Something rarely talked about in our industry is how it isnot very accommodating towards non-native English speakers and it is only when I speak to other multi-lingual devs that i feel truly understood, especially since working with Americans more. A small thread:
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Additionally, ironically - the better your English gets and the more you shed your accent, the more people expect from you that you’ll be perfect at this. It cloaks the fact that expressing myself well is still a massive cognitive effort to this day.
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Whenever I get excited, when I’m tired, when my mind is elsewhere, my abilities to pay attention to small things such as inflection and other social cues in language suffer. Multi-lingual folks are then often being mistaken for being rude, condescending, etc because of it.
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Factual, straight-forward communication is easier to maintain when you’re wrestling with language, but culturally, that’s not always an acceptable way to communicate. I often wish I had better ways of explaining how real this problem is.
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In the US, people are less likely to travel much to other countries so many folks can’t relate with this at all. It’s a struggle many people here don’t know and therefore lack empathy for, both in professional as well as social situations.
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If you’re a professional leader in any profession and studio, paying attention to these things can help you be a better manager and foster your non-native speaking talent. Cultural context and helping with empathy on both ends is very effective.
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Yeah I'm working on a game with a mostly-ESL team at the moment and I have so much admiration for their ability to discuss creative/narrative/design ideas in their non-native language at all, much less the level at which they're doing it!
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It’s a huuuge challenge and I wish people would cut us more slack, especially when it comes to not getting every cultural social rule right. I remember how I’m constantly gutted when I hear that someone thought I was rude when I just kinda... fumbled with language. :(
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The “personable and compelling” is the hardest part. I know all my aerospace words and can give the tech specs no problem but I still have no idea how to express how excited I am about our new frontiers.
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In Miami Dade, they changed the ESL program in Elementary school to a dual language program. K-5 my kid learned all subjects in both languages. That means science, math...etc. A lot of those kids were on the 2 or 3 language already. It was a great program.
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It says a lot about this thread and English and everything mentioned that I made really dumb mistakes in it because I wrote it this morning when I was tired. Case in point


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