Do you find it hard to understand different accents?

[-]

Decent_Cow@reddit

It depends on the accent and how familiar I am with it. Sometimes I have no trouble at all, other times an accent can be completely incomprehensible.

[-]

I live in the UK and in terms of accents in English the only one that’s impossible for me is Liverpool. Everyone talks about Glasgow but that’s nothing compared to Liverpool. Sometimes I’ll be watching a show and I’ll just look at my husband like… what?

[-]

MyUsername2459@reddit

When I think of incomprehensible British accents, I think of that scene in Hot Fuzz where the one old guy's accent is so heavy it takes being translated through two people to get it into normal, standard English.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs-rgvkRfwc

[-]

Taanistat@reddit

Ever watched Clarkson's Farm? There is a fellow on that show named Gerald, I believe. He works with farm walls and hedgerows. I have no idea what he's saying much of the time. They certainly play it up that people have a hard time understanding him. What accent is that?

Whatever it is, it's the only accent I've encountered other than very strong Cajun that I have a hard time understanding.

[-]

Prairie_Crab@reddit

I sometimes need a couple of minutes to get used to the accent before I understand, but generally I understand even heavily accented English.

[-]

Current_Poster@reddit

Rather than get vague about it: what would you (OP) consider a difficult accent to follow? I can follow some pretty strong accents, but people's ideas of what 'difficult' is seems to vary.

[-]

stanldrr@reddit (OP)

I'm not a native english speaker i find it hard to understand accents from Europe and some american accents too I can understand most of asian accents

[-]

Current_Poster@reddit

I get it. Sometimes, people come by here to 'challenge' us to decipher some English accents (Midlands or Mancunian, for example)- I find them understandable, but some people don't. At least that gives us a point of comparison.

[-]

ReadingRainbowie@reddit

I can understand most unless they are from Mississippi lol

[-]

ImaginaryCatDreams@reddit

I used to live in a heavy Latin area, I learn to listen with an accent - got so used to it, it was hard to understand people who didn't have one

[-]

MCMLXIXLXIX@reddit

I moved from the farm in Minnesota to eastern Kentucky. I couldn’t understand a word they were saying. Conversely, they couldn’t understand me. Uff da!

[-]

lky830@reddit

Is the question about foreign accents or dialects?

Broad answer: for foreign accents, it really depends on where the person is from and how otherwise fluently they are able to speak. In general, I personally find Indian accents the most difficult to understand.

Dialects of American English are generally not so different from each other that it’s difficult to understand someone from the other side of the country. Someone from Alaska and someone from Mississippi can understand each other just fine.

[-]

FoolhardyBastard@reddit

Never met a Cajun eh?

[-]

lky830@reddit

I’m literally from Louisiana. I don’t think this is applicable to me lol

[-]

Genius-Imbecile@reddit

But to be honest I have met a handful that need subtitles. Those on swamp people though don't need them for me.

[-]

notonrexmanningday@reddit

I grew up in South East Texas, and there were some old swampy cajuns down there that were pretty hard to understand

[-]

hypo-osmotic@reddit

There’s still a few pockets of Appalachia with some pretty strong accents, too

[-]

bkguy182@reddit

Ya Cajun is wild.

I was watching a doc- i think it was about Gypsy Rose and her grandparents were being interviewed and I had never heard anything like it.

[-]

MrTeeWrecks@reddit

My Mother-in-law is from Lafayette. But has almost no accent as she went to college in Colorado & actively worked to get rid of it. However, when visiting my wife’s relatives in Louisiana. I can only understand the ones that are under age 50 or so.

[-]

riotousgrowlz@reddit

I went on a highlands tour in Scotland with a guide that had the strongest Scottish brogue and my husband and I (American) could understand about 2/3 of what the guide said but the fairly fluent in English Chinese tourists couldn’t understand anything so we had to translate the entire time.

[-]

ljb2x@reddit

There is a Scottish candy company who posts on TikTok about the candy they're making. 95% of the comments are about how hard it is to follow what she says because her accent is SCOTTISH as hell.

[-]

shelwood46@reddit

lol, thinking about my aunt from WI/NJ visiting a Waffle House in Mobile AL and our server had such a thick local accent that they ended up communicating by written notes.

[-]

drnewcomb@reddit

I’ve known a Pakistani who had perfect English grammar but I couldn’t understand anything he said because his accent was Urdu.

