Hehe, pick your poison: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ (This ties in with bane's much more detailed note below about adopting the "customer's style of speech." I do the same, and have a lot of experience in business & social contexts with Brazilians, Mexicans, Indians, Scots, and Chinese via my global organization, and it still boggles my mind how rare it seems to be for people to switch communication styles based on the skills and language/idiom of the person they're speaking with. The flip side, of course, is that when both sides are learning the other's language, if the conversation is attempted in both simultaneously a disaster almost always occurs. Tying in to another of bane's comments, if you are expecting to hear one thing but something else hits your ears, you're going to have a much tougher time comprehending it.