[ilyausorov]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I invite you to watch one of our dialect coaches, Ron Carlos, share a bit about both the values and process that he brings to the table at BoldVoice (1:43 mins) - https://vimeo.com/572809188

As our name implies, we want to help non-native English speakers feel bolder and more confident when speaking English. To feel more confident, indeed, one may need to more deeply learn the rules of English grammar, and more varied vocabulary.

However, in the pursuit of more confident and clear speech, one may also want to learn how to adapt their pronunciation, how they place stress, how they use intonation and they way they use pacing and rhythm. All of these are the component parts of an accent.

A note from Ron (who just Slacked me while I was writing this): Clarity of speech and pronunciation are big parts of an accent. You can’t change those without changing an accent. We are dialect coaches. We love peoples’ native accents, which is why we use sounds and samples from each speaker’s familiar language to teach sounds in American English. We want to empower our users to be able to control their speech so they can choose when sound more American in situations where it may benefit them. We truly hope that one day accents won’t matter, but until then, we have folks who feel embarrassed about their accent which keeps them from showing up with their full selves. We’re here to help those folks feel more confident with their speech.

[eldaisfish]

You have not addressed the fundamental point of my comment - why are you selling a north american accent in particular?

Clear speech is not predicated on acquiring a certain accent and i feel you are feeding into the stereotype of an accent determining the quality of the speaker, not the content of speech.

Edit - you ignore the fact that a native speaker of English may have an accent that is not North American. Think about millions in the Indian subcontinent or Africa. Are you not being subtly racist in implying that only accents from North America are desirable? Personally, i find many African accents incredibly clear and easy to understand.

This is the reason for my opposition to "accent coaches" - they focus on the wrong thing - the accent. To anyone with half a brain, D Trump sounds incredibly stupid despite his north American accent.

[dakna]

As a fellow immigrant working in the US and as someone working with non native speakers from other regions in the world, I can assure you this is not about racism. It is about team cohesion, clarity, getting things done in an international team. People have to spend extra brain cycles just to tune in to how you say things, before they can focus on what you actually say. This is especially true at the beginning of working with someone who's accent you have never heard. There is a big difference in accents between someone from India, France, Ukraine. While there is nothing wrong with that, it has value for international teams to mitigate this difference and settle on a common standard.

[ddoolin]

I like your point about cohesion. I'm not an immigrant here so, perhaps obviously, I agree. I have worked on teams and accents of those I have to collaborate with is a big factor in determining overall "friction". Often if the accent is too strong, it really makes the interaction dreadful because I (and others) want to understand you but it's difficult and embarrassing having to ask "what?" three times per sentence.

I don't think you need any better example than support call centers. How many people routinely avoid calling for support or simply loathe the idea of doing so because they're like to get someone with a heavy Indian, Filipino, etc. accent that leads to the scenario I mentioned above ("whats?")? When it comes down to it, it has a real cost in many ways.

[argc]

Many people learning foreign languages have a goal of sounding like a native speaker from a particular area. There is nothing wrong with that.

[dang]

Sorry for veering offtopic, but can you please stop posting in the flamewar style to HN? You've unfortunately been doing it a lot, in many threads. It degrades discussion and, as https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html explains, we're trying for something different than that here. Note this one, for example: "Have curious conversation; don't cross-examine."

The main thing that would fix this is if you edit the swipes out of your comments, e.g. commenting on how bad the other person's point is, how they are nitpicking, how they are failing to argue properly. If you simply make your substantive points directly, without negative 'you' statements, your comments will be much better.

Also, please omit flamebait like the bit at the end of your comment here. It breaks the site guidelines too, and leads nowhere good.