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Comment by SoftTalker | Hacker News Reader

Strong Indian accents are very difficult for me. Less so in person, but on a Zoom call forget it. I end up asking them to email me.

Edit: added "Strong" qualifer, fwiw.

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Any unfamiliar accent is difficult. The only question is the amount of effort we’re willing to put in to familiarise ourselves.

For example, I thought I had a decent handle on Scottish accents. Turns out I don’t, just that all the Scottish people I worked with were anglicising their accents. I only heard their natural accents after we had a few pints. Now I’m working with several Scottish people who don’t change their accent and it is hard. I’m thinking I probably have to watch a few seasons of Outlander to get used to it.

There’s nothing “natural” about any accent. How difficult was the Boston accent the first time you heard it? I needed subtitles for sure. Then I watched several movies set in Boston (Good Will Hunting, The Departed, The Town) and it’s understandable now.

All this to say - you need familiarity to understand and you need to put in effort to gain familiarity. That’s fairly uncontroversial.

Here’s the controversial part - people will put in the effort to understand the accents and dialects of people from Scotland, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, America. But if it’s an accent/dialect from India, they say some racist shit about the brown people being unable to speak English.

So yes “Strong Indian accents are very difficult” for you. And now you know why.

I'm a) not a linguist and b) ESL - but I notice a stark different between Irish/Scottish/Texan (as a standin for a thick southern example) on the one hand and most Indian/African (both native) and French (as ESL) dialects on the other end. The former are doing a lot of different words, contractions and mostly different pronunciations, but the latter are often using the same words, no contractions but just speaking with a different stress on syllables and melody of the sentence and that's what makes it harder for me. But I am in no way disputing your "getting used to it" argument.

Also, and again I might be wrong, but I cannot for the life of me understand people from Glasgow but the rest of Scotland was pretty much fine when I was there. I know it's kinda different but lumping "Scottish" together is already weird. I'm from Bavaria, I know how it is - people who understand German can't understand us :P

The fact that you're willing to put in the effort for accents with different words, contractions and pronunciations but not willing to put in the effort for slightly different stress/melody is sadly quite common.

Someone saying "I'm going to pick up my ute in the arvo while I eat a jaffle" - sure, let me look up what that means. Whereas "Kindly do the needful" - no fuck this, you need to learn to fucking speak English.

I'd say the difference isn't what you've pointed out, it's the colour of the skin of the speaker. White people saying anything they feel like - the onus is on the listener to adapt. Brown/black people saying anything - they need to learn to speak English.

> lumping "Scottish" together is already weird

You lumping "Indian" together is equally weird. What's the matter? You can't tell the difference between a Tamil person and Malayali person speaking English? Spare me the condescension, please.

You are the only one that is acting racist here.

I put in the effort for every English accent I've encountered - French, Turkish, Greek, Scottish, Australian, Indian Canadian.

You put in the effort for white people's accents.

But sure, I'm the racist.

Typical isn't it? Indian person complains about racism and you immediately decide that complaining is racist. Says everything I need to know about you.

I grew up familiar with "do the needful", which I still use. I also grew up many thousands of miles from India. But my favorite Indian expression, which I learned later is to "prepone" something, as in the opposite of to "postpone" something. That one, I genuinely love. Neither of these are slang, like "ute" or "arvo", they're a thoughtful evolution of the language.

A data point from me: people in Chicago had real trouble understanding my English accent. Then I realised that when they had trouble understanding I reflexively said it again closer to Received Pronunciation i.e. even more English. Then i started imitating the Chicago accent and people understood me. They still thought I had an English accent, just not so thick they couldn’t understand me. English people who knew me found the way i talked to Chicagoans absolutely hilarious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pit0OkNp7s8 This Irish Sheep farmer is my favorite example of a hard to understand Irish accent. I've lived nearby to this location and can attest that it is quite common.

In 2005, I could believe this complaint because offshoring was still pretty new. But 2025, still... really? I find it hard to believe. This sounds like very low effort on your part. India is the size of a continent, and AI tells me: "India is roughly the same size as Europe (excluding Russia)." Can you imagine someone from India saying the reverse? <<"European" accents (whatever the hell that means because there are 50 countries in Europe!) are very difficult for me...>>

What is your native language, and what makes your struggle unique?

Do you also struggle to understand the myriad of other strong English accents, such as: Oz/Kiwi English, or Singlish (Singaporean/Malaysian English) or South African English, or Hongkonger English, or (Los Angeles) Valley Girl English (I jest here)... or French English, or whatever else? Plus, there are so many incredible YouTube content creators speaking English as a second (or third!) language these days... hell, it is like language accent training watching YouTube these days (hats of to them for publishing in a non-native language!).

I don't think it's unreasonable to find accents from places you don't live hard to understand. A lot of accents completely shift the vowel sounds. It can take a lot of familiarisation to start to understand what each sound means. Some people find this easier than others.

India is a huge country with a strong local tradition of speaking English. That means Indian English has a lot of local quirks that someone from outside the country wouldn't know.

I imagine everyone who speaks English struggles to understand strong accents that have significant shifts from their local one. I work with lots of French people speaking English, and even after years of daily conversations it can still be a struggle to understand them. I've got better over time, but it's not nearly as straightforward as listening to a native speaker.

You're essentially saying you don't believe the OP actually struggles to understand some accents. Is that really an outlandish claim?

> That means Indian English has a lot of local quirks that someone from outside the country wouldn't know.

Every accent is different. Every accent needs effort to understand. The point is that Indian English isn't uniquely difficult. It doesn't have very many unique words, other than obvious ones (prepone) or quirks that are easy to understand (kindly do the needful). And yet, racist white people from around the world, even ESL speakers, will take delight in shitting on Indian English while putting in zero effort to understand it.

But if the same white people heard a fellow white person say "I'm going to pick up my ute in the arvo while eating a jaffle" they'll happily look that up and expand their vocabulary.

> You're essentially saying you don't believe the OP actually struggles to understand some accents.

I'm saying people who have a problem with Indian English in particular are racist pricks.

Fuck these racist double standards and fuck anyone who defends it.

Good day to you though.

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