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0:18

Hey, it's Gregory from Rough Translation.

0:21

So my father-in-law came to the US

0:23

from the Soviet Union in the 1990s.

0:26

And he worked as a computer programmer while

0:28

taking night classes in English. Really

0:30

threw himself at the language. And then a few years

0:33

later, he got a job on Wall Street, which he

0:35

was really proud of. Only he

0:37

found that when his new boss would talk

0:39

to him in English,

0:41

he was lost. He just couldn't follow him.

0:44

And when his co-workers would talk, he'd also

0:46

reliably lose the thread. And then as

0:48

happens in these situations, he'd get nervous, but not

0:51

understanding, which made him understand even

0:53

less.

0:54

And this was stressful. Not only because

0:56

he needed the job, he had two kids to support,

0:59

but because he was really working hard day

1:01

and night at studying English.

1:03

At first, his response to all this was just to

1:05

work harder, to stay up later, study

1:08

more grammar. But that didn't seem to help.

1:10

And that was demoralizing too, to understand

1:13

everything in the classroom, everything in the textbook,

1:15

and then go to work and be

1:18

lost at sea.

1:19

It took him a long time, he told me, to realize

1:22

what was happening. His co-workers,

1:25

it wasn't their English that he didn't catch.

1:29

It was really their baseball.

1:33

There

1:33

are so many baseball idioms

1:35

in standard American English. Touch

1:38

base, step up to the plate, come

1:40

out of left field, right off the bat, throw

1:42

a curveball, play hardball, give a ballpark

1:45

figure, hit a home run, or strike out,

1:47

and cover all the bases. And

1:49

my father-in-law, he's a soccer guy. He'd

1:51

never watched a baseball game in his life. But

1:54

once he realized where these phrases were coming

1:56

from, and that to comprehend his co-workers,

1:59

he didn't need to grapple with

1:59

with more grammar lessons, he needed

2:02

to queue up America's national pastime. That's

2:05

when his confidence and his comprehension shot

2:07

up. You could say he hit his

2:09

stride. Now,

2:12

my father-in-law, he's

2:13

not the type to get angry.

2:15

His attitude is more like, oh, so

2:18

that's how it is. But when he told me the

2:20

story, I was kind of annoyed on his behalf. I

2:22

mean, why throw so many idioms at

2:25

the new guy and put him at a disadvantage?

2:28

Until I realized, you know, they didn't

2:30

see them as idioms. They literally

2:33

thought of it as English. And

2:35

that kind of cultural deafness, it

2:37

can be its own kind of disadvantage, especially

2:40

if you look beyond one Wall Street trading

2:42

floor in the 90s and look at today's

2:44

world of global business.

2:46

A listener recently reached out to us with

2:48

a story about a group of Americans who were visiting Russia.

2:50

This was a couple of years ago. And

2:53

the Americans would speak, the Russians

2:55

would look confused, and he,

2:57

this listener who wrote us, would find himself translating

3:00

for the Americans, but not English to Russian,

3:03

but English to English. Like,

3:06

he would just say what the Americans had said,

3:09

but just in less idiomatic, less slangy,

3:12

more global English. And the

3:14

Russians would say, oh,

3:16

that's what they're talking about.

3:22

In the lead up to our summer season, we are revisiting

3:25

some of the episodes in our archives that

3:27

I think capture the mission of rough translation.

3:30

And this episode that we have for you today, it

3:32

was one of our most downloaded episodes of 2021. It

3:35

provoked a lot of reactions, good and bad.

3:38

All kinds of people wrote in, we

3:40

heard from ESL instructors and

3:42

travelers, self-proclaimed serial

3:44

expats and first and second generation

3:47

immigrants, students and educators

3:49

and tech workers. You talked about your experience

3:51

of this communication

3:52

gap between those

3:54

born into English and those who learned

3:56

it in the classroom and about the stress

3:59

and about the weirdness of.

3:59

of being caught in the middle. Like

4:02

that listener I mentioned who went to Russia and translated

4:05

English to English. How do you know

4:07

when you should step in to translate or

4:09

correct somebody's English? How

4:11

do you know if you're being a language bully or

4:14

a language ally?

4:17

This episode, it also got a fair amount

4:19

of criticism. People thought we did not

4:21

go deep enough on the problems

4:23

with the phrase native English speaker

4:26

with its clear colonial overtones. And

4:28

why when we say that phrase native speaker,

4:31

are we more likely to think about an American or a

4:33

Brit and not an Indian

4:36

or a Singaporean or a Nigerian?

4:38

Others criticized us from the other side saying we didn't

4:41

declare more strongly the difference between good

4:43

English and bad English and why

4:45

those standards matter.

