I work in tourism. Its shockingly common for tourists to say that their tour guide’s accent is “impossible to understand” or “horrible to listen to”. I don’t have a particularly strong accent when I’m speaking normally and I can put on a very posh and slow phone voice. Last week I took a call at work and I was asked if I could “speak English”. I immediately hung up the call. It really made me feel terrible. I honestly think that accent discrimination is one of the last bastions of acceptable discrimination in modern society. It’s really not hard to just listen to what someone is saying and to be polite if you don’t catch something the first time. |