
native-level English.

------
YuriNiyazov
Not quite the main point of the article, but this stuck with me: "I don't know
most of the words needed to refer to objects you find in a kitchen for
example"

I grew up in the Soviet Union; I learned the names of trees, and birds from my
grandma, and the names of tools in a shop from my dad. We emigrated to New
York; It's been 20 years; I am fluent, I speak with a slight accent, but no
one ever claims they can't understand me; yet, only now, barely, have I
started to learn things like names of birds, trees and tools. I, of course,
don't mean the basic ones like "owl" or "pigeon", or "wrench" and
"screwdriver", but things that are slightly more obscure like "bluejay" or
"vicegrip" eluded me for a long time.

------
pauloya
"Introvert or extrovert": this is a huge deal when learning and living among
foreign speakers. I went through this when I moved to Turkey and I called it
an "Identity Crisis", the way other people perceive you is totally different
than what you are used to.

------
walshemj
Interesting point between English and Italian - when I was diagnosed with
dyslexia the specialist at great ormand street commented that if was an
Italian I would have had much less trouble with writing and grammar as Italian
is a very regular language compered to English

------
CurtMonash
PG has been off his game in this discussion. It is important to be fluent both
in understanding and in communicating, both in English and in techspeak. I
threw together
[http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/](http://www.strategicmessaging.com/fluency/2013/08/30/)
to spell that out, and it's the first time ever I've just banged out a post
that much improved on what Paul Graham wrote.

antirez adds to the discussion further, by pointing out that there are various
different kinds of language fluency. Excellent observations.

------
coldtea
> _So starting from 1998 I slowly learned to fluently read English without
> making more efforts compared to reading something written in Italian. I even
> learned to write at the same speed I wrote stuff in Italian, even if I hit a
> local minima in this regard, as you can see reading this post: basically I
> learned to write very fast a broken subset of English, that is usually
> enough to express my thoughts in the field of programming, but it is not
> good enough to write about general topics. I don 't know most of the words
> needed to refer to objects you find in a kitchen for example, or the grammar
> constructs needed to formulate complex sentences, hypothetical structures,
> and so forth._

Well, have you tried to properly study English, as in, with a teacher and a
course book? From your description I understand that you merely tried to
casually pick up English.

If so, it's not particularly fair to assess the difficulty of English compared
to your own language (that, besides, being your native language, you were
taught it's grammar and syntax for years on end at school).

I've studied English for several years and have no trouble speaking or reading
it -- despite not having had many opportunities to speak it with native
english speakers until much later in my life. Reading a lot of
books/magazines/etc helps a lot. Reading for like 1-2 hours per day.

I found out I could pick a specialized subject I was interested in, like, say,
electronic music production, and just by reading the magazines (Future Music,
Electronic Musician, Keyboard etc) for a couple of years I could go from a
total newbie to understanding all the specialized vocabulary used (from simple
stuff, like "knob", "fader" and "slider" to "dither", "LFO", "frequency
cutoff" etc).

Watching movies and tv series without subtitles also helps tremendously. In
Italy this is even worse, because they don't just add subtitles, they usually
dub the whole thing with Italian actors (ugh).

(OTOH, ho studiato Italiano per tre anni, in un gruppo picolo, e questo e
tutto che lo ricordo, ho dimenticato quasi tutti gli parole e la majorita de
la "syntax" e gli tempi -- damn, that got bad quickly)

~~~
antirez
Hi coldtea, I tried to study English more formally, to start at high school,
but the level of English teaching is not great in Italian schools most of the
times. I tried it again from time to time, but now the barrier is the free
time. With a busy work and a family it really is not an option for me to spend
another one/two hours to watch films and/or study English... probably a
simpler approach could be to travel more, and instead of refusing all the
invitations I get for confs, to attend more events where there are many
English speakers. Your italian is still understandable :-)

------
zedr
I'm more intrigued about his statement "in 10 years I'll likely no longer
write code professionally".

I wonder if it's a personal choice, or if he thinks that there is age limit
for the profession.

~~~
lutusp
It could mean a number of things.

* He expects eventually to burn out, a risk for any programmer.

* He expects to write a best-seller and retire young.

* He expects to eventually no longer be able to keep up with changes in the software business.

* All of the above. :)

------
microcolonel
We need a standard technical document describing a subset of the natural
language English, which is suitable for increasing clarity of technical
documentation and discussion. Maybe evolve it like we do so many software
projects(in a revision control mechanism, with an issue tracker).

