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Comment by marbletiles | Hacker News Reader

I think the problem really arose because he said foreign accent. So if it was someone American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent that would be fine? It wouldn't, if what he really cares about is comprehension.

> I'd thought of just letting this controversy blow over.

A common PG tactic, this (see also the "HN mods wilfully ruin submission titles" storm). But probably not a great one to emulate: time and again here we've seen startups badly burnt by the "fuck up in public and don't say or post anything hoping it will blow over" stance.

Even if it does blow over, you've damaged your image. People might treat you the same, but they'll long remember that time you ran away and hid when people expected better of you.

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To an England-born person now making his home in Northern California (PG), some extreme American accents would also be "foreign". Indeed, in idiomatic English, "foreign" doesn't necessarily mean "from another country" but can also mean "from another place/region" or even just "strange and unfamiliar".

(I'd bet a sensitive-enough analysis would show that even North American accents "foreign" to northern California have a very slight disadvantage in the bay area startup community. The tiniest of things can send signals of mutual-understanding and shared-goals, fairly or not.)

Focusing on the "non-United-States" sense of "foreign", in order to take offense here, is thus yet another example of why a shared, subtle, native-like understanding of the nuances of language is so important.

Appreciating the whole range of senses of "foreign" makes it easy to interpret the PG quote sympathetically, as being about practical comprehension. Focusing on just the primary sense of 'foreign', as if the word only meant "other-country-origin", leads to time wasted on misunderstandings and taking-offense.

I think most Americans would regard different regions of the US "not foreign" and British or Australian accents as "foreign". This is entirely justified. Those of us who grew up in areas with nonstandard American accents grow up with enough American media to know what Americans are "supposed to" sound like. While there is still some regional variation, there is no place I know of in the US where it's socially acceptable for an educated person to speak in a way that educated Americans from other regions would have any trouble understanding them. In fact, it's quite the opposite; the strongest American accents tend to mark you as a member of one of the lower classes.

As a result most of us either eliminate our accent as much as possible or learn how to switch as needed (as philwelch below pointed out). The bar to get past the prejudices of other educated Americans is so high that we get past the point of comprehensibility by default.

Someone from another country doesn't have the same influences. An adult from an outside English-speaking country may not be able to sound American simply because they've never tried. That's not going to be the case for someone who grew up here, even for an unusual value of "here".

People who are focusing on the "non-United-States" sense of "foreign" are reading the statement as it was meant.

"letting this controversy blow over"

Could be an effective strategy or could be a technique employed by people with a low threshold or tolerance for adversity (as hard as that is to believe) or experience higher than normal levels of frustration when people don't agree with them.

You sometimes see this in people that normally are tops at something and where things come easy to them (vs. "normals"). So they are not used to having to put in much effort to defend themselves and the practice of having to do so feels foreign and distonic to them.

If you've ever attended a top school you see this in some of the students there. The ones who skated through high school and were tops find it hard to operate where they actually have to work very hard and study so much (because of the competition). The ones who struggled and had to work hard to get in take the "b's" in stride and continue working hard and aren't as bothered by setbacks. Because it's always been like that.

A generalization, based strictly on my observation.

PG rarely engages in long back and forth's with comments on HN. He makes comments but I don't normally see much of him replying to a reply. I remember recently where he actually told people it was time to "get back to work" just like a parent would tell you that you are being silly and to grow up.

A thick southern accent is far easier for Americans to understand than a thick foreign accent. I've never heard a native English speaker that I had a hard time understanding.

I occasionally have—some Newfoundlanders, people from certain parts of the UK, and so on. There's a whole lot of variation in the English-speaking world, and the line between dialect and accent isn't well-defined. There's even an island off the coast of Virginia (I think) where people speak 18th-century English!

I don't know what island you're referring to, but there are a lot of claims out there like this - a lot of people claiming they speak the "Queen's English". Every claim I've heard, much like Eskimos and snow, turns out to be a myth:

http://streaming.ohio.edu/cas/lingCALL/ling270/myth9.pdf

(Replying to both you and dylangs1030 here)

The "18th century" thing stuck in my mind from some media piece, and now that you mention it, does sound rather obviously like a myth. But the place exists—I think it was probably Tangier Island [1], and the accent there is indeed archaic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E#t=0m33s

Some of that sounds like a Monty Python sketch! It's definitely an example of one native English speaker (me) finding another (them) hard to understand.

