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What do you think?
If people dislike me for a DIFFERENT reason, they can use accent as an excuse 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
People can look down at me for my accent 40%  40%  [ 2 ]
Neither of the above 60%  60%  [ 3 ]
Total votes : 5

kraftiekortie
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31 Oct 2021, 10:20 pm

Oxford is not cosmopolitan.

Albuquerque is a larger city, and more cosmopolitan than Oxford—but less so than the other places you mentioned. It has a large Hispanic population, so it should be better at “tolerating” accents.



QFT
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31 Oct 2021, 10:26 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
Oxford is not cosmopolitan.

Albuquerque is a larger city, and more cosmopolitan than Oxford—but less so than the other places you mentioned. It has a large Hispanic population, so it should be better at “tolerating” accents.


Somehow I don't feel that Albuquerque is any better than Oxford. In some respects even worse. At least in Oxford there were some strangers offering me rides (which is actually a unique thing to Oxford, I never saw it anywhere else) but in Albuquerque I can't find a single positive thing in comparison to other places. I just feel more ostracized all around.

Sometimes I wonder whether its because in Albuquerque there is a lot more crime so people are more suspicious. But why does being more suspicious translate into not understanding accents? Thats why I feel like pretending not to understand them is a form of passive aggression.



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01 Nov 2021, 7:42 am

QFT wrote:
Still, however, when it comes to accent, it wasn't the issue in Minnesota either, neither it was in Michigan. But it became an issue in Mississippi and New Mexico. So, going back to your point, maybe different people with different accents tend to go to northern states but not so much southern states? For example in California, Minnesota and Michigan everyone seemed to be from across the country, but in Mississippi and New Mexico people tended to be a lot more local.


Very possible, especially if the North is more financially well off since that will draw in well educated professionals from abroad.

Quote:
Yeah, but the issue of people misunderstanding me started long before pandemic. So I came to America in 1994. By 1997 I learned to speak good English, and I was in India from 2009 till 2014. Between 1997 and 2009, the accent was not an issue at all (although I was ostracized due to all of the *other* things I been talking about). Then in India they had trouble understanding me, but I blamed it on "their" poor English skills not mine. Yet when I came back to America, in 2014, I saw that Americans didn't understand me either. And that was when I first had that question why is it Americans have more trouble with my accent than they did in the past. Seeing that I came back from India to America in 2014 and COVID started in 2020, I don't think you can entirely blame it on masks.


Five years in a foreign country is a long time, especially for a non-native speaker. Perhaps you unconsciously picked up some speech habits from India during that time and still have them, which makes you harder to understand for those not used to Indian accent? The timeline matches with your troubles.

Of course, since that was seven years ago, one would think that the habit should've fallen away by now, but I suppose that doesn't always happen, either. Actually, might be likelier that in your case it didn't since, if I've understood correctly, you haven't been interested in getting rid of your accent, so any changes you accidentally absorbed in India stuck, just like your Russian accent.



kraftiekortie
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01 Nov 2021, 8:02 am

California is in the southern USA, latitude-wise. Though most people think of it as a "western" state.



Texasmoneyman300
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01 Nov 2021, 5:18 pm

kraftiekortie wrote:
California is in the southern USA, latitude-wise. Though most people think of it as a "western" state.

Even though California in in the southern portion of the country latitude wise Cali is not in the South.The South is states like Texas Arkansas Alabama and Georgia and TN not Cali.



Mona Pereth
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04 Nov 2021, 11:59 am

QFT wrote:
The places where they had no trouble with my accent were Berkeley (California), Minneapolis (Minnesota) and Ann Arbor (Michigan).

Places where they have troulbe with my accent are Oxford (Mississippi) and Albuquerque (New Mexico).

I'm not at all surprised that people would have trouble with your accent in Oxford (Mississippi) -- where, as far as I can tell, there are very few immigrants. Albuquerque seems a bit more cosmopolitan, but perhaps it varies by neighborhood?

Berkeley (California), Minneapolis (Minnesota) and Ann Arbor (Michigan) are all relatively progressive-leaning places, so their greater acceptance of foreign accents is only to be expected.


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QFT
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04 Nov 2021, 12:17 pm

Mona Pereth wrote:
Berkeley (California), Minneapolis (Minnesota) and Ann Arbor (Michigan) are all relatively progressive-leaning places, so their greater acceptance of foreign accents is only to be expected.


If people had physical difficulty hearing the accent, then their ideology (progressive or otherwise) won't help them hearing it. So the very fact that you say that progressive people have less "trouble hearing" shows that it is *not* a physical difficulty but rather a passive aggression. Which is the exact thing I was suspecting: that people are purposely pretending to misunderstand the accent as a way of putting me down.



kraftiekortie
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04 Nov 2021, 12:29 pm

Progressive people might have more experience in hearing different accents other than their own.

Then again, they might not.

But, at least in theory, they do not mind it if a person has a different accent than their own.



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04 Nov 2021, 4:58 pm

QFT wrote:
Mona Pereth wrote:
Berkeley (California), Minneapolis (Minnesota) and Ann Arbor (Michigan) are all relatively progressive-leaning places, so their greater acceptance of foreign accents is only to be expected.


...So the very fact that you say that progressive people have less "trouble hearing" shows that it is *not* a physical difficulty but rather a passive aggression. Which is the exact thing I was suspecting: that people are purposely pretending to misunderstand the accent as a way of putting me down.


These cities are more likely to have a diverse population of both various American accents & foreigners speaking English accents. Smaller cities and towns have less exposure to a diverse population; they're typically more insular. A larger city is much more likely to have people from all over due to things like people moving for jobs, colleges & universities, & so on. They're not being passive-aggressive if they haven't been exposed to & aren't used to hearing a wider variety of accents.



Mona Pereth
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05 Nov 2021, 5:48 am

QFT wrote:
If people had physical difficulty hearing the accent, then their ideology (progressive or otherwise) won't help them hearing it. So the very fact that you say that progressive people have less "trouble hearing" shows that it is *not* a physical difficulty but rather a passive aggression. Which is the exact thing I was suspecting: that people are purposely pretending to misunderstand the accent as a way of putting me down.

I suspect it's a mix of passive-aggression and laziness. People who live in culturally and linguistically homogeneous, conservative communities are not accustomed to having to listen carefully to other people. They are accustomed to being able to understand each other easily, thus are more likely to get impatient with people they can't understand easily.


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QFT
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05 Nov 2021, 6:39 am

Mona Pereth wrote:
They are accustomed to being able to understand each other easily


People understanding me easily never happens. Even accent aside. It seems like they never hear anything I am saying and substitute something else.

Here is one of the recent examples. I talked to my roommate (who is Native American) as to why people seem to avoid me more than before. He told me that it is because of social distancing due to COVID. I told him that I am talking about 2014 onward, and COVID started in 2020. He still said its due to COVID. So I repeated to him: how can it be due to COVID if it is 2014. He started to elaborate why its due to COVID, etc.

And even in writing, same thing. When I try to get my physics paper published, the referees often misunderstand what I am saying and the paper gets rejected because they assume I mean something other than I actually mean. And in writing accent is not even an issue.

Yet you say people are "used to understnading each other easily". So you mean they can understand each other all across the board, both in speach and in writing, etc? WOW. Thats amazing!

My experience is that they can't understand what I am saying unless they assume it is either Box 1, or Box 2, or Box 3. So do others get understood so easily because they, INDEED, speak within those few boxes: as in, their thought process is a lot less creative than mine? Or is it they they can express themselves better so that whatever creative thing they are saying gets understood?