4:46

But many of you just told stories,

4:49

funny stories, weird stories, wondrous stories

4:52

about your experience with English around

4:54

the world

4:55

and how it expanded

4:57

your world and your sense of yourself. If

5:00

hearing this episode either for the first time or

5:03

the second brings up any of those stories

5:05

for you,

5:06

write us an email at roughtranslationatnpr.org or

5:10

send me a note on my sub stack aroundtheworldin85days.substack.com.

5:15

It's free to sign up. I would really like to

5:17

do more stories on this theme and I would love to hear the questions

5:21

and the experiences that you are

5:23

bringing to the world. And hey, if you're already

5:25

on the sub stack, that's great. Please share it with a friend.

5:28

Help me build this community of people who

5:30

want more global stories told from fresh

5:32

perspectives. Today in the sub stack

5:34

newsletter, we have a guest post from our editor,

5:36

Luis Treas. Check that out.

5:39

Meanwhile, here is how to speak bad English

5:42

from 2021.

5:45

Hey everyone, I'm American and

5:47

today I'm here to help you sound

5:49

like one too. I'm going

5:51

to talk about seven easy things.

5:53

As any YouTube language video

5:55

or language learner or teacher will attest,

5:59

the process of remaking. making yourself in another language

6:01

is about a lot more than grammar or

6:03

pronunciation. It's a million

6:06

little things. A guy from Arizona,

6:08

he teased me for not knowing what granola

6:11

was. This is a listener from Sweden.

6:14

And I looked it up later and it's like,

6:16

it's not granola here, it's musli. A

6:20

while back we asked you to send us your

6:22

stories of teaching and learning

6:25

English. Some of you shared

6:27

your joy at discovering a side of your personality

6:29

that English had unlocked.

6:31

Now that I mastered it to a

6:33

certain degree, I really feel like I

6:36

am more open.

6:38

I think I may have had

6:41

a different journey to

6:43

finding my voice if I did not

6:45

learn English. Others of

6:47

you shared

6:48

your concern at learning this language

6:50

over others. I'm a new generation

6:52

of children in Nigeria who

6:55

speak English as a first language and

6:57

have difficulty speaking the native language.

7:00

There's a lot of shame for us.

7:03

And you talked about your frustration, when

7:06

even after you'd learned English and spoke it

7:08

with fluency. I don't know if it's because

7:10

of my accent or my pronunciation.

7:14

Your English was seen as not good enough.

7:16

The people say like, what? Say

7:19

again. So I have to repeat it and

7:21

then they're like, oh, this. And

7:24

then they said the word that I thought

7:26

that I was saying and I thought

7:28

that I was saying it right. And I'm like, yeah, that.

7:33

This is Rough Translation, the show

7:35

with far off stories that hit close to home.

7:37

I'm Gregory Warner. If

7:40

you were to add up all the people who learned English

7:42

in a classroom, that's

7:44

a much larger group than those who were born into

7:46

English.

7:47

Those of us who are born into the language are

7:50

hugely, hugely outnumbered. And

7:52

that's why I argue that we

7:54

do not own this language.

7:56

Today on the show, we meet

7:58

an English language instructor. who is pushing

8:00

back against a kind of basic axiom

8:03

of her profession, saying

8:05

that good English

8:06

might be a bad thing for the

8:08

world. If you think that English

8:10

that has some errors in it is bad,

8:13

maybe that's the new good.

8:14

So what does it really mean to

8:17

speak good English? And who

8:19

gets to decide? That's coming

8:21

up, plus more of your stories, when

8:24

Rough Translation returns.

8:30

Thanks for watching!

8:38

This message comes from NPR sponsor

8:40

Cunard. Experience Cunard's

8:42

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thought-provoking stories from famous

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classes from Royal Shakespeare Company, and

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9:05

slash crossing.

9:08

We love the freedom hip-hop offers,

9:11

but there's a lot less freedom inside

9:13

the culture than you might think.

9:14

This is Louder Than A Riot, a

9:16

podcast where we explore who hip-hop

9:19

marginalizes and why it's embedded

9:21

in the fabric of the culture we love.

9:23

Listen to the Louder Than A Riot podcast

9:25

from NPR Music. We are

9:27

back with Rough Translation. I'm Gregory

9:30

Warner. There are all kinds of reasons

9:32

people take a job teaching English, maybe

9:34

to travel somewhere or stay a while in a new

9:36

place. I have done that myself back

9:38

in the day. But for

9:40

Heather Hansen, teaching English

9:42

was a calling, one that crystallized

9:45

for her when she was a college student studying

9:47

German in Austria. And I remember

9:49

almost making myself sick about having to

9:52

speak in German and then standing in

9:54

front of the class, battling through,

9:56

can't find the words, not pronouncing

9:58

things correctly.

