[thaumasiotes]

> The article also assumes every one is a native speaker who can write quickly and clearly in a chat -- in a lot of international projects this is not the case.

You think non-native speakers have an easier time communicating in real time in a video call than through text? A video call is the worst case for a non-native speaker.

(Well, OK, a phone call is even worse. But being synchronous and relying on their ability to understand the spoken language are both terrible ideas if you're concerned about what makes things easy for non-native speakers.)

[nottorp]

> You think non-native speakers have an easier time communicating in real time in a video call than through text? A video call is the worst case for a non-native speaker.

Oh yea, I forgot about this because I don't do video/audio calls.

A non native speaker is NOT exposed to spoken english daily. In some countries they even dub Hollywood movies so not even their entertainment is in english. And where movies are subtitled you tend to read the subtitles so you don't bother understanding accents, speech over explosions and stuff like that.

Written english is another thing, if you do programming. There's no point of looking for docs in your native language; the originals are in english and always more up to date.

So maybe the non native speakers have trouble because the OP speaks too fast / has an unfamiliar accent?

[BlargMcLarg]

>because the OP speaks too fast / has an unfamiliar accent

Here's an unpopular opinion by a hard-hearing person with native English skills: the far majority of people are really bad at verbal communication as a way to transfer knowledge. Doubly so in complex areas. To top it off, I see barely any difference between people in roles that require speaking often and those who don't, except for frequent public speakers.

The reasons? Bad articulation. Speaking too fast. Speaking before you know what you want to say. Complicated explanations. Muttering "uh", "ah" and more. Diversions. The list goes on.

And it's not like the information on how to be a better speaker isn't out there. I can assuredly say the average person in a leadership position doesn't even take 5 minutes of their work day to do vocal exercises. That alone already helps a lot.

Meanwhile, people making informative videos and talks out of their own accord are much easier to hear and understand. The difference is night and day.

[DiggyJohnson]

I am not a great communicator. I talk too fast, don't articulate my thoughts, start talking before the other person is finished (though I have a pet theory I picked up this habit from my first high-paced tech job working across 9 timezones with Indians =p ).

I am constantly trying to work on this part of myself-for both myself and others' benefit-but have to be careful to not get too anxious about trying to fix my communication.

I really appreciate this comment because I've found that when I talk to (close) friends about this challenge they do not consider communication something that can be much improved; communication style is mostly rigid. This baffles me because it seems like it would doom most bad communicators to a lifetime of bad communicating. This might be exactly how life works, I admit, but its an interesting way of getting to this obvious point.

Where do you recommend someone like me go to learn more about those vocal exercises you mentioned. That does seem like a great starting place.

[perl4ever]

I'm attending a series of lectures on project management, and the first one was great. I mean, it didn't contain any earth shattering information, but it was paced perfectly.

The second one was surprising by comparison, because while it wasn't that bad, it illuminated all the things that were spot on in the first one. For instance, it was just a little too fast for me to easily type everything on the slides as notes, which I think is approximately the pace at which I absorb information. At the same time, there was too much redundancy and filler so I tended to get lost figuring out where information should go in my outline.

If someone is otherwise a good and prepared speaker, a heavy accent can be adjusted to.

Go a little slower and prune the verbiage a little more seem to me like principles to come back to.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

Apart from what you say about exposure (which is true), I'd say that written English is much easier than spoken English for most (if not all) native speakers, for several reasons:

- If you don't understand a sentence the first time, you can read it twice (or as many times as you want), and this very often helps as a non-native speaker - sometimes you misinterpret a word and this throws you off, but reading the sentence again clears the misunderstanding. It also can help deducing the meaning of an unknown word from context, etc. Of course in a video call you could ask the speaker to repeat, but this isn't functional if you do it often, and can make the non-native speaker feel ashamed of slowing the conversation too much, especially in work environments.

- This one only applies to related languages, but it's much easier to deduce the meaning of written words from other languages. Take the word "subtitles" in your text. Any Spanish speaker could infer that it is equivalent to "subtítulos" in Spanish, because it's spelled very similarly (Levenshtein distance = 2). But the pronunciation (/ˈsʌbtaɪtəls/ vs. /sub'titulos/) is very different (Levenshtein distance = 5).