[-]

Majestic-Macaron6019@reddit

Yeah, a lot of South Asian accents are difficult for American ears

[-]

Morlain7285@reddit

Out of my ten coworkers, I am one of three white native born Americans. You learn accents pretty quickly

[-]

Burial4TetThomYorke@reddit

For me the hardest are thick Scottish accents and some more obscure ones from the UK. Perhaps also Jamaican English sometimes (keeping in mind that Patois is a different language entirely though it has a lot of English words). I’ve met enough foreign Chinese, Indian, Mexican people that I’m comfortable understanding their accents.

[-]

Urawinner1945@reddit

It depends, a really thick southern drawl, a decently thick or stronger cajun accent, and a thick Northern English accent are the hardest for me to understand, from the ones I've heard personally, though a strong Filipino accent can slip me up sometimes. Usually if someone repeats what they said a little more slowly, I can catch what they said the second time.

[-]

jadeybugz@reddit

No, but my area growing up had a lot of diversity in accents so I think that played a factor

[-]

FoggyGoodwin@reddit

India and Jamaica. So many companies have customer service call centers in India.

[-]

Chibichanusa@reddit

India for me as well. I'm American but grew up a military brat, so I've been exposed to a lot of different cultures. But for some reason it's only Indians that I struggle with. My husband however, born and raised in the deep south, can barely understand any. Even easy ones like posh British.

[-]

CtForrestEye@reddit

American ones, no. Some UK or Indian, yes.

[-]

ljb2x@reddit

I'm Appalachian so I agree with you, most (outside DEEP cajun and Aaron earned an iron urn) American accents I'm fine with. I have to play hearing loss a lot of Indians though because I just can't understand them.

[-]

dystopiadattopia@reddit

As an American I only really have trouble with some British accents where they speak quickly and only pronounce half of each word. And most Scottish people 😀

[-]

Bastyra2016@reddit

I worked for a multinational company and had colleagues/customers from all over the world. I generally understand people whose native language isn’t English. Within the US I struggled the most with Louisiana Cajun. I understand the context of the sentences but the individual words not so much.

[-]

TsundereLoliDragon@reddit

American accents or foreigners speaking English accents? Generally no on both. We're pretty used to it.

[-]

ABelleWriter@reddit

Some, of course.

Where I live we have a LOT of south east Asian immigrants, the Philippines being the most. So those accents? Easy. Daily interactions with people with Vietnamese, Filipino, and Mandarin accents. Arabic and Farsi are also pretty easy. I grew up around Portuguese, so that's easy for me, too.

We don't have a lot of people coming here from India, anywhere in Africa, and not a lot from Spanish speaking countries. Those (except for Puerto Rican accents, I grew up around those) are harder for me.

[-]

FishingWorth3068@reddit

I have a pretty good ear for accents and languages. I like trying to figure out what language it is and people are usually happy to tell me. I can’t understand when people don’t more their lips much. Think Boomhauer but I have an uncle that talks like that and if I’m around him for more than 10 minutes I can get it.

[-]

Orbiter9@reddit

Rarely. It’s usually when someone has sort of an unexpected rhythm / enunciation and I’m just not quite in the right listening mode. Harder when it’s audio-only.

[-]

IHaveBoxerDogs@reddit

I try really hard to understand accents. I think I do a pretty good job. I have traveled a fair amount and know what it’s like to be the one who struggles to be understood. So, I want to help others out.

[-]

TheOwlMarble@reddit

Generally, no. There's are some thicker accents by some east Asian immigrants I've met that can be difficult at times, but those are the exception, not the rule.

[-]

Chemical-Mix-6206@reddit

I've lived in the south for so long that now I have a hard time with anyone who talks fast. It all blurs together like trash thrown out a car window & tumbling end over end. If they slow down, I can usually understand almost anyone trying to speak english.

I hate getting an overseas call center because 1. It is often very loud in the background, and 2. They are apparently trying to set a record for speed talking. Sets me up for failure to communicate, every time.

[-]

LadySilvie@reddit

I have a bit of hearing loss and usually get by okay, but Indian accents really make me struggle. I work in IT where more and more folks with that accent are appearing, and I rely pretty heavily on closed captioning for our Teams calls.

[-]

TrillyMike@reddit

Sometimes

[-]

qu33nof5pad35@reddit

Depends on the accent.

[-]

Frosty_Employment171@reddit

Yes. Being hard of hearing, accents make it near impossible to understand an accent. Not just me, but seems to be a consensus among the hard of hearing population.

