How irritating is a non-english speaker to an english speaker?

[kohoutek]

To any non-native English speakers: How is this problem for you when it comes to people who don't speak your language perfectly? How is it when an American butchers Dutch, Chinese, German, or French?

The thing is that many people whose native language isn't English are decently educated in at least one other language. I can only speak for Germany, obviously, but nobody here expects someone whose native language isn't German to be 100% accurate and proficient in it. Not everyone has linguistic talent, so to conclude someone's stupidity from the lack of being good at one very specific discipline is a very abstract notion to subscribe to...

When I read some of the responses here (and elsewhere), it seems that many native English speakers expect you to be proficient in English (their language), and when you're not, you'll be exposed to mockery because you're thought of as being illiterate or simply dumb, something I find immensely arrogant, irritating, and utterly fatuitous.

Not everyone is that way, thank goodness, but quite a few are and it's just really, really, well, "silly", to put it diplomatically.

[ralph.m]

it seems that many native English speakers expect you to be proficient in English (their language), and when you're not, you'll be exposed to mockery because you're thought of as being illiterate or simply dumb

Certainly not in Australia (most parts, anyway), I'm happy to say, as we have such a mix of cultures here that accents/broken English etc. are a daily norm. People are happy here as long as they can glean the intended meaning. (At our local computer 'swap meet', I often have to resort to sign language to communicate with vendors, but it's kinda fun, actually.)

[Shyflower]

Certainly not in Australia (most parts, anyway), I'm happy to say, as we have such a mix of cultures here that accents/broken English etc. are a daily norm. People are happy here as long as they can glean the intended meaning. (At our local computer 'swap meet', I often have to resort to sign language to communicate with vendors, but it's kinda fun, actually.)

So that's why I misunderstand you! I can't see what you're signing!

[Spartinman]

Well, to flip the script, literally, what about when it comes down to having someone who's original langauge was not English writing for you? It find that they do a better job sometimes with writing because they are almost OCD or anal about proper grammar and spelling. Although, words do get mix-matched depending on their original language.. ie: spanish it happens a lot considering how a lot of the language structure is 'backwards' when compared to traditional English (sentences for instance).

[ralph.m]

I can't see what you're signing!

That's lucky for you, too, as it's not pretty sometimes.

what about when it comes down to having someone who's original langauge was not English writing for you?

As long as they have a good command of English, it won't be hard to proof read what they've done and iron out any little idiomatic slipups.

[kohoutek]

Certainly not in Australia (most parts, anyway), I'm happy to say, as we have such a mix of cultures here that accents/broken English etc. are a daily norm. People are happy here as long as they can glean the intended meaning. (At our local computer 'swap meet', I often have to resort to sign language to communicate with vendors, but it's kinda fun, actually.)

That's good to know! It most certainly isn't everyone and these people are in a minority, as I said, but I get really mad when I see someone—on an international platform like Twitter or other—post a time or recommend a shop to a stranger and expecting everyone to know what timezone is meant or not being aware that Bestbuy or Walmart aren't international stores! I've seen that quite a few times and, boy, it drives me mad! But then again, I'm easily annoyed.

[ralph.m]

I get really mad when I see someone—on an international platform like Twitter or other—post a time or recommend a shop to a stranger and expecting everyone to know what timezone is meant ...

Indeed, it's very small-minded. I've contacted a few sites (mostly in the US) and told them off for things like that. For example, a hosting company in the US used to describe its location as "just outside the nation's capital". I wrote to them and said "Ah, so you are based near Canberra?" They quickly changed it to "just outside Washinton, D.C."

[PWS]

Just about all of my customers are non-english speaking, and I think the majority of them use Google Translate. But I don't complain, they are customers . I have started referring them to OneHourTranslation though, since my customers buy high ticket items paying $7 or so for translating important emails is well worth it.

[Shyflower]

Indeed, it's very small-minded. I've contacted a few sites (mostly in the US) and told them off for things like that. For example, a hosting company in the US used to describe its location as "just outside the nation's capital". I wrote to them and said "Ah, so you are based near Canberra?" They quickly changed it to "just outside Washinton, D.C."

Off Topic:

Canberra... I thought, 'There MUST be a town somewhere in the US named Canberra!'

Nope, there is a US ship and a US plane named Canberra, but Australia has dibs on the city!(I need to retake a geography course. I always thought your Capitol City was either Brisbane or Sydney. Shame on me! )

[ralph.m]

Off Topic:

I need to retake a geography course. I always thought your Capitol City was either Brisbane or Sydney.

