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Comment by wink | Hacker News Reader

Guess it's the right time to smugly lean back as a continental European and point to your absolutely disgusting freeform mix of AE and BE terms, pronunciation and spelling, the only saving grace usually having decided to be consistent with o vs ou, at least in a single document or conversation :D

Also yes, I think we mostly learned Received Pronunciation in school but at least half of the people diverged towards American (in words like "can't") pretty soon and I honestly couldn't tell you if I'm still being consistent, 20 years after school and using English for a huge part of my working life, as a software developer.

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Another continental European here (also software developer). I know most non-native speakers will never learn "proper" English pronunciation (whether AE or BE or Australian English I don't care) and international English is here to stay but, man, the many ways in people butcher English pronunciation (not because they pronounce everything as in their mother tongue – that's fine – but because they actually try to put on a native AE or BE accent) still makes my ears bleed on a daily basis.

Pronouncing English literally as if it were Spanish, French, etc. would make it impossible to understand.

Every non-native English learner tries to imitate natives, to the best of their ability. I don't think there's any other way to learn. Some people relax and stop trying to improve once they notice that they get to a level where they are understood, though. And then, one can be aware of one's limits (I don't think I'll ever get to distinguish "ice" and "eyes", so I don't even try anymore).

What you describe seems to be some kind of linguistic "uncanny valley" effect.

> Pronouncing English literally as if it were Spanish, French, etc. would make it impossible to understand.

I was chatting to a French-born colleague and he mentioned visiting the camping store "Millets". He pronounced it as a French word (something like "mi-ey") and I had no idea what he was talking about. It was unusual as otherwise his english was flawless.

Hehe, or hearing Versace pronounced like ver-b and surf-ace ;) That also took a bit of thinking outside the box.

Brits can occasionally run into this problem with US or Canadian place names that look like they ought to be of French origin, but really aren't pronounced that way. (someone else can provide examples)

Surely not in Canada?

Yes, that's probably a much better way to put it. Thank you :)

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