I know somebody is going to say “But there's ASD-STE100!”, unfortunately ASD-
STE100 is a closed standard, and it's not even exactly clear how one might get
a copy(without working for a DoD contractor or some similar).

Revised Report on the natural language English(RRE) maybe. ;)

------
16s
I hope antirez never stops coding to move into management. I first came to
know him during the Engine Yard Hamming Distance contest (2009). I've read and
followed his work ever since.

------
nfriedly
I'm a native English speaker, but I sometimes have a problem with pronouncing
words that I've read but either not heard spoken, or heard but didn't realize
it was the same word. I'll make up a pronunciation in my head and then use
that in conversation and confuse whoever I'm talking to.

My wife catches me saying a new one every month or two, and she thinks its
hilarious (but she also helps me pronounce it correctly, so I can't complain
too much.)

------
cliveowen
Last time I expressed my thoughts[1] here about the same thing I was brutally
word-raped by the angriest people on earth, now everyone is saying what I was
saying all along and it's all well and good.

You need to know English: put in the effort, watch a shitload of movies and
read even more books. That's it, you can't just ignore it.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6239371](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6239371)

~~~
DanBC
> You need to know English

No, you really don't. You only need to know English if you're selling to
English speaking people. You'll probably need to learn English for a number of
professions. But apart from that you can live and work perfectly well without
using English at all.

English isn't the main language on the Internet any more, it is just one of
them. The fact that you happen to think that English is the major language
used on the Internet is possibly just a vicious self-reinforcing cognitive
bias.

~~~
cliveowen
It's not about the language of the internet, it's about the language in which
the most influential books and papers are written. If you can't read ACM
papers or IEEE specifications you're at a disadvantage whether or not you're
selling to English speakers. If I were to build a car and the best resources
were written in Japanese I'd be at a disadvantage even if I was working for,
say, a Swedish outfit.

Since most researchers relocate in the states and subsequently publish their
findings in English there's no doubt that the best sources of knowledge are
written in English.

------
djvv
Does anyone know of software that does speech to IPA (or any phonetic
representation)?

If such a thing exist then it should be possible to write a program which
compares the users pronunciation to the official one and gives tips and
exercises on getting closer to the proper way of speaking. I can see some
difficulties with differences depending on the speakers native language and
the target language.

What do you think?

------
iframe
I'm good reading and listening English but when it comes to talk with somebody
it feels like I forget it all I have to think twice before talking and I my
pronunciation sucks I've been practicing that .. if there are good sources for
improving this please share it , I'm currently using livemocha but I already
lost interest on it, I also recommend listening to podcasts.

------
justin66
> My long term hope is that soon or later different accents could converge
> into a standard easy-to-understand one that the English speaking population
> could use as a lingua franca.

I'm puzzled by this comment. The generic midwest accent that most people on
television use would seem like a good, obvious candidate. Even newscasters in
Europe seem to target this when using English.

------
xr09
I read a lot of technical docs in English, and watch a lot of movies without
subtitles to force my brain to catch the words, it worked pretty well so far.

I'm starting to read non-tech literature, is another league but I like it, is
cool reading a book in its original language. (Robinson Crusoe right now..)

------
simonebrunozzi
Another hopefully interesting discussion on another HN thread here (Accents,
English, Arrogance, Success):
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6316826](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6316826)

(disclaimer: I am the author of the original article)

------
nairboon
That's the reason they've invented Lojban, a logical language, which is way
easier to learn than those natural languages:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lojban)

------
mwcampbell
I wonder if using a screen reader for the blind, with the language set to
English, would help non-native speakers learn pronunciation. For example, use
VoiceOver on OS X (enabled by pressing Command+F5) to read blogs, HN, etc.

------
Qantourisc
In Belgium you often need 3 languages to operate (depending on the company
location, and how big the company is): Dutch, English and French...

------
olivier1664
Paul Graham talks about the "founders", not of the whole "IT workers"
community.

------
mmgutz
English is the QWERTY of languages.

------
Havoc
Could be worse. Like say German. der/die/das would cause many suicides.

------
devgutt
besides, I feel that I'm wasting too much time. I know that is important, but
still, it is just a tool. Not even a challenging one. It's just a boring tool
to learn.

------
DDR0
English would appear to be the Javascript of spoken languages.

------
bluekeybox
Listen to audio books. Problem solved.