Be glad that you knew Australia was somewhere outside the US. For many years there's been a running joke about geographical knowledge of US college students ... but I won't go there. I can't claim to be much good at geography myself. (Thank the gods for Google!) It helps if you've been to a place.

Since Australia was federated in 1901, the original capital of Australia was Melbourne (where I live and where SP is based) followed by Canberra in 1908. Canberra was originally a sleepy country town roughly half way between Melbourne and Sydney—Australia's two biggest cities—because no one could agree on which city should be the capital. (BTW, Canberra is still a sleepy country town roughly half way between Melbourne and Sydney. )

[Stomme poes]

Off Topic:

When telling 'murkins we were from Holland or the Netherlands (you actually can't say you're "from Holland" when in West Michigan since the assumption then is you meant Holland, Michigan... or Zeeland or Overrijsel or Watervliet or Drenthe or any other long list of Dutch names there locally...), we were asked things like "Is that in Amsterdam of Finland?" (yes that's a real quote) "Is that in Scandinavia?" (well, they were geographically kinda close) and "Is that part of Denmark?".

I have to give them credit for choosing the correct quarter of the planet though.

[pkwrite78]

What I find much more irritating than mistakes by non-English people are serious mistakes (or just really bad writing) by native English speakers. When reading something that isn't perfect English, it's usually pretty easy to tell whether the author is a native English speaker or not – the style is very different – and I have much more patience with someone who is writing in a foreign language than someone who hasn't made the effort to master their own.

Having worked for close to half a dozen call centers in India, I thought it right to say something here,

well this question, reminds me of a discussion we had at a training session for AT&T ,Bell south training program for new joinees. we were going through communication skills training , and the trainer explained the reasons , why Indian's needed training on communication skills, though they speak good English is because of the 18 different dialects this country has every language has different set rules of the way the language is spoken etc, some languages do not have certain sounds etc, and therefore arises a need to neutralise the accent.

Well, I asked her, in that case , I heard America has 6-8 different accents, like the NY accent, Texan accent and so on and so forth, also America being land of opportunity's people from across the globe live, work there, now these guys could be customers, or even call center reps ( which makes them non native speakers of English , in America . I have known couple of Indian's who went to USA for Graduate studies, worked for call centers there) She had no answer for that question .

Now this situation makes it equally important for even American representatives to be trained in language, communication skills etc ( so they leave their regional accent behind and speak a neutral, universal accent).

Now the biggest barrier in customer service with outsourcing , I feel is culture and lifestyle kind of issues, than language, if an agent understands what a customer is complaining of, then he doesn't need the customer to repeat and frustrate the customer .

For example, I have worked for more than a year with a satelite tv services company and I still do not understand or know what black out means, regional and national etc. now in calls relating to black outs , I used to be lost completely, and frustrate the customers, by probing more or talking something else than what customer is trying to tell me.

Well if this discussion is not just about call centers and outsourcing , as the title of the thread says

"How irritating is a non-English speaker to an English speaker?"

It could also be the other way round , I mean

How irritating is an English speaker to a non -English speaker?

Well I am a racist, but I am fine with everyone except one religion and this discussion has no remote reference to them now back to discussion

An Afro Americans nasal accents used to be irritating , while we were on job, with hectic calling schedules etc.

And as one of the beginning posts here says, mistakes English speakers makes, yeah

some of the funny statements mocked at in these call centers are

Agent :::Mam, May I please have your card number ( or some information say)
Customer : You want my whaaaat

[ralph.m]

why Indian's needed training on communication skills, though they speak good English is because of the 18 different dialects this country has every language has different set rules of the way the language is spoken etc, some languages do not have certain sounds etc, and therefore arises a need to neutralise the accent.

They also need to familiarize themselves with the accents of the people they will be helping. A lot of our companies here in Australia outsource their call centers to India, and the people on the phone often can't understand our Australian accents, making the communication all the more frustrating.

Off Topic:

it equally important for even American representatives to be trained in language, communication skills etc ( so they leave their regional accent behind and speak a neutral, universal accent).

"Hey maw, I cain't git my head 'round what this here dude is talk-in 'bout. Ifn he thaynks we goan learn ta speak diffrn, I thaynk he gut rucks in hees heyd."

[Stomme poes]

Well, I asked her, in that case , I heard America has 6-8 different accents, like the NY accent, Texan accent and so on and so forth, also America being land of opportunity's people from across the globe live, work there, now these guys could be customers, or even call center reps ( which makes them non native speakers of English , in America . I have known couple of Indian's who went to USA for Graduate studies, worked for call centers there) She had no answer for that question .

