English regional/country speaking accents

[Alondra]

A couple of days ago I saw a video from Snoop Dog commenting a Planet Earth segment of an iguana v snakes. Apparently is an old one but I never saw it before and thoroughly enjoyed it. Not many videos can make me laugh out loud, and he did..... .....except I could only understand 80% of what he was saying, thank goodness for the subtitles.

I had a coffee with an Aussie friend yesterday and while commenting the video and the fact that after 9 years living in Australia, I still have problems understanding English she breezily said "don't worry, I still get problems understanding some accents as well"

Which led to a lively conversation. I learned English in public schools in Spain where the emphasis is English Oxford grammar....and prepares us shit at all to understand different accents. When I arrived in Australia I couldn't understand a word anyone was saying and was ecstatic when I saw Queen Elizabeth Christmas speech - I understood everything.

I've progressed a bit since then ....but I still have problems with American accents, Scottish accents (much as I love Scots) and other English accents as well (my niece in law is Cornish and boy, I keep saying"What, what?'" when we talk.

So, if you are a born English speaker, do you have some problems understanding other regional/country accents? And if you do, which ones?

I can't stand Scottish accents at all.

I can't *understand

Nor people that talk like farmers, I'm not sure what that accent is, but it's very difficult to understand those people.

English people not being (bothered to be) able to understand people with different regional accents is really common.

You’re confusing accent with dialect or colloquialism, surely? Most standard English-speakers use the same grammar regardless of their accent.

I find Scots quite impenetrable, but that’s because it’s entirely different lexically and grammatically rather than just being a different accent. I’ve always worked amongst people and had friends from across the globe and have never found them difficult to understand at all unless they use words or phrases uncommon to British English.

Is it?

I find Scots quite impenetrable, but that’s because it’s entirely different lexically and grammatically rather than just being a different accent.

The OP is talking about English, not Scots

I'm English and have lived in the UK all of my life, and am generally quite good at understanding people, even if they're speaking English with a strong foreign accent, but I still struggle sometimes with a really thick scottish or geordie accent.

My DP weirdly can't identify accents at all, she'll be able to tell if someone has a strong accent, but couldn't tell you if they were Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Australian, or American. She has absolutely no problem understanding people at all though, it's bizarre

I have British parents but grew up outside of the UK. When I first lived here, as a young backpacker in a hostel, there were people from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, France, Spain, and many others, and the only two people I couldn't understand were two lads from Newcastle. I think some British regional accents are quite hard to grasp. Whereas colonial countries, even though they have different accents, are generally easier to understand (in my experience, at least).

When I was 18, I needed an interpreter between me with a strong Dorset accent and a guy with strong Brummie accent, though there was also some alcohol involved.

I've grown up listening to different accents on TV and radio, and I probably didn't really notice as the BBc moved away from everyone being RP because I was growing older, so it changed with my awareness.

I remember watching Manon des Sources when doing French A-level, and being able to recognise they were speaking with a different French accent from what I'd been taught.

I remember going to a German-speaking place for the first time, Zurich, and the taxi driver couldn't follow me saying Gartenstrasse, till I thrust a bit of paper with the hotel address written on it - his vowel sounds were much longer than I had learnt, more straaah than stra with a short a, like cart and cat differences. And then there was the German boyfriend's mother's accent - thick regional accent with a lisp, and would never repeat or reword stuff...

But I've never been fluent in French or German. I can usually get my ear in pretty quickly with English accents, though I might struggle with dialect words from an area I don't know. But realising other languages also have regional accents made me realise it must be a nightmare learning English as a foreign language.

I’m a native English speaker with a vaguely RP accent. I’ve never had a problem understanding other dialects or accents of English although it may take a moment to get my ear in.

I don't think I'm confusing grammar with variations of speaking language? English grammar, with a few Americanisms, has remained the same (and thanks goodness for that).

I may be wrong but the only lexical and grammatically different language from English in the UK is Welsh?. Scottish speak phonetically a different English but they don't have grammatically a different language.

