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Comment by ngoel36 | Hacker News Reader

"One quality that's a really bad indication is a CEO with a strong foreign accent...they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent."

I'm curious to learn more about this. I'm certainly not accusing YC/PG of being racist in the least, but although I don't have an accent, I feel like I know numerously brilliantly smart people with heavy accents, many of whom happen to be Indian-born Stanford students or Google employees. I think we all know that "brilliantly smart" doesn't necessarily correlate with "great CEO", but it has to suck that something like your own accent puts you at a huge disadvantage applying to YC.

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I talked about this on another thread, but by strong accent I mean so strong that people have a hard time understanding you. It's not a problem if founders have accents as strong as, say, the Collison brothers'.

It's not that bad that Patrick has the accent, but he talks really fast. I struggled to listen to his talk at Hacker School. I have talked to him solo in person and understood him fairly well; maybe it was just the auditorium.

Do you mean Startup School? I don't recall him talking at Hacker School.

Yes, I meant Startup School.

Is it just accent or that people make too many grammatical mistakes? Or to put it another way, if you had to choose between two: clear pronunciation with a lot of grammatical mistakes vs a strong accent but flawless grammar. Which one is harder to understand for a native speaker?

I have had a few Indian professors who tend to have perfect grammar but strong accents, and some Chinese professors with poor grammar but better accents. I find the latter much easier. It's easy to correct simple grammatical errors in my head, but if you don't know what words are being said, it doesn't matter if grammar is perfect.

Thanks, that's something I thought, but wasn't sure, because as a Finn it's hard to get enough samples of the equivalent situation: someone speaking my native language without accent or without grammatical errors.

I've heard from some Finns that they have never heard of a foreigner speak Finnish at a level comparable to a native.

Contrarily, I have heard several Europeans speak American English almost flawlessly.

"they must just be clueless if they haven't gotten rid of their strong accent"

Specifically "clueless". I agree with that but I also think it's an attitude as well in some people. I think even if it was explained to them they might not think that it would benefit them. In that case they are not clueless they are simply rigid in their thinking, right?

As the saying goes "when in rome do as the romans do"

Along those lines I am surprised at the number of people who are foreign born who don't change their names to something more Americanized.

Back when people came to this country at the turn of the century I believe the immigration people would give people americanized versions of their names so they wouldn't experience as much rejection or racisim. Maybe it was for other reasons as well.

Now you can look at it as wrong that people jump to conclusions or you can simply do what is practical and attempt to lessen the disadvantage that you are in if someone perceives you in the wrong way. If I am a member of a religious group and I know that people that I am selling to are biased against that religious group I see it as practical not to wear any symbol of that religious group. It's a business decision.

I'm not saying that someone needs to totally hide the fact that they are Indian, Chinese, or whatever. I'm simply saying you can make the name a little easier for people in America (where you live) to remember it. That's in a sense basic marketing.

Lastly, I've been approached by people trying to sell me with really difficult names to remember. I am less likely to connect them with others simply because their name is so hard to remember.

The reason might be not cluelessness, bad attitude, rigid thinking or bad marketing, but the hidden costs of your suggestions. Many migrants tend to spend an inordinate amount of time, during the first months, thinking about how they might be perceived, often playing pointless guessing games. For example: having two different names is an additional source of confusion, and a constant reminder of "otherness". These costs have to be balanced against the perceived benefits. Sometimes they are worth it, often times not.

Focusing on improving communication skills is different because the cost is time, effort and perhaps money, but there are no negative side effects.

I've actually asked some American (one of them being my boss) on whether I should be using an American name to make it easier for everyone at work.

I received two "It's weird" answers, and haven't asked the third person yet.

Considering that my name is relative short (the first 4 letter of my username, Americans tend to remember the "h" and "a"'s position swapped though), would you consider it a difficult name to remember or not?

I use my real name and offer them an easy to use nickname in the same sentence. I've been doing it since childhood.

Nhan? I'm assuming that sounds like 'non', so it's probably easier to use your real name. I do know some people who abbreviate their names, though, if there's a workable abbreviation (e.g. Siddahrta / Sid).

Take a look here: http://www.forvo.com/word/nh%C3%A2n/#vi

The "h" is not a silent sound, and I think pronouncing as "non" is part of the reason why American tends to mix up "Nhan" and "Nahn".

To me, when listening to that, it sounds like "Nyen" or "Nian", which isn't a sound that any English word I can think of correlates with an H. Perhaps sharing one of these spellings with people will help them. You might experiment with different people and see where you get your best results.