I knew this before, but got a better explanation when I read an autobiography of Dan Rather, a somewhat well-known US tv news anchor. He came from Texas, which has what Americans consider an obvious and strong accent. When he broadcast locally in Texas, this was fine, but when he went nationwide (I forget which network he worked for, but at the time there were only 3 major networks across the US), he was required to get training to remove his accent. Specifically the words he pronounced being misunderstood by non-Texans: one example he was picked on for was pronouncing "deputy" as "deppity".

National television anchors, and some musicians and public speakers, have schools or courses where they are taught to imitate the flattest accent, that of the MidWest. It sounds similar enough to parts of the south like Florida, parts of the west like California, and large parts of the urbanised middle. It was not considered acceptable for a nationwide news anchor to have an "obvious" accent like New York, Boston, southern or Texan accent (even though there are some who still did and were known for it).

Now the biggest barrier in customer service with outsourcing , I feel is culture and lifestyle kind of issues, than language, if an agent understands what a customer is complaining of, then he doesn't need the customer to repeat and frustrate the customer .

For example, I have worked for more than a year with a satelite tv services company and I still do not understand or know what black out means, regional and national etc. now in calls relating to black outs , I used to be lost completely, and frustrate the customers, by probing more or talking something else than what customer is trying to tell me.

It's absolutely the job of the company hiring the call center (or the call center itself) to be 100% familiar with the terms used by customers. It's not *your* job to just know what these mean: you should have training in the terms and a place where you can look them up while on the job. "Black-out" being an example of a term with region- and nation-wide use. Wikipedia even uses the term for black- and brownouts.

When we were trying to get my uncle in the States out of the Internet black hole he was living in (Windows 98 machine running dial-up AOL, barely), he had to get a router from the cable company (I think ComCast). When we got the router, something wasn't working. Now it ultimately turned out the the issue was an answering machine someone'd forgotten about interfering with the line (adding a splitter there fixed everything) but since the cables of the router were kinda brown and melted, we figured it was defective and should send it back.

So a new one came a few days later and now the problem was, how to send the old one back. This wouldn't have been a problem if the company had simply supplied a return form with an address, but they didn't. Instead somewhere deep in small print it mentioned using a special number and writing that on the box and then dropping it off at a UPS center somewhere. Problem was, there were several numbers that could have matched. A call to the company led to a call center worker in the Phillipines whose problem was she could only follow a script, which didn't help us as at the point where we were supposed to add a number, there was no (matching) number available. She could only keep going back to step one which frustrated my uncle, who ultimately decided that he would just keep the router, decorate the table with it or something, until they asked for it back.

So far as I know it's still there. Telecom, cable and credit card companies are the worst companies to have to call, evar.

[pkwrite78]

I knew this before, but got a better explanation when I read an autobiography of Dan Rather, a somewhat well-known US tv news anchor. He came from Texas, which has what Americans consider an obvious and strong accent. When he broadcast locally in Texas, this was fine, but when he went nationwide (I forget which network he worked for, but at the time there were only 3 major networks across the US), he was required to get training to remove his accent. Specifically the words he pronounced being misunderstood by non-Texans: one example he was picked on for was pronouncing "deputy" as "deppity".

Now that proves language barrier is universal, not just limited to Asian country's or so

[Stomme poes]

Now that proves language barrier is universal, not just limited to Asian country's or so

Oh absolutely. There are accents in America other people outside their region cannot understand.

Here in the Netherlands, there are farmers in Brabant with strong accents, and they don't speak what they call "standard Dutch". So whenever a news program has interviews with someone from Brabant and it's meant for the whole country, they get undertitles/captioning.

There were two films made with a stereotypical set of Brabanders called New Kids. They needed undertitles for anyone outside of Brabant to understand them.

Oh lord they have a wikipedia page...

Also my company has Dutch people who speak English with a very strong Dutch accent, and we work with a group of French-speaking Belgians who speak English with strong French accents. Listening to my boss try to talk to one of the Tryton guys is... interesting :P

[Shyflower]

Oh absolutely. There are accents in America other people outside their region cannot understand.

Here in the Netherlands, there are farmers in Brabant with strong accents, and they don't speak what they call "standard Dutch". So whenever a news program has interviews with someone from Brabant and it's meant for the whole country, they get undertitles/captioning.

There were two films made with a stereotypical set of Brabanders called New Kids. They needed undertitles for anyone outside of Brabant to understand them.