9:59

And all I'm thinking is if

10:02

I could just do this in English, they would all know how

10:04

smart I am. So

10:07

that was really what put me on the course for

10:10

working with language and helping people with language

10:12

because I thought we've got to help them so they

10:14

can express themselves better, so they can get

10:16

the respect they deserve, so they can avoid embarrassment.

10:19

And that was why I got into

10:21

doing what I'm doing.

10:23

So a few years later, she moved to Singapore to

10:26

work with pilots at Singapore Airlines.

10:28

To help them deliver

10:31

better public announcements to their passengers.

10:34

In an English that was clear and

10:36

inspired trust, which according to the language

10:38

school that Heather worked for was. A

10:41

standardized English, an English that everyone

10:43

in the world can understand. And of course, that

10:45

English would be the British English

10:47

variety. I'm thinking of moving.

10:50

Oh, where to? This is one

10:52

of the pronunciation practice CDs

10:55

that Heather used in her course. It's

10:57

known as received pronunciation or Queens

10:59

English.

11:00

I'm not sure. I might move

11:02

to Manchester or

11:05

I may go to Cambridge or maybe

11:08

Marseille or. Well,

11:11

don't call the removers until you make

11:13

up your mind. When she

11:15

arrived in Singapore, this was 2006. She

11:18

realized that it was not necessarily the

11:20

passengers of the plane that were asking

11:22

for this.

11:24

The Singaporean government had launched

11:26

a national campaign to discourage

11:28

people from using the local English

11:30

based Creole known as Singlish.

11:32

The house is so big and

11:35

so much cars.

11:38

The house is indeed very big. There are

11:40

many cars here. This is a clip

11:43

from a kind of public service grammar

11:45

ad aimed at ironing out Singlish

11:47

grammar, which is borrowed from various

11:49

languages, including Cantonese, Malay,

11:52

English and others. This house, right? I

11:54

believe my friend paid over 20 million

11:58

for this good class bungalow. Wow.

11:59

Goodness, graceful me. Don't

12:03

you mean goodness, gracious me?

12:07

Let's connect. Let's speak good English.

12:09

The government campaign, which is still ongoing, is

12:12

called Speak Good English. Which

12:14

I find the name a little bit ironic because the

12:16

whole time I'm like, shouldn't it be Speak English Well? And

12:21

the Speak Good English campaign

12:22

was not just about grammar.

12:24

Also pronunciation. And anything

12:26

else that might prevent Western speakers of English

12:29

who do business in Singapore from understanding

12:32

Singaporeans. Was it a fun

12:34

job? Or was it satisfying?

12:36

Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And

12:39

really, you just sit there in the dark because you

12:41

think you're doing the right thing. And people

12:43

are getting what they're asking for. They come to you saying, I

12:45

want to sound like a native speaker. And you say, OK, sounds

12:48

good. Let's go. And here's the book. Here's

12:50

the CDs. And yeah, everybody's happy.

12:53

Heather was good at this work.

12:55

Really good. She was a hawk for grammar errors,

12:58

patient with accent reduction. And

13:00

she loved it so much that she started her

13:03

own company based in Singapore, offering

13:05

English language instruction to multinational

13:07

companies, which meant that she started

13:10

talking with clients about what

13:12

they

13:12

actually needed. Yeah, it's interesting.

13:15

What I was seeing with my clients

13:17

wasn't matching what I was

13:19

told to believe. I was told to believe these

13:21

people cannot function in an international

13:23

environment if they do not speak proper global

13:26

English of a standard of American

13:28

or British. They have to master that in order

13:30

to survive. And yet I started meeting really

13:33

high level professionals who did not speak

13:35

that way, who were doing just fine, dealing

13:38

with very high level business all over the

13:40

world. And I thought,

13:43

you know,

13:43

how necessary is it really?

13:46

Is this really needed? Why am

13:48

I teaching this?

13:52

So, Heather, the way we found you was through a TEDx

13:54

talk that you gave in 2018. And we'll, of

13:57

course, have a link to that on the website.

13:59

you mentioned a body

14:01

of research that completely

14:03

struck me

14:05

and I wanted to tell everybody about it when I heard it. It

14:07

has to do with what happens to communication

14:10

when non-native speakers are talking together

14:12

in English and a native speaker

14:15

enters that conversation. Well,

14:17

what the research is showing is that when

14:20

the non-native speakers are together

14:22

alone, they're actually doing

14:24

just fine. So we have a Singaporean and

14:26

Indonesian, a Korean, a German

14:29

and a French and someone from Finland

14:31

and they're all in a room, you know, negotiating

14:34

a contract and they're all doing

14:36

great and then the American walks in

14:40

and that's where the misunderstandings start to occur.

