Elon Musk agrees with Scott Jennings' reformation proposal on H-1B visas
(twitter.com)
The Musketeer
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Heh. Years ago, when I was visiting USA, I rented a car. Now I mostly have no problems with native speakers, or they with me, although I do have a definite accent. So no problems when I got it because I was speaking face to face with an American. But then something happened that made me need to extend the time I had it, by about 3 days. And I wasn't near any of their brick-and-mortar offices. So I call customer service.
Pretty heavy, I assume Indian, accent. And as said, I have a definite Finnish accent. I say that I need the car for 3 more days, and would return it to a different city. Let's say Chicago, while I was currently somewhere in Kentucky.
The person on the other end says something like "okay, a month more, and you return it to Florida?"
COME ON, my English isn't THAT bad...
Took nearly half an hour to get that cleared up. She didn't seem to get anything I said right, and I had hell of time understanding what she was saying. We managed in the end, but what should have been at most a ten minute call, yep. About half an hour. And for several moments during that time I was considering driving to the nearest city where that rental firm had an office.
My company used to have a partnership with Nokia so my colleagues and I had plenty of contact with Finns by phone and in person. We were always astounded by their ability to speak excellent English. Every one of them sounded American to us though and when we asked them why that should be they replied that they watched US TV shows all the time for fluency practice. Back in those days "Kojak" and other police shows were very popular and I was half expecting the Finnish guys to be reading me my rights or something.
I have been able to almost lose my accent a few times in my life, but it requires that I practice speaking a lot. When I don't and just listen I get it back.