Interesting. It sounds like nee-han or something. You might be able to get by using "Ian" as a nickname, losing only the initial N sound.

If it's "nhan" that's fine and maybe even a little exotic (which could be a plus). Would depend also on what your last name is in combination of course.

I can't say what you "should" do, but here are some thoughts.

Your name is really really hard for English-only speakers. Sorry.

I have a friend named Nhan. I put a lot of work into learning to say his name correctly. Most people did not. After two degrees in Canada, when he moved to the Valley he gave up and changed to an English name. An ex-co-worker named Nhi has just accepted that everyone calls her "Ni" (like "knee")... at least it's closer than calling you "naan" or "non". ;P As far as I can tell, the best spelling to get people to say your name correctly is probably "nyen". (Like maybe if you put in your email sig "Nhan (pronounced like 'Nyen')") If you want to make a joke about it, I guess you could even say "the 'h' looks like an upside-down 'y', so just pretend it's a 'y'". Although I dunno if you feel okay about using humour about your native language to try to improve communication.

As I'm sure you've noticed, Vietnamese pronunciation rules have surprisingly little in common with English pronunciation rules, so virtually zero English speakers will correctly pronounce your name, unless they've been told (by you or by someone else). The other more-common examples are Ng and Nguyen (I've been told these are actually Chinese names, but everyone I've met with one of these names was Vietnamese... I dunno, I'm just an ignorant Canadian struggling to be less ignorant). Almost zero English speakers pronounce these names correctly, even after being told many times! It's not that hard, people! But most people are hilariously lazy about learning new sounds. "Nhan" is a lot easier to get almost-right than "Ng" or "Nguyen".

Personally, as a language nerd, I like it when we're forced to learn a little tiny bit about another language, so selfishly I hope you keep your name. =] But you'll have to decide what's best for you.

As a little side story, in Vancouver there used to be a pho restaurant named Pho Bich Nga, on a very busy street (Kingsway, for the Vancouverites in the crowd, which has lots of Vietnamese shops... I'll drop a shout-out here for Green Lemongrass). I'm told that's correctly pronounced kind of like "fuh beek nga". English speakers don't really know what to do with that, but the best guess usually ends up being "fo' bitch nigga". Teenagers think that name is pretty funny, yes sir. Sadly, they changed the name, and a Vancouver cultural landmark is no more.

https://www.google.com/search?q=pho+bich+nga

> I believe the immigration people would give people americanized versions of their names so they wouldn't experience as much rejection or racism. (edited for spelling).

You were hopefully thinking about refugee immigrants when you said this?

I think the difficulties of communication, specially during incubation time and demo day, justify this qualifying as a bad indication. A great deal of YC value lies in the office hours and everyone has some bias to listen what they want to listen on a feedback session and to create excuses as "they didn't quite get my idea, that is why they are pointing these errors". When mentors actually don't understand them and vice-versa, this may totally nullify a feedback session. Networking on Demo Day (and subsequently fundraising meetings) also is seriously jeopardized. How to look formidable when you can't even sound "right".

But on the other hand, this shows a way of doing business that SV still suffers from: they are too west centered. These companies build things to US market and, sometimes, Europe. South America usually follow-up as we (i am brazilian) are very connected to US culture. But even we have our thriving copycat companies. But if you take Russia and China into account, then they often have juggernauts versions of SV companies (not regular copycats, but dominant companies) that the original ones just can't easily beat when they try.

I don't think there is causality here, just guessing that they are both reflects of a particular trace of SV companies: US is the Total Adressable Market. So, if you don't completely fit with the US culture, you will likely fail as a startup CEO in SV (for pragmatic reasons, not any "racist" bias or anything like that). At the same time, these companies usually take a little too long time to expand internationally.

This a diferentiation that 500startups have that, in my opinion, will pay large benefits to them eventually.

Me too! I would have thought there could be so many things in the number 1 spot ... and then this :)

Err... if you read the article, he says "one quality", not "the number one". Also, it's worth considering that this is something that has jumped at them only after a number of batches of YC, not something that they started out with, so it is, in some way, based on actual data. They probably already filter out people based on any number of more important criteria.

If found it worth a mention for a worldwide released article ... I am sure its pretty high on his list

I know a good accent-reduction service (among other language services) via skype, hit me up by email and I'll hook you up. It's definitely something you can improve!

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