I don’t know why it took me until #8 to hit this one, which has raised my metaphorical blood pressure (actually, my blood pressure is remarkably stable) for a very long time. I do know why I’m mentioning it now, though: my last month’s hellish dive into customer service departments, where the only good thing I can say about the crazy-making automated phone systems is that at least the faux humans on them speak distinctly and can be understood. Not so at least 70% of the agents I eventually reach after screaming myself hoarse. (A good freind, generally civil, told me that she has discovered that when caught in and endless loop in customer service phone system, screaming “fuck” continuously always gets you to an agent. In my experience that usually works, but I’ve encountered two systems that just disconnect you.)
Look, my grandmother was a Greek immigrant. She learned English diligently and quickly (unlike her sisters and brothers), but she never was able to ditch her strong Greek accent. That’s fine: I have complete sympathy for (legal) immigrants having difficulty mastering English. I am hopeless with foreign languages: I can’t imagine what it would be like committing to a life in a country where I had to learn a new one…..but I would still commit to learning it as a high priority, and constantly strive to master that new tongue as an obligation of living in that society and culture.
And until I did master that language, I would certainly not accept employment in a job that required communicating with the public. Yes, yes, I know: the establishments hiring such non- or barely- English speakers are the culprits of first impression, but both parties have ethical obligations: the employers, who have a duty to hire people capable of doing a job, and the employees, who, like Kamala Harris, are ethically obligated not to accept a job they cannot competently perform.
From the employers, I don’t care to hear the excuse that “Americans” won’t take the jobs they are hiring incomprehensible non-native English speakers to handle. Pay more money, then. Pay enough, and hell, I’ll take one of those jobs.
Meanwhile, I don’t want excuses from the English-manglers either. Get help. Practice, do the work: “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain…” I can coach anyone who really wants to learn to speak more clearly, has a minimal IQ and no speech impediments how to minimize an accent, even a <Gasp!> Boston accent. Many foreign language-raised workers speak too quickly (particularly Spanish speakers); how many times do you have to be told “Slow down, I can’t understand you!” before you figure out that the problem is your inadequate English skills and not the people you’re talking to?
Come to a new country (Welcome!), learn the language, master it, respect the culture, and don’t take jobs requiring English language skills until you have English language skills. There shouldn’t be anything controversial or impossible about any of those requirements.
As for native born adult Americans who can’t speak English clearly and correctly, shame on them and their teachers, parents and neighborhoods.
Ethics Alarms 
I think you misunderstand, Jack. Those people are doing the job. The issue is that you think ‘the job’ is to assist customers, whereas it’s actually to frustrate you into giving up at the lowest possible cost to the company.
At least, that’s my conclusion. I can’t imagine any sane adult, who pretty much to a man despise phone-menu-Hell, can look at their system and imagine it’s good for the customer.
“Pay enough, and hell, I’ll take one of those jobs.”
I wouldn’t recommend it. You’re not a weenie. That works well for you in certain situations, but the first time a customer calls you a high-school dropout because they expected you to automatically put ketchup in the bag instead of asking you for it, you would be hard pressed to keep from using the ubiquitous, “Bite me”.
Or even if you did automatically put ketchup in the bag and they barked at you for that.
Or when a caller mumbles his or her name or address so quickly that you can’t understand and ask for the spelling only to have them loudly and rudely spell out “J-O-N-E-S” and act as if you don’t know how Jones is spelled without taking into consideration that you just didn’t understand what was being said.
Or when you’re having what you think is a perfectly pleasant and, out of nowhere, the customer interrupts and demands to know your name, following it up with, “Are you in a bad mood, Jack?” and begins calling your tone rude even though the thought had never occurred to you.
Or when three of your co-workers decide not to show up for work and you get held over doing their jobs and the customers are lecturing you about how your employer obviously doesn’t care about customer service and making you wish you had called in, too.
And your boss will not back you up when those things happen either.
I get it. I’ve had customer service experiences that made me wonder how the places stayed in business, too. It’s not just about the money, though. The culture of the place matters. There will always be some lazy people who take advantage, but, if employees feel valued (and, yes, compensation is part of that), they will generally do their best. If they feel that they are essentially cannon fodder thrown in the path of a public that blames them for laws, rules, policies and other acts of God that are beyond their pay grade, they won’t.
What a head-exploding memory this conjured up! Years ago I hired a company to install a sump pump in our basement. Though most of their workers were Hispanic, they assured me an English-speaking member would be on site each day.
When the day for digging the sump pump hole arrived,. the head of that day’s crew seemed to only understand some English, so I kept my instructions very basic. ”Do NOT dig here,” I said, pointing to the area where my washer and dryer would go, then outlined the correct area with chalk. He nodded, saying “OK”, and I left for an appointment. When I returned several hours later, a nice big hole was sitting precisely in the “Do NOT” spot, while the chalked outline was untouched.
I called the head of the company to demand an answer for the mistake and reminded him of his English-speaker-on-site promise to me. He said the usual crew member couldn’t be there that day. I asked how long the one I got had been working for the company. The answer…FIVE years! I was livid.
What kind of a company has someone with them for five years and doesn’t demand they learn enough English to communicate with homeowners? What kind of an individual works for a company for five years and doesn’t take responsibility for improving his or her own communication skills? I was dumbfounded by the clueless attitude exhibited by both parties.
Since then, I conduct my own English test on anyone I hire.
I feel your pain.
I’m curious about how the accent coaching works. I know of two things that I still do not master and end up reflecting in my spoken English as native Spanish speaker.
Yes, I love looking at the theory behind this, but have never attempted to actually apply it all consciously to may speech patterns.
