I wish we as society could simply have one language to overcome language barriers, but that’s more of a content for my daydreaming.

I often encounter issues due to language barriers.
Mainly with 2 languages.

Since the start of war, I’ve been encountering lots of Ukrainians I can’t really speak with. Especially when I was on a dorm, where they were a great majority.
Not that I tend to talk with people, but I felt weird after a while.
Probably like someone who doesn’t speak Spanish in the US (at least I assume that’s fairly common over there).

And now searching for a job, I found many companies want you to know German.
Which I also encountered as “would’ve been useful now” a few times.

Seems like I should know an answer to this, as English isn’t my first language, but I have no fucking idea how I picked it up. I never made any serious attempt (i.e.: studying for more than a week) to learn it.

    • Melobol@lemmy.ml
      3·
      1 day ago

      Appreciate the compliment!
      My accent is really strong and that won’t change. I don’t have the ability to do that.
      Interesting to note: I noticed that native US speakers actually struggle more to understand really strong accented second language English.
      They don’t have a problem with the southern deep deep “crocodile hunter” English, but watch something with a very strong accented English - even some Ted talks - and they start to struggle.

      • pelespirit@sh.itjust.works
        4·
        1 day ago

        I struggle with Scottish, but I think that’s because they have a lot of slang mixed into the typical English words. If they took those out, I would hope I would get the rhythm. Japanese accents can sometimes be hard, but most of the time I have no issue. That might be a speed issue as well. I think exposure has a ton to do with it.

      • velma@sh.itjust.works
        3·
        1 day ago

        I’ve had coworkers look me in the face and claim that they simply can’t understand what someone is saying if they have an accent. I happily take all the calls they don’t want to bother putting even a little effort towards.

        Of course they never struggle with southern accents and the like.