On Accents, Founders and the Rest of the World

by cvander • 13 years ago

5 4 13 years ago

kvinnako• 13 years ago

I read the article but I wish these kind of articles had tl;dr. Too many things with the real content(what the company does or how it's going to solve the problem) buried deep inside.

abracar2• 13 years ago

Original author here: wanted to reflect on the whole accents/founders debate and why we do what we do, not just pitch my startup; but here's our one-liner: "MonoLibre helps non-native English speakers improve their accent enough to be understood, using listening and speech training exercises."

evadne• 13 years ago

Accents? Yeah, I have three for English alone and switch between them depending on the other person I’m talking with. I’d also argue that, as a non-native speaker, personal identity is not part of your product.

Accent-free speech is like chemical-free food, but some accents come with connotations and should be deployed judiciously.

abracar2• 13 years ago

Agree with you on code-switching, it's very common. Not sure what you mean on personal identity, but non-native speakers are often afraid to betray themselves, consciously or not. They don't realize that they could soften their accent without completely getting rid of it, so that people can understand them but still tell where they're from.

On Accents, Founders and the Rest of the World

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