[colechristensen]

One thing I have noticed is that ESL speakers even from very different languages seem to have an easier time understanding each other than I do as a native speaker. As someone with mild attention issues the frustration is real, especially in the kind of long half-important meeting in which it is sometimes quite important to follow along but other times completely unnecessary.

[majewsky]

ESL speaker from Germany here. My experience is that I can cope really well with the accents that I understand, but I struggle really hard with new accents until I crack their code, so to say.

For example, the wife of a friend is from Turkey and is not very proficient in German, so we talk in English. The first few times it was really tough for me to understand anything, until I figured out how the Turkish accent works. For example, the Turkish accent replaces th -> t, e.g. "tank you" instead of "thank you", which was really confusing for me since I'm used to German ESL speakers who replace th -> s instead.