14:43

I'm kind of imagining a Zoom with everybody

14:46

else in the world except the Brits

14:48

and the Americans apparently

14:50

and everybody's communicating fine, even

14:53

in their quote unquote bad English and

14:56

then the native speaker joins the conversation

14:59

and what happens actually? The

15:01

general level of understanding and

15:03

exchange of ideas starts to sink?

15:06

Exactly and this is also part

15:08

of the problem is this whole concept of native

15:11

and non-native and there are a lot of people

15:13

in the world who are trying to get rid of these

15:15

terms as well because when

15:18

we say native speaker, we're generally referring to

15:20

the Western native speaker of the Brit,

15:22

the American, Australian, but

15:25

why aren't Singaporeans considered native speakers?

15:27

They grow up and are educated in English and

15:30

yet Singapore English. Or Indians. Yeah, or

15:32

Indian English speakers. If you ask them what's your

15:34

native language, they'll say English, but they are

15:36

not

15:36

globally recognized as native speakers.

15:39

What I have been saying a lot and even as

15:41

I'm writing now in my next book, I

15:44

talk a lot about the people who are born into

15:46

the language and you have all of the privilege

15:49

of that, that's attached to that and

15:51

then there are people who are learning English in a classroom.

15:55

The problem is

15:55

those are mouthfuls. How many people in the world were born

15:57

into English? How many people in the world learned it?

16:00

in a classroom. I base my

16:02

numbers on estimates given by David

16:05

Crystal, who's literally, he literally

16:08

wrote the encyclopedia of the English language

16:10

from Cambridge, and he was

16:13

willing to suggest now

16:15

that the people who were born into the

16:17

language number about 400 million, whereas

16:20

people who were learning English in a classroom

16:23

were numbering close to two billion. So

16:26

we are

16:27

hugely, hugely outnumbered, and

16:30

something needs to change. And I think that that starts

16:32

with educating the 400 million to

16:36

start communicating better with the

16:38

two billion. Instead of trying

16:40

to make the two billion sound like

16:42

the 400 million, it seems like we're doing something

16:45

backwards here.

16:46

Heather started to wonder, why was it that

16:49

English teachers around the world were spending so

16:51

much time teaching non-Americans a

16:53

bunch of sports idioms?

16:55

For sports, they didn't even play. Moving

16:58

the goalposts. I mean, why

17:00

do we say that? Move the goalposts. Touch

17:03

base. But you know what's really hard

17:05

is that if you ask the average American, how

17:07

would you say that otherwise? I'm not

17:09

really sure.

17:11

Wouldn't it be easier to teach Americans

17:13

when they enter global business meetings to

17:15

check their idioms at the door? I mean,

17:17

we use touch base as if it's normal

17:20

English. We don't even think of the

17:23

connection to baseball and touching

17:25

the base. So how do we translate

17:27

that into real English? I will

17:30

contact you. I will speak

17:32

with you. I will send you an email next week.

17:34

I will call you next week. We

17:37

forget even how to translate it. So

17:39

there are a lot of- I will

17:40

get in touch. So what does that

17:42

mean, to get in touch?

17:43

If you take the words individually

17:46

and try to translate that to another language, in

17:48

touch. What does that mean? You're not gonna

17:50

touch me? Like, so we have

17:52

to really consider as native speakers

17:55

how we use the language.

17:56

The flip side of this research is

17:59

somehow even more- surprising to me that when

18:02

that native speaker is

18:04

not there, communication

18:07

goes up. So

18:10

what skills do those who learned English

18:12

in a classroom, what

18:14

skills do they have that those who were born

18:16

into English often lack?

18:19

So the speakers who are growing

18:22

up learning English in the classroom, they're approaching

18:24

the language in a completely different way. They use

18:26

simple English. They usually are not

18:29

using a lot of idioms. They aren't using

18:31

terminology that's really high level.

18:34

They all are able to adapt and fit

18:36

and have conversations at the same level.

18:39

And they're listening to people more

18:41

carefully because they want to make sure that they

18:44

understand what's being said.

18:46

In

18:48

these global environments, we have

18:50

to stop for a second and think about

18:52

what's behind the words, what's behind the message.

18:55

The language itself is simply a tool.

18:58

And it isn't always going to be a perfect

19:00

expression of the meaning or the feelings or

19:02

the ideas that the person is trying to get

19:05

across. And that's what the native speaker

19:07

lacks.

19:12

And so the native speaker or the person

19:15

born into the language was sort of missing

19:17

out on conversations and collaborations

19:20

and exchanges of ideas that might happen when

19:23

they're not there.