I also second the commenter who brought up the Glaswegian accent. I love how it sounds but damned if I can make out half of what they're saying.

Maybe you're just gifted with dialects :)

[1] http://goo.gl/maps/Brbtr

Wow. I can't make out half of that either, and I'm a native English speaker too. Thanks for this, that was fun.

There's really an island where people speak 18th century English? I find that really hard to believe. Do you know what it's called?

How well do they integrate with modern English speakers when they leave the island?

I would say that depends on the southern accent in question. I (native english, mid-east coast) have never had trouble with Texan accents at all, no matter how strong, but have had a lot of difficulty with rural accents from people in South Carolina. A few weeks ago I was down there visiting and tried to buy some shrimp from a native South Carolinian. I had to resort to hand-gestures; he seemed to have as much difficulty understanding me as I did him.

My wife's family comes from the coastal islands off South Carolina.

They speak English, but I just could not understand anything the locals said. The dialect/culture is called Gullah: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gullah

Hmm, that may very well be what I encountered. Thanks!

Took me a couple months to reliably understand my first landlord in Boston, a 3rd or 4th generation American of Italian ancestry.

A couple of years back, I met my friend's grandma down in the bayou on the border between Texas and Louisiana. I had absolutely no clue what that woman was saying to me. I had to look at my friend for a translation every time she spoke. He assured me that she was speaking English.

EDIT: Here are some native English speakers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1TJnDG61_Y Can you understand them? I sure can't! :)

Listen to some "native English speakers" in Glasgow - I understood them reasonably well after a week, but when I arrived the cab driver might as well have spoken chinese, I had to write things on paper to get where I wanted...

I am Indian, but a native English speaker. When I went to Northern Ireland, I took a long cab drive to meet a customer. For the first 15 minutes of that drive, the driver and I were trying to calibrate accents. I certainly couldn't understand a word he said. After a while, things magically started making sense.

Plenty of Singaporeans or Indians are, in fact, native speakers with accent and dialect differences that can stymie other English speakers. I've had people complain New Zealanders speak too quickly for foreigners to understand (as well as our flattened vowels). And get back to me after watching Taggert.

(The most incomprehensible language I've ever heard from a native speaker personally wasn't Glasgwegian, but rather two 60+ folks demonstrating Black Country English.)

Sometimes, it takes a while.

>American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent

Is there an example of this that can be pointed out? A nearly unintelligible American accent held by someone working in technology who is trying their best to be understood?

It's exceedingly easy to find an example in people who are speaking English as a 2nd, 3rd, or 4th language, and isn't a reflection of their worth as a person, but a sign that they may have a problem in the English speaking startup world.

A sole person in the country would do as an example, right? And I'll bet with 300 million there's at least one tech-inclined American with English as the first language that has trouble being understood.

Likewise, if foreignness isn't really the issue, disabilities will surely also count? Are there disabled people in tech who have a hard time speaking English? Would Stephen Hawking pass as a Founder for PG?

How about people with thick Southern or Mainer accents? People with heavy lisps or stutters? People who have suffered debilitating injuries, etc.?

Most educated Americans with any type of accent can usually alternate between standard dialect and their regional accent. Politicians especially are good at this. Kevin Spacey nails this in "House of Cards", but there are examples of Obama, Bush, and Clinton doing this as well.

Clinton: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=6175843

Obama: http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=30-lYueJivk&feature=player_embe...

http://mobile.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/...

http://www.npr.org/blogs/codeswitch/2013/04/10/176234171/lea...

Appalachian.

> I think the problem really arose because he said foreign accent. So if it was someone American with an incredibly thick and hard-to-understand accent that would be fine?

How many native-born US citizens with regional accents this strong are in a position to start a technology startup? I grew up in the Bible Belt and I find this inconceivable.

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