Same as we do in Spain. Andalusians can be hard to understand but they speak Castillian. Catalans, Basques and Galicians speak a different language.

Please, my post is not about anyone taking offence. I just want to know in a lighthearted way if native English speakers also have problems understanding other native English speakers from other countries or their own.

The last thing I want with my post is a political debacle.

The Americanisms are generally linguistic artefacts from the English that was spoken when the first English speaking settlers went over. It's the English spoken in the British Isles that has changed to a greater or lesser degree depending on where it's spoken, not the English spoken in America.

It’s MN. People will find something to take offence to. Don’t worry about it. 😂

Anyway, I grew up in west Africa and went to international schools, where we were basically taught in RP. When I moved to the U.K. for uni, many regional accents completely stumped me. It’s been over a decade and I think I’m better now, but I do still have difficulty identifying/differentiating between some of them.

Oddly enough, I don’t have this issue with people speaking English in non U.K. accents. I also speak a few other languages and U.K. generally fine with understanding a range of accents in those. It’s just done U.K. regional ones that I’m not great with. I wonder why that is.

Scots probably isn't different enough to English to be considered it's own language, but it's it's own dialect with it's own spelling. People tweet in Scots, Books are published in Scots.

Harry Potter for example - www.openculture.com/2018/01/harry-potter-finally-gets-translated-into-scots-hear-read-passages-from-harry-potter-and-the-philosophers-stane.html

It even has its own version of wikipedia - sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

(Although there was a scandal a few years ago where it was discovered that a huge amount of it had been made up by an American teenage boy - www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/aug/26/shock-an-aw-us-teenager-wrote-huge-slice-of-scots-wikipedia )

There's also Gaelic and Celtic, which are considered separate languages, although they're spoken by far fewer people than Welsh.

Accents can be tricky for non-native speakers where the accent alters the sound (e.g. baaarth vs ba-th). As a native English speaker accents are usually OK, some of the stronger ones might take a bit of tuning in (scouse, scots, west country, Welsh, brummie).
The biggest issue for communication is local slang / dialect which introduces words you either don't know, or uses words you do know in a hole other meaning. Urban street slang is terrible for this, and that's why they use it!

The current drive for diversity of language in the media to attract 'diverse' (but actually mainly youth) audiences annoys me because it can make things harder to understand, especially for non-english speakers, older audiences and those with hearing difficulty. I'm all for bringing back Received Pronunciation for BBC continuity announcements and news output, but I'm against the zeitgeist it seems.

I have the same issue understanding my partner's non-english language. I can recognise accents now (progress!), some are easier due to clear separation of works and sounds from others, speed of speech and clarity of speakers voice. But the filler words and slang are a nightmare!

WTF are you talking about? You realise farming takes place throughout the uk?

I love you DP :). Seriously, for many years I couldn't identify different accents, my rule of thumb was whether I could understand them or not. Which has to do with diction - if you speak English clearly and enunciating perfectly every word, I understood/understand everything. If you talk like Snoop Dog I understand most but not all of it.

No issues
16 years working in a contact centre means I can understand

I'm Irish and grew up speaking English. I have had trouble with strong Kerry and strong Derry accents. I would probably have the same in parts of Britain or Australia or anywhere English is spoken.

DP also can't sing to save her life, by which I mean she has a lovely voice, sings in tune and if you ask her to sing the same thing twice it'll sound exactly the same both times.

What it won't be however, is the song she is trying to sing. It's a very nice, tuneful piece of music, but it is very definitely not the song the rest of us would sing.

We both wonder if the accent thing and the song thing are linked, and that there's some weird auditory processing thing going on in her brain that means she doesn't hear the world like everyone else does.

I presume they mean the accent in the entire south west of England.

Scots is officially recognised as a separate language, it had its own vocabulary and some grammatical differences - but because it’s in the same language family and there’s a fair bit of mutual understanding it’s considered a sister language to English.

It’s not just English with a Scottish accent, which does also exist alongside it.

Interesting you say you grew up in West Africa, my favourite English speaking diction is South Africa. Their English is soft-spoken and perfectly understood to non-native English speakers.