19:24

I think a lot of what's happening in global

19:26

settings has a lot more to do with that power differential

19:29

that the native English speaker is seen as the owner of

19:31

the language. They walk in, suddenly my

19:33

language isn't good enough. I would rather be

19:35

quiet than make mistakes. So I'm just not going to

19:37

talk anymore because I'm too shy

19:39

to speak up. And in these

19:41

business contexts, I think that adds a

19:44

new level of pressure. Suddenly

19:47

anything you say could be judged

19:49

by a boss. It could impact your promotion.

19:51

It could have a lot of

19:54

lasting implications when you

19:56

make those big mistakes.

20:01

In your emails and voicemails to us,

20:03

you talked a lot about this fear of

20:06

making mistakes versus the cost

20:08

of staying quiet. My name is Nestor

20:11

Rodriguez and I teach Latin American

20:13

literature at the University of Toronto. Nestor

20:16

told us about leading a dissertation defense

20:18

this was back when he was a young professor.

20:21

This question was pretty heated

20:23

and what it seemed to be fading off. I

20:27

asked candidly, does

20:29

anybody else want to intervene? One

20:32

of the professors leaned back in his chair.

20:35

I repeated in a dramatic

20:38

mock British accent, end

20:41

of in.

20:43

After hearing John Milton reincarnated

20:46

mocking my plebeian accent, I

20:49

could not complete my duties.

20:55

Hi, this is Sophia. For 30

20:59

years I worked at IBM. We

21:01

were rolling out a new software and

21:03

in a big development meeting I

21:06

kept referring to it as version 1.1.

21:10

Afterward, a colleague came to

21:13

my office and said, Sophia,

21:16

it's virgin, not

21:18

virgin. I was very

21:20

grateful for his correction. We

21:23

laughed together. The fact

21:25

that my American colleagues took

21:27

the time to help me express my

21:29

ideas made me feel that

21:32

what I had to say was valued and

21:35

that they wanted to include me in the conversation.

21:45

And on the other side of this, some

21:48

of you shared your experience as teachers or as native

21:51

speakers rethinking your

21:53

role in an international conversation.

21:55

Hello, rough translation. My

21:57

name is Stephanie. So I am a student of the University

21:59

of Michigan. Previously, I was an English teacher

22:02

in South Korea. One story that

22:04

sticks out is when I was in a guesthouse

22:06

with a group of individuals, they

22:08

were speaking English as the common denominator.

22:12

However, when I entered the conversation and

22:14

they asked where I was from and I told them the USA,

22:17

they all hesitated and just

22:19

kind of froze up.

22:20

And I was like, what is the problem? And

22:22

they said, we are a native speaker. They

22:25

were nervous to speak in my presence. That

22:28

threat or, I guess, intimidation of

22:31

being a native English speaker caused

22:33

them pause.

22:36

So after running her own company for

22:39

a number of years, Heather decided that she

22:41

was going to be a different kind of English language

22:43

instructor.

22:44

When clients approached her to get their accents reduced,

22:48

she'd ask them questions. They'll come and say,

22:50

I want to sound like you. I need to

22:52

sound like a native speaker. And I'll say, well, what does

22:54

that mean to you? What kind

22:56

of native speaker? And then

22:58

they might say, oh, well, I don't know. You know,

23:00

I just want to sound more like you. And

23:02

then I'll say, OK, well, what is it about the

23:04

way that I speak that you really like? And

23:07

they'll say, oh, well, it's so clear. Or

23:09

I love how much the intonation

23:11

it changes. It sounds so nice. It goes up and

23:13

down. And so we start realizing

23:15

that, oh, OK, so it isn't really the accent then,

23:18

is it? It's more about the way it sounds,

23:20

the confidence, the melody,

23:23

the clarity. And

23:25

we start to move quite far away

23:27

from this idea of I want to sound like you. I

23:29

want your accent to them kind

23:31

of realizing that, no, wait, yeah, you're right. Actually,

23:34

I just want them to understand me. I want to

23:36

be able to express myself without fear

23:38

of failure. I want to be long.

23:40

I want to get respect.

23:43

Basically,

23:43

I made this shift

23:46

from the very

23:48

subjective labeling of right and wrong,

23:51

correct and incorrect, to focus

23:53

on connection and not perfection.

23:57

But as long as you're communicating and getting

23:59

your points

23:59

across and people are understanding you, this

24:02

is when I believe that your

24:04

bad English is actually perfect.

24:10

Heather's quest to find takers for her brand

24:12

of bad English and more of your stories

24:15

when rough translation returns.

