• toastal@lemmy.ml
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    21 days ago

    When other, non-native English speakers were invited to hangouts they were even more confused—asking me what he meant & I would have to look it up. In casual speech or storytelling these things don’t matter but when planning events & meetings they do. I have seen so many confusing scheduling issues in work & life that can be solved by just communicating clearly & precisely. I have seen meetings missed for time zones & ambiguous phrases like “biweekly”. You know what I do? I send an clear date & timestamp + *.ics iCalender file since I try to put events in my calendar since I can be forgetful, & it is almost no effort to forward it to the other interested parties. The other end then has a precise reminder that can be localized/translated however is clear to them in their calendar—& as a result no one has mistaken an event.

    Yes, the “obvious poor social skills” of being clear with folks when their time is involved. As well, trying to get someone else to give up their speech oddity in planning for the sake of everyone else, myself included, by explaining that others are confused & it not being worth it. Do you have experience working in international groups?