[-]

ch4nt@reddit

I had a genuinely hard time with Singaporean English when I visited Singapore

[-]

HoyAIAG@reddit

I don’t but a lot of people do.

[-]

Cheap_Coffee@reddit

I assume you are talking about foreign accents. It depends upon the person speaking. There are no standard accents.

[-]

crafty_j4@reddit

One time a guy with a thick southern accent asked me where he could find some “Ass Cream” turns out he was actually asking where to find Ice Cream.

[-]

catatethebird@reddit

In general, native English speakers tend to be much better at understanding people with various accents, because we encounter many more non-native speakers than people do in other languages.

Personally, I find some people with Caribbean accents really hard to understand (even though often these ARE native English speakers.)

[-]

Silently-Snarking@reddit

Only one I struggle with is a thickkkkk Cajun accent

[-]

sneezhousing@reddit

I do pretty well bit I grew up with many.

In college I knew people that avoided foreign teachers because they couldn't. Some I had zero problems understanding they complained it was as difficult to understand in class. They would drop the class and take it the next semester with someone else, or of no one else taught it they just complained all semester. I know some went as far as putting that they couldn't understand them on the end of semester evaluation.

[-]

Ok-Energy-9785@reddit

It depends on the accent

[-]

machagogo@reddit

Not really. Depends on just how legible their pronunciation is.

Here in New Jersey almost a quarter of the people I meet have an accent of one sort or another.

[-]

DoublePostedBroski@reddit

Not all. The hardest for me is Indian.

[-]

rockettaco37@reddit

Not really, unless it's very thick or something like that. I think the biggest challenge would be different vocabulary rather than a specific accent

[-]

Chance-Business@reddit

American ones, nope. I can understand them easily. The ones i have some problems with are ones you have not heard often in media, like the ones where people live on an island and their accent moved in a weird direction, and nobody's ever heard of them except the people that live near by them. Even those ones I can understand ok.

[-]

burlingk@reddit

Usually no, but there are a few American and UK accents that flow well into 'dialect' territory.

[-]

kmoonster@reddit

no

[-]

wieldymouse@reddit

Depends on the accent and the person.

[-]

TallWalmartCovington@reddit

I can do Boston, France, Canada, Russia, Brazil, Vietnam, California, Alabama, Poland, Germany, anything. But as soon as Louisiana enters the chat, no translators can do anything.

[-]

SaoirseMayes@reddit

Yes, even other American accents

[-]

Smart_Engine_3331@reddit

Depends on the accent so it varies a lot.

[-]

Blaqkjaqk1355@reddit

Yes, some accents even make me wonder if I'm on the Earth. There's no other way. Only by listening to it a lot can one gain experience.

[-]

PAXICHEN@reddit

In high school (NJ) we had a couple of janitors (black) from nowhere North Carolina who spoke in what I can only call a mumbling southern drawl along with low talking. Holy Moly were they hard to understand. Eventually I could but man did it take a whole.

[-]

DrBlankslate@reddit

No. That's just normal in the US.

[-]

Weightmonster@reddit

A few. Scottish, Belfast, Appalachia, Punjabi, etc. ,

[-]

donnacus@reddit

I do at first but I can adapt unless the accent is super thick.

[-]

Nightmare_Gerbil@reddit

I’ve had trouble with Cajun accents and some NYC accents when spoken really fast.

[-]

FoolhardyBastard@reddit

From where I live, there are a few accents that are really challenging to understand. In order from easiest to most challenging are Scouse, heavy northern English, Jamaican, Cajun/Louisiana Creole, Nigerian and fast Irish. Everything else is pretty easy.

[-]

SigglyTiggly@reddit

Yes if it extermly thick, i've teachers who i couldn't understand. For most it fades the longer you engage with the culture. You have people only interact with english when absoultely needed and their english never imoroves ( listen,watch,read mostly in their first langue

[-]

cevapi-rakija-repeat@reddit

Not really, but then again I travel a lot. The worst for me is some Scottish accents in a noisy pub.

[-]

marylander_@reddit

I'm around the standard American midwest accent the most. When I'm in a loud or echoey environment I have trouble understanding almost anything else- the further away from that accent the worse it is. Mostly because I'm not hearing every single sound but my brain can still fill in the gaps really naturally. I feel really bad because I go ice skating with a friend of mine with a non American accent and while on the ice I have to ask her to repeat herself pretty often and no one else. But in an area with good acoustics I don't find it difficult at all.

[-]