As a deaf person, it is difficult to imagine a more challenging job that could be realistically be undertaken than mine.
I work with a crew of around 150-250 people. The vast majority speaks English as a second language, and loaded with their own strong mother tongue accent. The crew consists of people from Libya, Algeria, Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, Sudan, Niger, Turkey, Russa, Kazashstan (sp), Croatia, Greece, Italy, Germany, France, USA, Canada, Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Argentina, Australia, New Zealand, India, China, Bangladesh and Indonesia.
It is really is difficult to understand someone who is talking in English as a second language, I’m usually hopeless and often resign to writing it when I’m at home for the occasional time I do meet someone like this. However, out here, it is on a daily basic and have no choice but to really concentrate.
My technique is to get them to repeat about three times, and remember that their pronounciation of the vowels is greatly exaggerated and changed. “Donk ga to bithraam – ah dirtee!”. I’m sure there’s a British accent somewhere that resembles this. The word “salary” gets me stumped every time – “saal – aal – reeh” when pronounced by north Africans. After a while, it gets easier as my ears become accustomed to funny pronounciations.
The worst people to listen to, for me as someone from the north of England are those from western Australia, specifically Perth, and the French from France. The Russians and eastern Europeans comes a close third.
The biggest surprise to me is understanding Texans remarkably well. I don’t know if it’s a good or bad thing to hear someone from the Lone Star state.
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