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slash NPR today to get 10% off

25:02

your first

25:02

month. We

25:04

are back with rough translation. I'm

25:06

Gregory Warner. Hello, my name is Alexander

25:09

Smirnoff. I'm 18 and from

25:11

the beautiful country of Russia. If

25:14

you were to Google accent reduction,

25:17

you will get millions of videos

25:19

promising a new you. However,

25:21

as you can probably tell, I don't really have a hard Russian

25:24

accent or anything like that. So

25:27

what did I do to get rid of it? These

25:30

videos range from the cheerfully optimistic

25:33

to the downright mean. Now

25:35

say curtain.

25:38

Curtain. Don't say it like

25:40

that. Now say curtain.

25:44

For Heather Hansen, she decided she

25:46

didn't want to be part of the tactics. Listen

25:48

to me. Of the multi-billion

25:51

dollar English language industry.

25:53

Well, in some

25:56

ways I think the industry exists because

25:58

it can shame people. into believing

26:00

that they aren't good enough without speaking

26:03

in a certain way. That's the

26:05

privilege and the power that we have

26:07

over the language. Language has always been a weapon.

26:10

It always has been. Colonizers

26:12

went in. First thing they did was

26:14

force the language on populations. If

26:17

you didn't speak that language, then you were not going to

26:19

have any kind of status in that colony.

26:25

I am

26:26

originally from Sri Lanka, so naturally

26:28

I'm going to talk about

26:29

my time back at my homeland.

26:33

We were under the rule of England

26:36

up until 1948. This is

26:38

where the relationship with

26:41

English started up, but

26:44

the relationship gets a bit

26:46

strange because we learn English

26:48

from the very elementary school to

26:51

the high school. We call it karichi

26:53

ingrizi or we translate it into

26:56

broken English if someone is speaking

26:58

English in an affluent

27:01

way. And in the country itself,

27:04

people usually put the language

27:06

up on a pedestal because

27:08

some

27:10

consider it to be something

27:12

that you use to show

27:14

you are in a higher class.

27:18

Almost as soon as Heather decided

27:21

to stop fixing people's accents, she

27:23

ran into some realities of the business world. So

27:27

this was the HR of a Fortune 250 company, headquartered

27:29

in Michigan, but global company.

27:31

And

27:37

their HR director called me and said, we have

27:39

this acting CFO, acting because

27:43

he hadn't been offered the full job yet. They

27:46

wanted to offer him the full job, but there

27:48

was this really big problem. And that problem

27:50

was that he had a really heavy French

27:52

accent. Nobody can

27:54

understand him.

27:59

and we don't know what to do, and can you help

28:02

him to sound more American so

28:04

we can understand him better? Okay, I

28:06

said, well, could you send me a CV? You know, I'd like

28:08

to talk to him. And I'm sitting there

28:10

thinking in my mind, you know, a Frenchman

28:13

doesn't get up to the level of CFO in

28:15

an American Fortune 250 company

28:18

without having quite a bit of international experience. And

28:20

sure enough, I see his CV 10 years

28:23

in London, 8 years in Asia. I

28:25

thought, there is no way that he's

28:28

unintelligible. And sure enough, I

28:29

get him on the phone, and he speaks

28:33

nice, clear English, more

28:35

intelligible than any Frenchman I've ever worked

28:37

with. I understand every word he says. Who

28:40

is having difficulty understanding him? Well,

28:42

people in America who had

28:44

never heard a French accent before. And

28:46

he's in a very important role. He had to do

28:49

financial statements publicly. There

28:51

were the press and media was there

28:53

transcribing what he was saying and

28:55

publishing his words. And at the time, they

28:57

were only getting about 60% of

29:00

what he was saying correct.

29:02

The CFO was the one communicating

29:04

the financial information of the company to

29:06

the public. So the stock price could

29:08

hang on his words and whether people understood

29:11

them correctly.

29:12

And so the company told Heather they

29:14

needed her to get rid of this guy's accent. Otherwise,

29:17

they could not give him the job. And

29:19

it went against everything in my bones because

29:21

I was sitting there like, oh, but

29:23

it should be good enough. But the way it should be versus

29:26

the way it is is not always in sync,

29:28

right? So this

29:30

was a tough situation. Yeah,

29:32

it's a tough situation. I mean, so how would

29:34

you, with your newfound thinking about English, how

29:37

would you ideally have wanted to solve this communication

29:39

problem?

