English has been my pain for 15 years

The recent frenzy of accent related Hacker News posts seems to reinforce the opinion I saw in a thread discussing the pg controversy: "Dear Paul, It's not what you are, it's what you did. At least, I hope. I suspect this is all coming out of a desire to emphasize that communication is important when you're starting a company. It's never just about solving technical problems. Well, sure, that's true. But as Nitasha has covered rather thoroughly, your "empirical evidence"…

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…

In continental Europe I have often been in a room with people from 10 different countries say Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Poland, India, China, Korea, England. Everyone could understand each other's broken English with the exception that half of the people couldn't understand English guy. What always puzzle me is the fact that the English doesn't consider that the room language isn't their mother tongue and they should also try to speak this universal dialect that everyone understands.

Growing up, speaking US English natively, I never realized how messed up English is. Then I learned Spanish (and lived in a Spanish speaking country for 2 years). Wow. Now that is a sane language. Once you learn the alphabet and a few pronunciation rules you can read anything in Spanish correctly. Try doing that with English. Ha! This has become even more reinforced as I've helped my children learn how to read English. Trying to explain to a child…