It is VERY difficult to do this alone. All accent coaching has to be supplemented by someone who hears those subtle differences, can explain them, and show a speaker how to get around them. For decades, until relatively recently, British actors couldn’t master American accents (except Southern ones), then, suddenly, some sharp speech coaches figured out the problem, and now you have shows like “The Walking Dead” where half the cast is British and you’d never guess which.
Dr. Geoff Lindsey has several very good videos on accents, mostly Anglosphere actors attempting to affect other Anglosphere accents. I’d give his channel a watch if you want excellent explanations on differences between accents.
I just have one thing to say about this, quoting a former governor of a state-which-shall-not-be-named:
“Like a good neighbah, State Farm is theyah.”
Yeah, I bet he had fun making those commercials. They’re actually pretty good, I think.
I agree.
I have a couple additional frustration with AI generated content related to this. AI generated voice to text is rapidly replacing voice actors all over. This is common in phone menu purgatory, in content on places like youtube, and in the classes corporate America likes to make their employees take.
The first relates to the fact that a voice actor will often fix bad grammar and bad segues. They may overtly do it and interact with the writer to fix the script, or just read it in a more comprehensible manner. So far, the AI tools to create the voice content that exactly matches the written words. It’s like the gag in “Anchor Men”, where Ron Burgundy will read exactly what is on the teleprompter. Now improper grammar goes on the recording unchallenged and uncorrected. I note it is common to see things like new chapter headings just read as a terse sentence of “chapter two” with no pause between the last sentence of chapter one, the statement and the start of chapter two. A voice actor is going to make headings like that something more than just reading the words as if it was a sentence fragment in a wall of words.
This is fixable with better AI. If the tools included suggestions to flag this type of mistake, the output would be better. One can look at the latest iterations of MS Word and all of the grammar suggestions there. Make the content creator repeatedly click “OK” to proceed with bad grammar and maybe they will get a clue…. or maybe not.
The second relates to poor pronunciation in AI. I’m noticing this heavily in the annual safety classes my employer picked. They switched to AI generated content this year. People who put a “T” in across (“acrost”) are like fingers on a chalk board to me. If that’s not bad enough, they make up for the over use of “T” by taking one “T” out of important (either with “impor_ant”, or using a glottal T for the first “T”). That’s the one I noticed the most, but it is far from the only example. I fail to grasp why anyone would train their AI with a voice actor that mispronounces many commonly used words.
As I’m confident Jack knows, the Boston accent is hard to drop. While I grew up there, and can slide into the accent very easily, I was raised by mid-west accented parents. Thank god. Even for those (actors, for instance) who have worked hard to drop the accent, I can usually hear it in the most subtle, throw away word. I can also tell if you are from the South Shore or North Shore, closer to the New Hampshire border, or closer to Worcester. While it’s all a Boston accent, there are distinct variations from suburb to suburb.
It is also a very hard accent to teach. Watch a movie like The Departed and you can hear how badly the accent is butchered by non-native speakers. The accent is non-rhotic – but not always; and that’s often where actors make mistakes. An R should be added when moving from a word ending in a vowel sound to a word beginning in a vowel sound; something a native speaker does naturally. The dropping of the R needs to take place in the front of the mouth, not at the back of the throat. The Brahmin accent is of distant memory and almost no one today speaks like the Kennedy’s (did).
For someone who worked so hard to not have the Boston accent, I am strangely obsessed with it.
Oh, me too. I love the accent: my mother had it, but I only have vestiges that almost nobody noticed (except my wife).
“Cheers” drove me crazy with the usually terrible Boston accents. (But “Spotlight” did a pretty good job.) Hearing an authentic one still makes me warm inside, like a trip to Mahblehead. Listening to the late Jerry Remy and now NESN part-time colorman Lou Merloni on Red Sox broadcasts was and is instant nostalgia.
I had a deer-in-the-headlights moment when I first taught English in Japan. I tried to be very conscious of it, and tone down my Boston accent. I was not entirely successful, as I had a class of businessmen talk about their weekend plans, and many spoke about planning to travel by caa on the weekend. Eek. That was corrected immediately! With apologies!
Having to speak English slowly over the subsequent 40+ years when addressing non-native speakers, and having friends from multiple regions of the US here has changed my accent enormously. It comes right back when I talk to my sister, or get off a plane at Logan, though.
I too, am bugged by bad Boston accents in movies, but I guess it’s a tough one to learn.
Speaking of the degradation of the English language and its use:
Here’s a freed slave, accused of murder at the end of the 1700s, his last words to the community, demonstrating that eloquence, intelligence and clarity aren’t impossible tasks:
Also enjoy the later half of the speech full of ethical advice.
https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/1797-abraham-johnstone-address-people-color/
It’s not surprising that Spanish-speakers speak swiftly. The syllable ratio to the same information expressed in English has to be close to double.
It’s not surprising that they speak SPANISH quickly. How hard is it to observe the lesson: “When you speak English, don’t talk as fast”?
I think the biggest obstacle to call center employees is that they are geographically outside the United States (particularly for overnight hours here). English is a second or third language, and the call center workers only speak it at work. Everyone else they are exposed to has the same accent, and it is usually influenced by British English making it that much more removed from American comprehension. There is no one to learn from in person! These countries also have such high poverty and unemployment, that they are in a zugzwig: accept a job they can perform with only minimal competence, or not feed there families. The solution can only come from the American company outsourcing the work to prioritize costumer service, hiring domestically if necessary (even if it impacts the so-called bottom line in the short term).
Bingo. And they can do this, and should do this.