Non-native English speaker learning to code — anyone found a way to deal with heavy accents in video tutorials?
Posted by justin-davis-miller@reddit | learnprogramming | View on Reddit | 11 comments
Most of the best programming tutorials I've found on YouTube are by instructors with really strong accents, like Indian, Russian, Chinese, and I'm not a native English speaker either, so it becomes genuinely hard to follow.
It's especially bad with technical terms. Slowing the video down doesn't help, and auto-captions just butcher anything code-related.
Not complaining about the instructors at all, some of them are genuinely the best teachers out there - I just need to actually understand what they're saying.
Has anyone dealt with this? Is there a tool, converter or any workflow that may help in understanding accented speech more easily?
mandzeete@reddit
Have you tried using written courses/tutorials/documentation? I'm also a non-native English speaker and I have avoided all of the Indian videos because of how heavy is the accent there. I can get all the required information in written form, from the Internet.
YetMoreSpaceDust@reddit
I'm a native English speaker and I prefer written documentation. It goes as fast or slow as I care for it to go.
aqua_regis@reddit
Closed captioning (subtitles) to the rescue. Even they might hit their limits.
Yet, the really best courses are not videos. They are text. Either in the form of MOOCs or in the form of good old fashioned books.
Less-Procedure-4104@reddit
Turn on closed captioning. Also if you listen to the same accent for a while , you will adapt.
peterlinddk@reddit
Focus less on what they are saying, and instead look at what they are doing - try to write the same code, and come to your own understanding. Just listening to someones explanation will never teach you anything - no matter how good (or bad) that explanation is.
I've seen A LOT of youtube-tutorials where the speaker simply recites what they think is the correct definition of something, often they aren't even correct, but what is worse is that they very rarely actually explain anything, they just, well, repeats an explanation. So it doesn't matter that much if you don't entirely understand everything they say.
For actual technical definitions, look up direct sources, don't trust random people's interpretation, and definitely do not trust AI!
Trust the code more than the coder!
a3th3rus@reddit
I found the hardest accent for me to follow is British accent, even harder than Indian accent 😅
SlimeX300@reddit
British kinda depends. For me, if it’s Irish, then I might have a hard time understanding. Normal British accent is comprehensible.
nobanpls2348738@reddit
w3schools is good non-video learning resources
FloydATC@reddit
Like pretty much everything else, the simplest way to "deal with" heavy accents is to experience more of it and practice. Do this, and you will learn to focus on what is being said and why, rather than how it's being said. You'll begin to notice that not all videos are helpful, and that this has nothing to do with accents.
szank@reddit
From the best to not-really-the-best
Use written tutorials/books and forget about learning programming from youtube.
If you must, find someone who is native speaker
if you cannot, enable closed capitions/auto generated subtitles.
0x14f@reddit
> Has anyone dealt with this?
Anybody who've ever watched YouTube, yes. Anyway, keep watching you will get used to the pronunciations :)