- If you still don't understand a word, you can look it up. Or even hit Google Translate. Good luck with that in a video call.

- Written language is reasonably standard. While there can be some regional variation (color/colour, lift/elevator and so on); you get rid of all the diversity of accents which can be a huge deal for a non-native speaker.

Seriously, speaking as a non-native English speaker (at a quite good level now that allows me to speak quite comfortably, but obviously I went through all the stages of learning...) the difference between texting and phone/video calling when you're a non-native is enormous. The latter is like an order of magnitude more difficult.

[thaumasiotes]

> But the pronunciation (/ˈsʌbtaɪtəls/ vs. /sub'titulos/) is very different (Levenshtein distance = 5).

Levenshtein distance between conventionalized IPA orthographic representation is not a useful metric for the perceptual difference between two spoken sound sequences.

> Written language is reasonably standard. While there can be some regional variation (color/colour, lift/elevator and so on); you get rid of all the diversity of accents which can be a huge deal for a non-native speaker.

This problem actually comes up in writing too; I knew some Chinese students who were really offended by English typos. They had a point - lacking the pre-existing knowledge of English that lets me know what a typo was meant to say, they just had no way of finding out what a misspelled word was supposed to mean. You can't look up words that don't exist.

[hutzlibu]

"You can't look up words that don't exist."

Erm, just google them and take the recommended result?

In general I think searching with missspelled words is a quite solved problem.

[Al-Khwarizmi]

> Levenshtein distance between conventionalized IPA orthographic representation is not a useful metric for the perceptual difference between two spoken sound sequences.

I know. Just wanted to provide some metric for the quantitatively-minded, and because the example is hard to follow if you don't speak Spanish or read IPA, and I don't know any least bad quantitative metric. But qualitatively speaking, I can tell you that inferring the meaning of that English word from the written form is obvious even to a Spanish person with zero English knowledge, while inferring it from the pronunciation it's very difficult. And it's just an example, but it happens with many words.

> This problem actually comes up in writing too; I knew some Chinese students who were really offended by English typos. They had a point - lacking the pre-existing knowledge of English that lets me know what a typo was meant to say, they just had no way of finding out what a misspelled word was supposed to mean. You can't look up words that don't exist.

It can come up, but still, the normal frequency of typos is much, much smaller than the frequency of accent-specific pronunciation variants, which typically change several words per sentence. And with Google you can look up many light typos and it will come up with the correct form (although not things like using "of" instead of "have", of course).

[astonex]

I work as a non-native speaker in Korea. Speaking and listening is just insanely harder than reading and writing. I can be productive as long as I'm exchanging messages on Github/Messenger, but meetings are horrendous.

[jdshaffer]

I have the opposite problem here in Japan. I can listen and speak pretty well, even in meetings, but written stuff kills me because of all the kanji...

[nottorp]

And both of you should blame distributed work for this? For opposite reasons? You simply know spoken Japanese (much) better than written, while the poster above you knows written Korean (much) better than spoken.

[vasco]

A non native speaker wasn't born in an English speaking country, the rest are your assumptions. I'm non native and I'm exposed to and speak english every single day, and don't even live in an English speaking country.

[nottorp]

Local customs may vary? I'm not a native speaker either and I do mix English and my native language even when speaking. I'd still say my spoken English is significantly worse than the written one.

[mgbmtl]

Yeah, accents can be difficult. Personality too.

I grew up in a bilingual en/fr environment. I mostly read in English and watch TV in English. Half of my ex partners are Anglo.

And yet, on calls where I'm the only non-native speakers, and others are American or AU/NZ, I just don't understand half the cultural references and can't say anything because they talk too fast and interrupt all the time. At best, someone might notice that I am frowning or bored.

Regardless whether text or video, some people are not there to listen to others. No easy way out of that one :)

[zhte415]

Phone calls are better, as no one can see the group on the other end looking at each other in bemusement (if in a meeting room) or in a group IM chat (if not all in the same place) asking each other what the hell the speaker is talking about (was talking about, as the speaker's often moved on). That's assuming anyone not interested has not taken a bathroom break.

Sarcasm I hope detected.

Speaking in an international environment is a skill. It's not just about (I think the term is) paralinquistics (speed, accent, volume, etc), it's about thinking about who else is in the conversation.