29:40

Ideally, I would have loved to

29:42

sit down the entire leadership of that company

29:45

and do some programs

29:48

for them in how to tune your

29:50

ear and better understand accented English. I

29:53

think you've called this accent

29:54

recognition rather than accent reduction. But

29:56

what is accent recognition? I mean, how do you actually

29:58

teach that? Well, if I was, for

30:00

example, going to work with

30:02

an American who wanted to come and live in Singapore,

30:05

I'd have them listening to Singapore radio, talk radio

30:08

in English. Mr. C also reiterated

30:10

that bossing others around or meddling in

30:12

the internal games... And listening to how people

30:14

sound, although that isn't even ideal,

30:17

because it's not the reality of what you hear on

30:19

the street. It's like the pretty

30:21

broadcast variety of English. It's the higher

30:23

standard, but it still is accented. And

30:26

we would be looking at what

30:29

languages are influencing the English

30:31

that's spoken here, and why then

30:33

do the sounds change. So why is

30:36

it that they don't have a really

30:38

strong distinction between EH and AH? Well,

30:41

in Singapore and Malaysia, they've created a separate vowel

30:43

sound that's somewhere in between. So it's like one

30:46

men, two men. And

30:48

it sounds the same. It's not one man

30:50

and two men. They have this sound right in between

30:53

that they use. And I mean, we have all the linguistic

30:56

research to show it. So there's a

30:58

lot that we can learn about different accents,

31:00

and what sounds change, and why

31:02

they change. And once you know

31:04

the code, it's just a little puzzle. It

31:06

becomes fun, and your brain starts trying to figure

31:09

it out, instead of turning off and

31:11

ignoring or judging.

31:13

Accent recognition is

31:15

not always that easy. Some accents

31:18

are just harder to understand for outsiders,

31:20

harder still over a bad phone line or

31:22

a bad zoom connection. But

31:24

Heather says it is still a lot easier to

31:27

train the ear to hear new accents

31:29

than the tongue to speak them. It's basically reverse

31:32

engineering, what you say this way, they say that

31:34

way. And that's why recognition is easier,

31:36

because we aren't trying to teach you a new way

31:38

to speak. We're just trying to teach you a new way

31:40

to listen and understand. And

31:42

that's a lot easier than trying to break decades

31:45

of habits around the way the muscles

31:47

of your mouth are working. That's,

31:50

that's, it's very, very difficult. I don't think people

31:52

realize how difficult it is to change the way that you

31:54

speak. Just if you tried to start

31:57

saying a sentence, and if I

31:59

told you, every time you say, you want to say a TH, use

32:01

a T, and you have to

32:03

do that from now on. And it would

32:05

be really hard for you to do. You would start thinking

32:07

about it. I would start

32:09

thinking about it and 10,

32:13

I could maybe tink

32:16

and say tings differently.

32:18

I have to completely... Thank you for that example.

32:20

You're so much better than... It's so hard, right? It's

32:23

hard. Can you imagine? And

32:26

that's basically what

32:29

people I'm working with are trying to do. And truly,

32:31

TH is one of the sounds that has no

32:34

impact whatsoever on intelligibility. People

32:36

can say a TH as a d, t, s,

32:39

z, anything, and we will always

32:41

understand it, but it doesn't mean we'll accept it.

32:47

Hi, my name is Brigid Farrell.

32:49

I speak a variety of English

32:52

called Irish English, also known

32:54

as Hiberno English. And

32:58

so when Irish people meet other English

33:00

speakers, very often they laugh

33:03

at the fact that we

33:05

don't pronounce TH

33:08

the way it should be pronounced in some words.

33:12

So for example, when we meet people,

33:15

they will ask us to say things

33:17

like 33 and a third.

33:22

Now I have to concentrate when I say that because

33:24

if I say it naturally in Irish English, I

33:26

would say, thirty-three and a

33:28

third. So it sounds

33:31

like a very different thing.

33:38

Hey, you want to know about Singlesia? Well,

33:41

my name is Kalai Ramu, and I'm a second

33:43

generation Singaporean of Indian origin

33:47

with a little bit of Chinese thrown in. My

33:50

husband is Swiss, and he is the one

33:52

who often teases me about my Singlish

33:54

purely because it sounds so funny to him. I

33:57

only switch to Singlish whenever I'm around.

33:59

other Singaporeans, even

34:02

like my parents, just so that

34:04

I feel more understood, welcomed,

34:07

and it's just fun to be able to use it with other

34:10

people who know.

34:14

As for the French guy at the headquarters

34:17

in Michigan, he did work with Heather,

34:19

and she did a full My Fair Lady

34:21

treatment on him. The transcripts of

34:24

what he said in those press conferences went from 60% accuracy

34:26

to 90.

34:28

Did he get his promotion? As

34:31

far as I know, yeah, yeah, he finally did.

34:33

They finally made him full CFO.

34:36

What is your policy on correcting people's

34:38

grammar? I'm curious, and I'm not thinking

34:41

as a teacher, just

34:43

more in real life.

