Can you speak with foreigners?

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Non-native English speakers are actually who I prefer talking to in person, as I generally understand them better. Sometimes it can be a little difficult over the phone, though due to distortions caused by the technology. I will admit, though, I do have some difficulty understanding those with a strong Russian (or related) accent, and much easier times with either a Mexican or oriental accent (any of the Chinese languages, Japanese, Korean...) With native English speakers, (especially within a similar local variant of American) people tend to read things in to what I'm saying that aren't there. For example, when I worked in a call center, there was a recent policy change that said any time a person was disputing their bill, the call needed to be escalated to a manager. My boss was confused why I kept trying to give her these calls. It boiled down to differences in definition. I saw it as if a customer is confused about charges, I explain them, and they say they aren't right, that's disputing the bill. Simple as that. She was seeing it as the above, but also the customer showing significant anger/threats... as well. She always wondered why I didn't control the call, and let it get to the point of being a dispute. I never really understood why she kept asking me this. I have no control over when someone says their bill is wrong. This was around the same time as one of my co-workers suggested to me that I may be an aspie.

It depends on how strong their accent is! If it's mild, I usually have no trouble understanding them. However, the stronger the accent, the more trouble I have figuring out what they're saying. Ethnicity doesn't seem to matter, btw.

I love speaking with foreigners regardless of the accent. I love to do and hear different accents.

It's funny, but I actually can. I seem to know what they want, even if they can't say it exactly. I guess this ain't an NT thing I have...

One other thing, I translated my brother's often bizarre way of saying things to my parents as a child. I knew picked up some of the replacement letters he used to use, one example was "free" instead of "tree." Now imagine this all over the place. There used to be so many expressions, I can't seem to remember them now, argh, but it was cool. It's probably not uncommon, but reminds me of good times.

Omar finds talk'n with them foreign people to be very simple. They are very good at obeying simple commands like "sit", "stay" or "come", tho tell'n them to "fetch" usually results in lots of confusion.