Oh lord they have a wikipedia page...

Also my company has Dutch people who speak English with a very strong Dutch accent, and we work with a group of French-speaking Belgians who speak English with strong French accents. Listening to my boss try to talk to one of the Tryton guys is... interesting :P

Off Topic:

I once met a Belgian woman who spoke English. However, I found her accent to be quite unusual. After she told me she was from Belgium, I asked her, "Do you speak German there?" She was visibly irritated by my question and told me they spoke Flemish. Who knew? :

[Stomme poes]

Off Topic:

They seem to sound kinda German to American ears. If Belgians met more Americans I think they'd hear that more often :)

Flemish means "Belgian Dutch" as far as I'm concerned. The northern half (less than half really) speaks this, and the southern half speaks Wallonian which is just Belgian French. Strangely, most people there don't speak both languages. When we travel to Belgium, if we stray further south than Brussel we are down to grunting and pointing.

Because of cartoons, we can say "omelette du fromage" and that's about it.

[Shyflower]

Off Topic:

They seem to sound kinda German to American ears. If Belgians met more Americans I think they'd hear that more often

Flemish means "Belgian Dutch" as far as I'm concerned. The northern half (less than half really) speaks this, and the southern half speaks Wallonian which is just Belgian French. Strangely, most people there don't speak both languages. When we travel to Belgium, if we stray further south than Brussel we are down to grunting and pointing.

Because of cartoons, we can say "omelette du fromage" and that's about it.

Off Topic:

Well I get the 'eggs' but the fromage is beyond my poor two-year French class. I probably used to know what it meant (sounds a wee bit familiar), but it is lost in memory.

[Stomme poes]

Off Topic:

http://jimerryan.multiply.com/video/item/14

this
explains
everything

if you watch at least half of it.

Though, actually it should have been omelette au fromage, but whatever.

[pkwrite78]

"Hey maw, I cain't git my head 'round what this here dude is talk-in 'bout. Ifn he thaynks we goan learn ta speak diffrn, I thaynk he gut rucks in hees heyd."
[/ot][/QUOTE]


All I can say is that's John Howardism,

Anyways, as we agreed that Language barrier is universal, its more about product knowledge, listening skills, Training etc

Even native speakers of English may frustrate you, like as a customer when I call for assistance , my internet company or my mobile company, they talk Greek and latin, not that they dont understand what i want or I dont understand what they speak, but its all about their inability to give me what I need, now thats business policies, business never frames policies in consultation with customers, but they want customer service representatives to convince the customer and get a go ahead for the policies devised against customer.

And yeah speaking of outsourcing in India, US, UK,asutralian call centers are killing this country, economy and the future of this country .

[Stomme poes]

but its all about their inability to give me what I need

^
THIS

Every company who fails to understand this, fails, period. Or full-stop, if your British.

[EugeneK]

Hi,

Regardless how much i tried and how long i have lived outside my home country, my English remains non-native and it will...
I hear everything when i speak and even when i write...
It goes from fresh and jovial with some people to vintage and irritating with others.

I believe it depends on the reader - open-minded or not.
Does it truly mean that the Internet is forbidden to foreigners... Sad conclusion for the world wide web...

Please tell me how you feel reading at few mistakes in a post or a content...

Cheers

You are exaggerating a lot here.
Most of the world population is not native to English - it's just happened that this language is relatively easy to learn (comparing to Chinese or Hindu)

Regarding mistakes - it really depends on what kind of mistakes we're talking about here.
If it's a stylistic mistake, I usually don't pay a lot of attention to it.
In case of grammar - it gets a bit more irritating, because I get a feeling that the writer doesn't care much about his post.

Anyhow,
Being a foreigner is advantage - you have greater life experience and knowledge of multiple cultures.

[guido2004]

Being a foreigner is advantage - you have greater life experience and knowledge of multiple cultures.

Really? As a foreigner you surely have knowledge of a different culture: your own. But that doesn't mean you have knowledge of more cultures, does it?
The same for life experience.

[EugeneK]

Really? As a foreigner you surely have knowledge of a different culture: your own. But that doesn't mean you have knowledge of more cultures, does it?
The same for life experience.

As a foreigner you surely have knowledge of a different culture: your own. - different culture is my own culture? Not sure I get your point


If you live in a foreign country for enough time and socialize with the native population, you'll eventually understand them, their culture, and their mentality.
The only thing that I'm trying to bring across is that there is nothing disadvantageous in being a foreigner
Also, I'm going away from the topic of this thread