34:45

I typically don't ever point out people's

34:47

grammar. For me personally, I couldn't care

34:49

less. If there's an error, I

34:51

let it slide. I don't care, I understood what they

34:54

meant. If there's a situation where

34:56

it makes the message unclear, then

34:58

I might ask a clarifying question,

35:01

and I try to get them to explain

35:03

a little bit more, but only

35:05

if I've misunderstood.

35:07

What about beauty? I mean, a beauty

35:09

is subjective. I understand that

35:11

you're advocating for a kind of efficiency

35:14

and a functionality of language

35:17

that shouldn't be overly

35:20

burdened by grammar rules, but

35:25

what about those who say, listen, you're endorsing

35:27

a form of English that's good enough, kind

35:29

of good enough for the world,

35:33

and is it like a dumbing down? Yeah,

35:37

and that's what people will argue, that we're dumbing

35:39

down the language, where I would say it's not

35:41

dumbing down in any way, we're actually simplifying,

35:44

but your connection there to beauty,

35:47

I find that very interesting

35:49

and fascinating.

35:51

Of course we know, we know there

35:53

are studies out there that have shown women who wear makeup

35:57

are going to progress further.

35:59

in work, right? And

36:02

then we put that onto language

36:04

and this idea of eloquence and okay,

36:06

yes, we have this bias towards

36:09

wanting to listen to people who sound

36:12

really good. Just like we want

36:14

to look at people who are really beautiful.

36:16

Does that mean that their ideas are

36:19

better than the person who is ugly

36:21

and can't speak eloquently? That's

36:23

where we run into problems.

36:25

So how do you have

36:27

an unvarnished conversation? Yeah,

36:30

it's so difficult. And what

36:32

makes it especially difficult, Heather says,

36:35

is when our own biases get in the way.

36:38

Heather tells me about this story of her own when

36:40

her daughter came home from school in Singapore

36:44

and told her that she'd forgotten her water

36:46

bottle at school but she told it to her

36:48

in perfect Singlish. And

36:50

when I was kind of just blank

36:52

stare at her she goes, oh

36:54

sorry mommy I forgot my water bottle at school.

36:56

And it was like, oh no, I understood you. I just

36:59

didn't know how to respond in the moment.

37:02

What was going

37:02

on when when your daughter said that

37:04

to you and or and then she had to code

37:06

switch because she saw your expression. What

37:09

was what was your anxiety

37:12

or your

37:13

hesitation? I think I was just

37:15

shocked. I was just so surprised.

37:18

I had never heard her speak like that before. And

37:20

let's keep in mind this must have been about 2012. So

37:22

long after my awakening, right, and

37:28

understanding

37:30

that of course people should speak so

37:33

they belong and they should sound how they like and

37:35

this and that. But when it comes to your own child suddenly

37:38

all those wonderful thoughts are out the window

37:40

because you expect your children to sound like you. Your

37:42

children are a reflection of you. It's like

37:44

no no no no no this is the way we speak in our house.

37:47

But then Heather worried that the whole

37:49

this is the way we speak in our house was

37:52

planting the first seed of the judgmental

37:55

this is right this is wrong that she

37:57

had worked so hard as a teacher to escape.

38:00

When you see your child speaking in a way that

38:02

is so different from you, that's

38:04

when you realize how much your language is part of your identity.

38:08

And so what right do I have taking

38:10

that away from other people and saying, no,

38:13

you shouldn't sound like that. That's not proper. That's

38:15

not right.

38:16

Who am I to say that? And

38:18

that's, I guess, the whole crux of the

38:20

issue.

38:29

Well, thanks, Heather. Thanks so much.

38:32

Thank you.

38:38

Since we dropped this episode two years ago, Heather

38:40

Hansen published a book. It's called Unmuted,

38:43

How to Show Up, Speak Up, and Inspire

38:46

Action. This summer she's working with NASA

38:48

to do some accent bias training, soon

38:51

she's starting her PhD at Nanyang

38:53

Technological University in Singapore, focusing

38:56

on accent bias in the workplace.

39:02

This episode was produced by Raina Cohen

39:05

with help from Derek Arthur. It was edited

39:07

by Luis Treas. Carolyn McCusker

39:09

did additional reporting and wrote a fantastic

39:11

article in Goats and Soda and PR's Global Health

39:13

Blog. You can find links to that in the show notes.

39:16

Isaac Rodriguez was our engineer. Our theme

39:19

music was composed by John Ellis, additional

39:21

music from Blue Dot Sessions. The updated

39:23

version of this episode was produced by Justine Yan

39:26

with help from Elena Torek. Adelina Lantzin

39:28

is our senior producer. Liana Simstrom is our supervising

39:30

producer and our executive producer

39:32

is Irene Noguchi. I'm

39:34

Gregory Warner, back in two weeks with

39:37

some more rough translation.