<p>My H is from another country. He speaks perfect English. I make more errors speaking English (my native language) than he does. But he speaks with an accent, and not a particularly strong one. I have encountered people from all over the world in professional and non-professional settings, and I can count on one hand the ones I couldn’t understand at all. Occasionally, there was a sentence or expression or if I wasn’t listening carefully, but to say someone is totally incomprehensible has, IMHO, frequently more to do with the listener than the speaker. Communication is a 2-way street. </p>
<p>When H & I are together, he often prefers that I speak/order. He has found, after more than 30 years in this country, that those who are not used to dealing with non-English speakers have the same reaction. As soon as he opens his mouth and they hear an accent, they automatically do not understand, no matter how carefully something is pronounced. </p>
<p>There are, of course, other issues besides language–does the person communicate ideas clearly, are they reading something aloud or speaking extemporaneously, and, of course, the more people interact the better they get at understanding each other.</p>