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Because it's part of the job (esp if you work in call center). You have to learn the accent, idioms and culture.
Neutral is something that is widely understood. American slang, British Queen's English and even Singlish aren't consider neutral. You wouldn't know as a Malaysian because you are use to your accent and you perceived it as the normal accent.
PH is HOME of call centers businesses from AU, NZ. UK and USA. There are countries that might be cheaper but they chose PH simply because Pinoys has a neutral accent. The statistic clearly shows it.
My dad is Malaysian. I have an Australian accent, which is far more 'neutral' and 'understandable' than a Filipino one.
BPO is a business process outsourcing. Call center BPO is a developed industry in PH employing close to a million of Filipinos with an annual revenue of $13B. I don't think clients from US, UK or AU will consider China or Vietnam despite of their cheaper salary for call center BPO. Heck even a cheaper India with good command of english population is now being outranked by PH. Salary rate as what you are claiming is not (or could be least) determining factor.
This is an old comparison between IN and PH for BPO 2 years ago.
Er, what? RP is not easily understood? American slang? A strong pinoy accent can be hard to understand too, if one is not familiar with it. It all depends on what you're familiar with. There is no standard accent of English, there are many accents. Many Americans would struggle to understand many accents from the UK.
No, PH just has more land and is cheaper.
PH does not have more land. It is cheaper though. When talking about the outsourcing industry, the main comparison has always been India and the Philippines because both are cheap sources of English-speaking workforce. I have toured around IT companies in both. In India, it is very common to provide accent neutralization classes, the reason is because there are many in India with heavy accents that Americans find hard to understand. The main objective there is to be understood, it is difficult to mask the accent to make it sound American. In the Philippines, if the person is already speaking grammatically correct English, more often, they can already be easily understood by Americans. So there are classes for call center agents to make the accent more American, to understand more American slang so that the customer will not be able to tell right away that the agent is in the Philippines. There are actually some Filipinos who successfully can sound like US-born Asian Americans after sufficient training in these classes.
PH does not have more land. It is cheaper though. When talking about the outsourcing industry, the main comparison has always been India and the Philippines because both are cheap sources of English-speaking workforce. I have toured around IT companies in both. In India, it is very common to provide accent neutralization classes, the reason is because there are many in India with heavy accents that Americans find hard to understand. The main objective there is to be understood, it is difficult to mask the accent to make it sound American. In the Philippines, if the person is already speaking grammatically correct English, more often, they can already be easily understood by Americans. So there are classes for call center agents to make the accent more American, to understand more American slang so that the customer will not be able to tell right away that the agent is in the Philippines. There are actually some Filipinos who successfully can sound like US-born Asian Americans after sufficient training in these classes.
First fix the massive income gap. You talk about the small minority of rich Filipinos but ignore the masses in poverty.
Singapore has it's issues, but at least it's people aren't living like this.
I did a google search of Cambodian slums and Vietnamese slums and the same types of images popped up. I'm not saying that all the images are actually from Cambodia or Vietnam though. The Philippines is more densely populated, so the slums look worse, but besides being more crowded, they're probably not any worse than the poor areas of Cambodia and Vietnam.
Here is a look into the Manila slums. @ around 12:40. They have a freakin computer shop. Thats why so many Filipinos are on the internet. LOL
and about English. Compare the lady at 12:40 to the lady at 8:30. One is extremely rich and the other is very poor, but they both speak good English. I actually think the slum lady is more understandable
^ Angeles City is the hellhole of the Philippines. And people who search for opportunities there probably have very little or no education. Why would you expect them to be able to speak English?
Talk to a beggar in the Philippines, 95% chance that the beggar can understand/respond to you!
Besides Scottish, Australian/New Zealand english are some of the most difficult to understand. Many people will agree here!
English accents (from countries where english is not their primary language) which are easy to understand:
Russian English
Spanish English
Holland English
Italian English
Mexican English
Filipino English
Indian English
Indonesian English
Lat Am English
Neutral is when the words are easy to understand, not good for ears!
"R" must be pronouced with stress and should not be hidden!
"Four" must be pronounced as "fourr" not "foh". "Foh" can be mistakenly understood at "foe". "Foe" maybe good to your ears but you can be never be understood in some (if not the most) countries.
Spanish English and Indian English are more easy to understand than Australian? You've lost all credibility there. I and many others have had frustrating experiences with Indian call centres because of their pronunciation....
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