wendycoke said:
I'm talking about .... whose English is unintelligible.
LOL Wendy, some folks say that about my English. If I'm talking with a fellow Welshman in near-Queen's-English (well, with a bit of Wenglish thrown in), folks will sometimes ask Chris "are they speaking Welsh?"
On the flip side, we used to have non-Brit Europeans (who's first language was not English) visit our California company and say to me "you can't be American, you don't talk funny like all these other folks". ;D
I've had numerous Asian Indians as colleagues and subordinates, so maybe my ears are better calibrated. But I once had a boss who told me "I can't understand a word that guy (an Indian) says, how about you?" I replied "he's clear as a bell". ???
In another situation, that same boss, while listening to an Indian who was making a presentation, interrupted and said "I can't understand a word you're saying". Seeing the embarrassment on the recipient's face, another Inidian in the room said "they don't think as fast as us; Just speak a little slower so they can keep up". The whole room burst into laughter.
After many years of working in multi-national companies in addition to companies with many nationalities represented in the same location and having travelled extensively around the world, I truly believe that most of us who primarily speak English are lazy; We won't learn and speak other languages, yet we expect folks in other countries to speak our language when we visit their country. A "foreigner" who speaks English, even it's not highly intelligible, is doing something a lot of us can't be othered to do. i.e. speak to us in our language.
When someone is too lazy to listen past an accent, I let them know that it requires both ends of the communication to function - transmitter and receiver. ;D
Folks, y'all had better start learning Mandarin because one of these days we may not be the super power.