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Ask HN: Dealing with thick english accents, what do you do?

8 points by anon3_ ↗ HN
I am occasionally on phone calls and in meetings where the guests on the call may speak english as a second language. During these calls, I make a conscience effort to try to understand what the caller means, but unfortunately, sometimes the accent is simply too thick for me to understand.

In one occasion, I did my best to get the general question, but I didn't want to be offensive and say I didn't understand. I ended up answering the questions wrong and was sharply criticized at the end of the call.

What is the most professional way you can handle a situation like this eloquently?

14 comments

[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 61.8 ms ] thread
gloves
I guess for the case of phone calls you can blame other things such as the tech - a bad connection perhaps, this would avoid personally insulting them.
tomtoise
I'm 'lucky' enough to be completely deaf in one ear. Once I've explained this to the person I'm talking to, they tend to make much more effort to enunciate and speak clearly.

Fake being half deaf? Only half-joking.

mattdlondon
You can ask for them to provide "extra detail" over email outside of the call as you think that question may need some detailed thought/extra checks etc.
sageabilly
I'm a huge fan of sending follow up emails for all phone calls regardless of who is on the other line- I have a bit of hearing loss and all phone calls are a bit garbled for me, doubly so if there's a lot of background noise on my end.

I will typically follow up a phone call with something like "Hi Percival, just to follow up on our phone call today, we landed on Widget A going into V1.2.34 instead of 1.2.32, having the Howitzer firm handle the BigDoodle transition to Python instead of doing it ourselves, and you said that you'd follow up with the FlimFlams and I'll follow up with the Wannabes and the Charlitans. Let me know if I missed anything."

Doing this has saved my butt more times than I can count.

JoeAltmaier
Additionally folks reading your takeaways this way will often think of things they didn't while babbling on the phone. Time to cogitate can shake loose important things.
sageabilly
Exactly. At that point about 50% of the time I'll get a reply along the lines of "Oh yeah Wakeen said he'll contact the Charlatans, don't worry about that" and then I have less work to do.
neverminder
That's an ever getting worse issue (I live in London and English is not my native). Since there are so many people speaking broken English it's becoming a norm and these people don't even show any effort to correct themselves.
saint_fiasco
You should say you don't understand so you don't answer a wrong question.

The person you are talking to probably realizes they have a strong accent and would prefer to know right away when they are not being understood.

When you say you were sharply criticized, do you mean by the person you were talking to (the one you misunderstood) or by your superiors/colleagues who don't have thick accents?

88e282102ae2e5b
It's not impolite to say you didn't understand. In fact, by not saying it, you're implying that you DID understand. If you had asked them to repeat themselves twenty times before the end of that call, they probably wouldn't have been so quick to assume that you're the problem.

You might have to straight up tell them "I'm having some trouble understanding you, would you like to continue this over email?" I know your instincts are telling you that this is rude, but it's not.

If they're unable to communicate via phone and unwilling to communicate via email, you've lost nothing by doing this. It would mean you're physically incapable of learning what they need from you, so you never really had a choice.

pixelcort
These work for me:

1. I'm so sorry, I didn't get that. Could you say it again more slowly? 2. Sorry again, the word after <foobar>, could you spell it for me? 3. Okay, before I reply, let me make sure I understand: you are saying/asking "<unambiguous interpretation>"?

joeevans1000
One other tip is to be sure to wear very good headphones or ear buds during the call. Frankly, I have a hard time understanding even native speakers on many calls without headphones. The noise canceling variety are best to reduce ambient local noise.
Mimu
Just ask the other person to repeat. First the other guy probably know he does not speak very good english, second even between 2 native speaker someone can miss something and ask to repeat, this is very common and not rude at all imo.
arien
English is my... third language, and I do have trouble understanding certain accents over the phone, natives or not.

I usually ask them to repeat their statement a second time. If that doesn't work I politely blame the line/sound quality and suggest to them to bear with me and slow down for the remaining of the call. Then repeat what they say as I understand it, to ensure I'm getting it right (active listening).

If it still doesn't work out, I suggest that perhaps an email follow up or some other method would be best (e.g. Skype).