思考与写作antirez.com
英语困扰了我十五年
English has been my pain for 15 years
2013 — 2021，它一次次回到首页
黑点是上首页（≥ 50 分）的那次投稿，空心点是没冲上去的投稿，点越大分数越高。
导读
这是 Redis 作者 antirez 回顾自己作为意大利程序员与英语缠斗十五年的文章。他写下非母语者在技术圈使用英语时的挫败、口音与理解障碍，以及在英语环境中变得内向的体验，并给学习者和母语者一些沟通建议。
为什么经久不衰：它经久不衰，是因为英语作为技术与科学通用语带来的沟通不平等，仍是全球无数非母语程序员每天面对的真实痛点。
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母语者应主动调整语速、发音和用词来帮助非母语者，而不是只会大声重复。
他说，非母语者听不懂时，母语者很少会主动放慢；即使他说没听懂，对方也常以极快速度重复同一句。母语者可以练习放慢语速、让发音更标准（尤其元音）、换用更易懂的词（对罗曼语母语者多用拉丁词根词），并注意辅音；而提高音量或反复同一句通常没用。这种实时调整很难，但值得练。他举例说俄罗斯人更容易听懂他，而不是同地区的另一位美国人，因为他有意说得更清楚。
decode查看英文原文
hey guys, you are not understanding us, we are not understanding what you say as well, and it is hard to find people that, once your understanding limits are obvious, will try to slow down the peace of the conversation. Often even if I say I did not understood, I'll get the same sentence repeated the same at speed of light. This is an important point. There are a number of things that native speakers of English can do to be more understandable to non-native speakers. Some things I've found are helpful: speaking more slowly, shifting your pronunciation (especially of vowels) to be more standard, using different words (e.g. if you're talking to a native speaker of a Romance language, prefer words with Latin roots over Germanic ones), and being careful to pronounce all consonants. Things that rarely help: speaking more loudly and repeating the same phrase multiple times. Making these changes to your speech in real time is a difficult skill that must be cultivated and practiced. I would encourage native speakers to work at this skill, as it can make a big difference. I was once speaking to a couple of Russians and an American from the same region of the US as me. The Russians said they could understand me easily, but had difficulty understanding the other American. The difference was that I was making an effort to speak more clearly for them.
英语是科学商业通用语，母语者应避免俚语和习语，否则会突然变得难以理解。
英语不只是 IT 语言，已成为科学和商业的通用语；如今值得读的研究很少用其他语言发表。他多年与非母语者共事，最难的是当对方英语太流利时，他会忘记对方不是母语者，不自觉用上父亲那套俚语和习语，听起来像突然从清晰英语变成胡话。俚语习语对非母语者很不友好。
beloch查看英文原文
English isn't just the language of IT, it's become the lingua franca of science and commerce. Very little research worth reading is published in a language other than English these days. I wouldn't be surprised if there are obscure, third-rate English-language scientific journals in China that have never been seen, let alone had articles submitted to by native English speakers! Over the years, I've worked with a lot of people who are not native English speakers. The one thing that trips me up is when one of them is so utterly brilliant at speaking English that I completely forget they're not a native speaker and start unconsciously throwing in some of the slang and colorful idioms my redneck father has fed me over the years. I always feel bad when I do this because it must sound like I go from perfectly understandable English to complete and utter gibberish in nothing flat! Idioms and slang are really horrible things to inflict upon non-native speakers. I can't imagine what it must be like for a non-native English speaker trying to work with Cockneys or newfies!
小国不配音只加字幕的环境让孩子从小通过电视自然习得英语听说。
他注意到欧洲小国的人英语往往比大国好（瑞典对意大利），这多半是偶然：小国市场小，电影电视通常不配音而只加字幕；字幕对小孩太快，他们干脆只听，于是在家看电视就自然学会听懂英语，等到学校正式学英语时已经会说了。拼写另当别论。
petke查看英文原文
Ever noticed how people from small countries in Europe often tend to speak English well, while people from big European countries dont? Think Sweden vs Italy. Its mostly just a happy accident. You see, in small countries they usually dont dub movies or tv shows, simply because the market isn't big enough. They simply put subtitles on. Subtitles fly past way too quick for young kids to read though. So young kids dont read but just listen, and automatically learn to understand English at home in front of the TV. By the time they get to study English at school, they already know how to speak it. English spelling is another thing though. Im still struggling with that.
用外语工作时会变得内向，还常被误认为笨，因为大量脑力都耗在跟上对话上。
作为在巴黎工作几年的英国人，他体会到用另一种语言工作多难。以前他对没完全掌握英语的外国人有点轻视，现在才明白他们几乎算流利；而他自己根本没掌握法语。他也经历在外语中变得内向。文章没提到的是，人们常会因你外语不流利而认为你笨；而你确实要花 80% 脑力跟上对话，所以那一刻他们的判断某种程度没错。被这样对待很痛苦，他在伦敦时也曾无意识犯过。我们要提醒自己，非母语者为了交流要多付出很多。
robochat查看英文原文
As an Englishman living and working in Paris for a few years, my eyes have been opened to the difficulty of working in another language. I used to be a little bit dismissive of foreigners who hadn't completely mastered English but now I realise that they were almost fluent. On the other hand, I haven't really managed to master French at all. His observation about becoming introverted in a foreign language is something that I experience too. Something that he didn't mention though is that often people will assume that you are stupid if you can't speak their language fluently, this is made even worse since you are indeed dedicating 80% of your brain just to following the conversation, so that in a sense they are correct in their judgement at that moment in time. It's painful to be on the receiving end of this and again this is something that I was unconsciously guilty of when I lived in London. We just need to occasionally remind ourselves when the other person is not speaking in their native language that they are having to do a lot of extra work just to communicate with us.
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