Foreign English

We had a few of our international staff in town today, so the meeting was quite a linguistic jumble.

Imagine these attendees:

3 plain-vanilla Euro-Americans
4 Indians (3 naturalized citizens, 1 green card)
1 Nepalese (naturalized citizen)

1 Taiwanese
1 Korean
1 Japanese
1 Brit

We spoke English, but nearly everyone had a different accent. There were also varying levels of language competence among the Asians-- the Taiwanese guy is the best.

I have little difficulty understanding all of these people. It's my native language, and I am used to hearing all kinds of accents. English is, after all, the most universally mangled language across the globe. So many people are trying to speak it! Even many people in America speak with a heavy foreign or regional accent.

But the Japanese fellow said the meeting was hard for him because people speaking with accented English are really hard for him to understand. That makes sense to me (the same is true for me in Japanese or German). But what surprised me was the accent he finds hardest.... Indian!

To me, Indians are easy to understand. They speak with a lilting, semi-British-sounding accent that is pleasant and quite comprehesible. Furthermore, I don't detect an enormous difference between different regions like Calcutta, Mumbai, Goa, etc. in how they speak English.

But to my Japanese colleague, different Indians sound quite different speaking English, and furthermore, the accent is harsh and almost ugly-sounding to him. Not lilting at all.

Intriguing.