OT: Off shore call center workers mad at American

[Evil_Duckie]

Phil,

I'm Dutch (cheers) and last year I had the chance of speaking to a South African. We found out that if I spoke Dutch and he spoke Afrikaans, we could have a perfectly good conversation. Some words are different, spelling is different, grammar is sometimes different, but we could get the meaning across.

I've got the same thing with Belgian clients who speak Flemish. No major problems at all, apart from the occasional odd word that we can then laugh about.

Speaking Afrikaans, but Flemish more so, is still somewhat considered to be a sign of having lower intelligence (but then again, some of the rural Dutch accents have the same stigma)

As for learning languages, I had no trouble learning English and almost consider it my 2nd language but I found German and French much more difficult. I really suck at those two, because they're so hard on grammar. I can speak/read/listen to German okay though.

Finally, when it comes to accents, don't forget that there's plenty of people with horrible accents in English-speaking countries too. I have a friend from Yorkshire that I simply cannot understand...