Recently I had a conversation with a French restaurant owner at a popular beach location in Morocco.
‘I can understand you. Your accent is very clear.’
‘Yes, it’s intentional. When I’m speaking to non native english speakers I purposefully pronounce my words as correctly as I can.’
‘I can’t understand other Australians.’
Smiling, ‘No, our accent can be very nasal and strong.’
‘And English people I find hard too.’
‘Yes, there can be very different strong accents all over the UK even just in London itself!’
‘Yes, especially Ireland and Scotland.’
‘Well I try because I know I’m privileged to be a native english speaker. It doesn’t take much to make an effort. And the bottom line is I want to communicate with you. I want to be understood and have a nice conversation with you.’
Nodding ‘Yes, that could apply for us too.’
I cannot count how many times I’ve had this conversation. Different faces, same message. All over the world. People tell me they are nervous about speaking English, but tend to relax more in chats with me. They tell me they can understand me, but find most conversations with English speakers challenging.
It is not hard to pronounce your words correctly. Just a little bit more thought and pace is all it takes.
I speak in a natural way. Most people don’t know I’m making an effort and I like to keep it that way. But inevitably the above conversation will arise at some point, and then I get on my rant about native english speaker privilege (it must be a rant I enjoy because lets just say it’s a fairly regular conversation topic).
It’s a different story when I’m around other Aussies. As soon as I hear those familiar sweet sounds (although to most i doubt the Australian accent sounds sweet, probably more like tar sizzling on a hot desert barbie), I lapse into ‘Yerrss’, ‘No worries mate’, ‘Aaaaays’, ‘maaaaattee’, ‘she’ll be right’, ‘I’ll give it a burl’, ‘nothin’ like it’ and ‘F’in streuth’. Not in a million years would I say these things around non native English speakers.
It’s fun sometimes to mix it up with fluent english speakers and those I know can understand me when I relax into my full blown Aussie accent glory.
When I was in France a few months ago, I heard the unmistakeable sounds loudly emanating from a group of men beside me at a cobblestoned square overlooking a quaint 12th century village. I looked over and smiled. It’d been many months since my last physical hearing.
‘Do you want me to take your photo altogether?’
‘Yes, that’d be great, thanks!’
‘No worries…. hang on I’ll just get another angle…. Awesome… you all look dandy.’
‘Hang on, you’re Australian.’
‘Yes I am.’
‘Where yer from?’
‘Brissy and Melbs.’
‘Ahh, I’m from Sydney.’
‘Big smoke, ay?’
‘Yerr.’
Just letting my accent pour out of me gives me just so much pleasure. And when I can I relish in it, I add cheese and fresh bread and a glass of vin to boot. We were there for a good half hour and they even got pics of the ‘exotic’ Australian they met in France. 🙂
My point is, I get that you want to relax and have a good time with people you meet. I really truly believe you’ll have an even better time if people can understand what you’re saying.
The rewards
Why on earth would I want to change how I speak? I’ve learnt so much about people and cultures when I’ve taken the time to really listen and understand what others are saying. It’s all about mutual exchange. Care. Genuine interest about others and their lives.
I’ve been richly rewarded with insights on life, culture and religion when I’ve demonstrated interest, patience (with both myself and the conversation) in my exchanges with others. I find out both practical information (such as important events to note during my stay) and also deeper understandings of why people do the things they do (for instance, I found out the french appear to be comfortable with the idea of huge intestinal parasites since one specialty is steak tartare (raw minced beef or horsemeat), and a woman I met said it was pretty commonplace for someone to have to have metre long worms removed from their bodies and no-one bats an eyelid. Or getting to know Thai superstitions that aren’t readily documented – I wrote about this in a previous post – you can’t get these rich cultural insights off wikipedia!).
Give it a try. And you won’t have to go far either. I know there will be some people around where you live whose first language is not English.
What to do:
- Smile. Always a good start.
- Look people in the eye and watch for visual facial clues as to their understanding (I adjust my speed according to facial cues, if they are getting it, I can speed up a little, if they are not, I slow down or describe what I’m saying in a different way).
- Relax your shoulders and breathing.
- Concentrate on the conversation. It takes more effort to listen to accents different to your own.
- Try as naturally as you can to pronounce all the syllables in your words. Particularly the ends of the words you are speaking. Half pronounced words are one of the biggest issues in clear communication.
- Ask questions to clarify whether you understood what they are saying, or check in to see if they understood you.
- Start practicing summarising back what other people have said. This will not only help your conversations with non english speakers, but also do wonders for your conversations generally. People transform when they feel genuinely heard and understood.
What to watch out for:
- Do not, under any circumstances, raise your voice (unless of course you’re in a crowded bar or busy street where you would raise your voice to be heard ordinarily). Raising your voice does not change your pronunciation (and does not present well to the other person – how does it make you feel like when someone raises their voice or yells at you?).
- Not too slow, not too quick. Not too slow because then it can come across as demeaning, but not too quickly because people will miss what you are saying!
I would love to hear your experiences with talking to non native English speakers. Can you add to the above list?
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