Some companies are bring their call centres back home. Some have them in Australia as well as overseas. Apparently you can ask, in some cases, to be put through to an Australian call centre if you strike an unintelligable.

How far can you go in teaching someone to speak English?

The wife of a mate of mine in New Guinea was a Manus Island girl. She had 5 years as a boarding student at SCEGGS Moss Vale, the 3 years at Sydney Uni.

If you heard her speak, without seeing her, you would expect her to be a well educated Ozzie young lady, unless she laughed. Her laugh was extremely typical of the Manus people, distinct & very loud. This of course proves you can teach people to speak perfect English, but you can't teach them to laugh in English.

That reminds me of another example. Another mate had a plantation on an atoll about 150 miles north of Bougainville. It was way out in the middle of nowhere, over 60 miles from the nearest other land.

The locals, about 250 of them were basically Polynesian, with a very little infusion of Melanesian. My mate had put 8 of the boys through Kings School Sydney, followed by Sydney Uni, & a bunch of girls through SCEGGS, with some going on to Uni. Another dozen or so had boarded at schools in north Queensland& some of these Uni in Port Moresby.

After 30 years of this, despite quite a few not returning "home" the people spoke mostly English, & spoke it more correctly than the average Sydneysider.

Lee Kuan Yew said Australians speak a language very similar to English. Mahathir PM of Malaysia gave an example :" Good die mite it's a good die to die."