Comment by dumroll | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dumroll | Hacker News Reader

I have a different take. I am an immigrant. I speak 3 regional languages fluently and can partly speak German. While I always had English exposure since the age of 5 or 6, my parents spoke different language.

Everyone in my neighborhood who was not economically okay spoke different language than English.

I think it hurts more than helps when you are polylingual if you decide to spend majority of time in country like United States.

I have collected a lot of data around this. Time and time again, I can prove with data, that native english langauge speakers outperform anyone else. Whether it is college admissions, admissions to incubators like Y Combinator, job opportunities, sports opportunities, housing opportunities and more. If language is the sole factor to be considered, then polylinguals do not win.

When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is always something off about their accent. This leads to acceptance and at time getting asked "are you american" or "were you born here?"

I am not saying dont learn foreign language. But, language is one aspect of being polylingual. You just dont speak words. Words have meaning and they are deeply ingrained in cultures.

If you know long term where you want to be, learn and speak and immerse yourself in the culture. Otherwise you are just creating more noise for social media points and making it harder for yourself to be a master of one language.

> When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge.

That's not true, in this case it is simply the accent they learn because everyone around them has this accent.

But learning different languages when young doesn't mean one develops a foreign accent. I know Flemish people of Vietnamese origins who speak correct Vietnamese as well as Flemish with a perfectly good farmer accent from West Flanders. And their kids speak native French with a neutral (French) accent in addition to native Flemish, because the French speakers in their family are French and not Belgian.

When learning languages young, accents don't creep from one language to the other, that happens when one learns a language later on.

As far as my anecdotal experiences go, it is true. Bilinguals do carry bilingual accents even in native languages. You notice it from first few seconds listening. In my first language it sounds as if the person is playing in 4-note chords instead of 3-note.

It probably only matter as an item in the list of falsehood about speech recognition, definitely not something that deserve to be described as "messed up", but it's also not not true.

Yes, and the ones who can master pronunciation are the ones who realize that languages are just codified ways of expressing human sound. Then you can start to see them all as phonetic expressions, instead of as translations.

Yes, I am an accent coach and many immigrants do not accept this fact. They resist and resist out of stubbornness or laziness. I try to explain to them that people will react better if they can speak the native language like the natives to but to no avail. It's not even a matter of "correctness." It's great that you speak Kenyan/Punjabi/Ukrainian English! But we don't speak that here!

That said, if you have a foreign accent people expect a certain (low to average) level of fluency and can get quite confused if you use native idioms or slangs, which they only expect from native speakers with a native accent. There’s no way to pull off an “innit” unless you speak like a native Brit.

Vocab is easy to learn, losing one’s native accent is exponentially harder the older you learn a language, and as you probably know only through hard work with an accent coach you can eliminate that uncanny valley between fluent second-language speaker and native.

Also, not everyone wants to invest in a coach unless they really have to. You can learn a language on your own, not everybody has time, money and need to hire an accent coach.

"Hard work," really equals taking a few lessons on tongue & mouth positioning and working on changing your vowels one at a time.

It's work most people don't need to do unless they're an actor or they really need to pass for a native speaker. So maybe not hard, but often unnecessary and costs $$$.

>When you speak a foreign language than English, you accent is bound to be messed up. Look at Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans or other people who speak dual langauge. There is always something off about their accent.

in the case of Indian Americans or Pakistani Americans, I've seen that it's not about the accent, but about the vocalization: there are some sounds that are exclusive to English that simply don't exist in Indian languages. As an example: the "f" or "v" sound - made by lightly touching your bottom lip to your upper teeth and then blowing air through (unvocalized for "f" and vocalized for "v").

Similarly for "th" - you stick your tongue out between your teeth and the sound of the air flowing through that restriction is what defines the "th" (vocalized or unvocalized). I guarantee that if you start making these sounds in these ways, you will be seen as closer to a native speaker of English.

I can't speak about the American experience but as someone English I would say don't worry about erasing your accent.

If an accent is too strong, yes it can be a hinderance but English is a very flexible language and native speakers are very quick to adapt to variations because we grow up with large regional variations. We expect it.

In most cases having some varience in accent is charming.

I've been lucky enough to work with people from all over the world in my personal experience I may occationally ask you to repeat something but I'll lock in soon enough.

We used to have a TV show in the UK called "Rab C. Nesbitt"[1] about a guy from Glasgow with a seemingly impenitrable accent. Here's the thing though, you'd watch the first 5 minutes and not understand a word ...and then sunddenly you get it. If it works for him it will work for you.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbhhE4i8V2c

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