• Mike D.@lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    My ex learned English as a second language and was fluent but she had a very hard time with any heavy accent.

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
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      3 days ago

      My first language is English and some accents/dialects are very difficult. Certain Indian speakers, Scottish speakers, Newfies, and West Virginians (which has a lot of Scots and Irish roots) can take me some time to acclimate to.

    • jaschen@lemm.ee
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      3 days ago

      My wife too. She grew up in Taiwan and moved to America in middle school.

      She can’t understand understand British or Australian accents, where I can hear the differences between the two.

      She literally can’t understand Indian accents. It’s like they are not speaking English at all.

      • Probius@sopuli.xyz
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        3 days ago

        I’m a native speaker and have absolutely no issue whatsoever with Australian and British accents, but people with a heavy Indian accent still sound like they’re not speaking English to me.

        • jaschen@lemm.ee
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          3 days ago

          I think we were exposed to more Brit and Aus influences. Thinking Steve Erwin, Crocodile Dundee, and a bunch of British actors.

          For Indian speaking influence, nope. Even today, the only exposure to Indian accents is at work and even then, its limited.

          • Probius@sopuli.xyz
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            3 days ago

            You can get better at understanding accents by listening to them more, so yeah, that’s probably why.

        • nandeEbisu@lemmy.world
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          3 days ago

          It doesn’t help that Indian English often still uses a lot of colonial terms, like Capsicum instead of bell pepper. That being said most Indians in the US will adjust to the local vocabulary pretty quickly.

  • Bonus @lemm.ee
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    3 days ago

    If there were a phonetic phrase book like this, I might begin to learn their exotic language.

  • JasonDJ@lemmy.zip
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    3 days ago

    I went to Greenville, South Carolina to view the eclipse in 2017.

    Watched it from the Greenville zoo.

    There was a guy there, standing in line at the concession stand, talking on the phone to another person.

    He kept telling the other person, in his native tongue, that he was in the “Food Line”. After like 10 times repeating himself he burst out laughing “nah! Not the food Li-unn, the food LINE!”

    Food Lion, for those readers who are unaware, is a regional grocery chain.

    The zoo was an awesome place to view an eclipse, btw. Animals were going nuts. There were students there documenting their reaction with go-pros on many exhibits. But I’ll never forget that guy.

    2024 Eclipse we saw from the Perot Museum in Dallas. Also an awesome experience. They had live music and scientist commentary, and after the eclipse they played “Here comes the sun” and it was just perfect.

  • gmtom@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    A southern accent? That doesn’t sound like a Kent accent to me?

    Maybe he means southern Canada??

  • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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    3 days ago

    I don’t even have a broad British accent, generic middle class southern, but most speech to text can’t follow me well since I don’t speak Yank.

    The (certain, wealthy parts of the) US centrism is mucho annoying.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      2 days ago

      I don’t understand why this is considered US-centric. It’s not like anybody is making it illegal or oppressed to develop speech models in your local area.

      • Semjaza@lemmynsfw.com
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        2 days ago

        Local hobbiests tend not to have then as the default for phones, and pc software.

        The fact that the US companies can’t even get their voice recognition to follow other US accents but still think that they’re ready for global rollout.

        You’re right in that we should encourage non-Yankspeak English search engines. It would be a good way to attempt to stymie the loss of our own culture.

  • CheeryLBottom@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Some years ago when We were visiting my dad in Mississippi, my husband (Canadian) and I ,(American who moved to Canada) went to dinner and I had make the order because he just couldn’t get a handle on the deep southern accent hahaha

  • g4nd41ph@lemmy.world
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    3 days ago

    Reminds me of a time that I told my boss the “text dick taking” was not working so well. We had a good laugh about that one later.