[dodyg]

Jezz, this is bullshit - you already have to learn English, now you have to improve your accent, then you have to look certain way. Stop following the moving goal posts.

I don't know where "strong accents correlate to business comes from".

People are building amazing companies all around the world - with or without 'proper English accent'. Singapore, Taiwan, Korea, Japan build super successful organizations and high GDP with terrible English accents.

Damn people, don't let people make you feel inferior.

[SamReidHughes]

Yes, it's very helpful to have it be easy to understand you. If you don't like that, go live in a different universe.

[dodyg]

Accent has little to do with the ability to communicate clearly.

[bane]

In some cases it does. There are accents, even among English-as-a-first-language speakers that are almost unintelligible.

For example, many Americans struggle to understand the kind of English accent used by some recent immigrants from India -- immigrants who by and large speak perfect English.

Grammar might be perfect, but thick accents can be a tremendous impedance to communication.

In these cases it can be even worse since the speaker knows they're speaking correctly, but just can't make themselves understood, even in basic conversations. Accent training is the perfect and only solution.

[chetanahuja]

Nothing against your general point but...

even among English-as-a-first-language speakers...

kind of English accent used by some recent immigrants from India

Those two statements don't work together. Almost nobody in India speaks English as a first language.

Well, I'll refine that statement a bit. There are, in fact, families in India who speak a lot of English in day-to-day situations. This works both as a status symbol as well as a tremendous advantage in the professional world. But I'll bet these are not the people whose accents you'd have trouble understanding. Kids from such backgrounds usually grow up watching a lot of American/British TV/movies and are usually able to operate fluently in an international (not just American) English speaking environment.

[raverbashing]

Correct. Let me add Ireland as a good example of that as well

[draugadrotten]

I often get to translate what my Brisbane colleagues are saying to my Seattle colleagues. I'm from Europe and not a native English speaker. I suppose it makes me more indifferent to thick accents. However, Danish accents are too severe even for me.

[lcedp]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sM45TACI4H4

[icelancer]

It has little to do or it should have little to do with the ability to communicate clearly? Because I strongly suspect you mean the latter, not the former. There are plenty of examples of the former.

[dodyg]

I mean the former. People communicate with each other just fine - with or without accents, with or without stutters, with or without lisping.

Accents are part of people's identity because of the nature of their mother tongue. The Italians have strong accent, as well as Russians and Indians. They are fine - they are not a deficiency.

Ban Ki Moon is a UN Secretary General - and boy, he has an accent. It works fine for him being a diplomat whose job is to talk and talk and talk.

[VLM]

"now you have to improve your accent, then you have to look certain way."

Culture is a likely intermediate step. I'm not into watching other people play sports, or top40 music, or drinking beer as a hobby, or watching TV for 8 hours per day, or going to church, and that occasionally makes it difficult to relate to people who have their entire life revolve around those topics (aka stereotypical Americans).

I speak perfect midwestern "newscaster" English (Guess where I live? We all sound like that around here, so its no competitive advantage.) However it is still hard to relate in small talk. True stories : "What did you do Sunday, we went to church, went shopping and bought the latest Miley Cyrus cd do you have it yet? Then I got drunk sitting on the couch watching football all afternoon for nine hours and three six packs, still kinda hung over this morning". "Um, well I went for a 4 mile hike around sunrise before it got warm, then hacked around on my computer for most of the day, spent some quality time in the workshop soldering together a little micro controller project with my son, went outside and watched a really cool thunderstorm around dinner time, then watched some youtube video series about dwarf fortress and laughed at the host's antics (LOL he made a hole in the floor next to his well into the ceiling of a lower level, then managed to flood his well, then tried to wall up the flooding corridor with the hole still in the floor, then as usual the dwarf built the wall trapping himself on the flooding side LOL F-ing dwarfs), then the host panicked.) This is usually followed by crickets on both sides as we consider each other's lifestyles insanely boring and a total waste of time. I find it best to size someone up and if they look like a boring bubba type then simply avoid all small talk about culture, but sales/CEO/manager types cannot.

When conversations like this happen to me, its merely funny, but when a CEO tries to talk to a business partner this has serious financial costs. The problem with a Korean dude wanting to spend the first 15 minutes of the sales meeting talking about his epic starcraft battle last night is not just the accent.

[thenomad]

There are a lot of well-understood techniques to get around this problem, FYI - from "How To Win Friends And Influence People" onward.

For example, you could ask questions about the interests of the person you're talking to - "Really? I've not listened to much Miley Cyrus, I must admit. Which of her CDs would you recommend?". You could draw parallels between their entertainment and yours - "Yeah, we spent a lot of the afternoon watching video too! How was the football?". You could sympathise with any complaints they're making - "Aww, man, you're having to do this meeting hung over? That sucks. Can I grab you some water or something?".

It's definitely a problem, though, agreed - and it's something that's very worth thinking about if you're doing business cross-culturally.

[aylons]

I think you miss the point. They are talking about people who live in the US and must sell their work primarily in English.

[dodyg]

Go live in New York City. People negotiate accents just fine.