------
poppingtonic
While pg's comment may have seemed insensitive to some, it has helped bring to
light some of the anxieties that foreign-born founders may themselves have
(for instance, about the way the local culture they're founding a company in
will perceive them due to their accent, not forgetting their ability to
communicate anyway).

Posts like this one are a sign that cultural phenomena such as this will be
more visible, and won't just disappear into the detritus of forgotten blogs.
Do some foreign-born founders struggle with their accents? Yes. Is a strong
accent a barrier to communication? Quite likely, yes. Is it worth it for a
founder to do what it takes to communicate her message exactly, and nothing
else? Absolutely.

Shouldn't the goal be to either: 1) become excellent communicators, or to 2)
find excellent communicators, and get them on "our" team?

Now we can focus on, with our characteristic laser-like ability, and talk
about why accents may hold somebody back, as a community, and how we can help
people succeed anyway.

Some ideas: \- Schools to help founders communicate better? \- An additional
service within accelerator programs to help founders with strong accents
become effective anyway? (Maybe YC could just take this and run with it)

Solve that problem and move on to the next one. Isn't that The Rule?

Let me take the opportunity to focus on what, imho, started this whole
controversy. While I consider pg's position to be valid, he should probably
have explained it better, through his usual channel of the essay form, before
talking about it in the media, where his words were much more likely to be
taken out of context. He didn't, they were, and we're left picking up the
media-transformed pieces of what would have been an otherwise instructive take
on what might hold some foreign-born startup founders back. pg seems to have
forgotten why he writes essays (explore ideas as fully as possible, while
leaving room for improvement), and now he has to pay for that mistake with a
(possibly -- I have no way of knowing if he'd prepared an article about this)
quickly written piece of damage control, published in the middle of a frenzy
of accusations and hurt feelings. The "Founders' Accents" essay is weaker than
it would have been if he'd written it before he did the inc.com interview, as
the interviewer would have had a more self-contained source to reference,
counter-arguments and all.[0]

I must conclude, therefore, that his comment may have done more harm, in the
short-term, than good. It remains to be seen whether we can turn this around
for the good of all.

We should remember, though, that we're in this together, and pg is not the
only one who has a responsibility to make sure the people that matter don't
miss out on opportunities because of something that can be fixed. Which is not
to say that its trivial. Fifteen years is a long time.

[0] For one, I don't think the discussion surrounding it would have devolved
into accusations of racism, though that probably says more about my view of
people than about pg's detractors in this case.

------
whiddershins
English is to spoken languages what Javascript is to coding.

------
blackcat
Some simplifications were made by Noah Webster.

Webster thought that Americans should learn from American books, so he began
writing a three volume compendium, A Grammatical Institute of the English
Language. The work consisted of a speller (published in 1783), a grammar
(published in 1784), and a reader (published in 1785). His goal was to provide
a uniquely American approach to training children. His most important
improvement, he claimed, was to rescue "our native tongue" from "the clamour
of pedantry" that surrounded English grammar and pronunciation. He complained
that the English language had been corrupted by the British aristocracy, which
set its own standard for proper spelling and pronunciation. Webster rejected
the notion that the study of Greek and Latin must precede the study of English
grammar. The appropriate standard for the American language, argued Webster,
was "the same republican principles as American civil and ecclesiastical
constitutions". This meant that the people-at-large must control the language;
popular sovereignty in government must be accompanied by popular usage in
language. Slowly, edition by edition, Webster changed the spelling of words,
making them "Americanized". He chose s over c in words like defense, he
changed the re to er in words like center, and he dropped one of the Ls in
traveler. At first he kept the u in words like colour or favour but dropped it
in later editions. He also changed "tongue" to "tung"—an innovation that never
caught on.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster)

~~~
notahacker
Webster's choice of modifications has always puzzled me: he picked on
perfectly harmless words like "defence" (but _not_ it's cognate "fence") and
that you'd struggle to mispronounce or misspell whilst leaving abominations
like "Wednesday" alone, and reverting some of his better changes like "wimmen"

That said I think English would be much more useful as an auxiliary second
language if someone as bold as Webster was willing to actively promote a
distinctive "International English" with a more consistent orthography (I
quite like Valerie Yule's, but even fixing though/through/tough/cough/bough
would be a start)

------
thenerdfiles
"[...] in the attention zone [...]"

Are you serious, dude?

Politics and the English Language.

