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cowboy bob @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:17AM
I have had to talk to Dell on a number of issues in the past. They also have "farmed out" their I.T. network overseas. It is exasperating to talk to someone that has strongly accented english, and very hard to understand when on the phone. I have a major problem getting anything fully resolved with this language issue. I might as well try to sing rap music with a person using "eubonics" as a means of communication. This is not ment to be racial, but come on, can YOU really understand as good as when you speak with someone from your own area?
jon @ Feb 22nd 2008 9:58AM
I understand what you are saying but in this case it looks to be work related to website work, not thier customer service line.
I hope this does not reduce the quality of the websites as they have won recent awards for the quality of the Jeep website.
Injun Joe @ Feb 22nd 2008 12:50PM
CB-
Your comment, "I might as well try to sing rap music with a person using "eubonics" as a means of communication," may not have been meant to be racially motivated, but your choice of example might be viewed by some as just that. Especially, by those readers of the African American community.
Your statement might seem to suggest that persons living in our cities urban areas are not capable of speaking Standard English. Although, you and I both know that is not the case, nor do I believe you meant it that way. And I did understand the meaning of your comment. Overcoming language barriers always present a challenge.
Other than that your position was "spot on."
Dolemite @ Feb 22nd 2008 1:53PM
"can YOU really understand as good as when you speak with someone from your own area?"
No offense bro, but perhaps the language problem is on your end. I have noticed that those who complain about having such communication problems when talking to foreigners are quite often practically illiterate themselves. While you seem to have a reasonable grasp of english, I think even you could use a couple lesson from Hooked on Phonics, so as not to say things like "understand as good".
Also, you should learn to be a bit more open-minded and challenge your biases. If one finds so many variations of english within the different regions of the same country, whether America, Canada, or England, differences between the english of different states should be expected. Besides, I am pretty sure that there are more people who speak the Indian form of english than the American form, or any other form for that matter.
I have had to speak to the Indian tech support occasionally, especially with regard to my router and ISP support, but my experience has not been that bad. They do tend to have trouble with pronouncing names, but not numbers. Go figure. :)
cowboy bob @ Feb 22nd 2008 4:45PM
As I said, I ment no offense. My reference to rap with eubonics was in reguard to the so-called music, however, a good command of ANY language is key to understanding those using it. Dolemite- I am aware that it should be "as well", and I am not sure where your feelings that I am "biased" and am "closeminded" come from within this particular blog. My point was all about communication difficulties. If you are a perfectionist to this degree, I defer to your superiority.
010111 @ Feb 23rd 2008 10:28AM
talk about "communication difficulties"...
"eubonics"? maybe you are referring to "ebonics"?
"reguard"? like you were guarding something then left and decided to come back and re-guard it?
tekdemon @ Feb 25th 2008 3:33AM
Dolemite makes a good point...I think people need to put in a little more effort to improve their English listening skills so that they can understand a variety of accents. I've heard people complain about their bosses' English because their bosses were from some other country, or a professor or teaching assistant had a heavy accent. But the truth is that I've understood all those accents because I put some effort into my listening abilities.
While it might be easiest to understand your own accent, it's not like your accent is the only one in the world. Just in North America there's a huge variety of accents from French Canadian to deep south. It's really unfortunate if you can't understand English that isn't in your own accent, because the vast majority of English speaking people most likely do not speak the same accent.
And seriously? If you give it a little bit of thought I'm pretty sure you can figure out almost every accent out there. I've found it fairly easy to figure out English accents from everywhere from Spain to France to China to India. Ironically the hardest accent to figure out that I've ever encountered was in England-no I didn't have trouble with the standard London accent you see in movies, but some of the more rural English accents can really test your grasp of accents.
tekdemon @ Feb 25th 2008 3:55AM
BTW if anybody wants to listen to a really unintelligible English accent (from England of course), just search Youtube for Yorkshire accents.
Here's a particularly hard to understand one:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QN-lh3SeyB0&feature=related
There's others but some of them were a little too cuss-filled.