Joey Maresca’s Friday column, “Accents are hurdles to speech,” rails about his difficulty in understanding the speech of his instructors in the computer and information science and electrical engineering departments. He dismisses his own suggestion that students take the initiative to “try to make a better effort to communicate with professors,” arguing that because students pay tuition “they deserve to have the best teachers without needing to hire a translator.”
Maresca should quit complaining and take responsibility for his own education. If he has difficulty understanding his instructors, he could ask them to speak more slowly or bring to their attention specific words that cause difficulty.
In those conversations, I would suggest that he avoid the pointlessly insulting phrases like “unintelligible babble,” “jabbering English” and “pseudo-English” that pepper his Lantern essay. Maresca should also consider that the departments he mentions have a high percentage of foreign-born professors and TAs precisely because many of the best and brightest researchers in those fields come from other countries.
If he pursues a career in computer science or engineering, many of his colleagues are likely to be speakers of English as a second language or native speakers of Indian English or some other non-American variety.
Millions of people in the United States, including millions of Americans, speak English with non-American accents. We limit ourselves when we make no effort to understand those speakers.
Pauline Welbygraduate student in linguistics
