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?

Are you sure it was English??
im born and bred in the city. There’s areas of Liverpool I can’t understand!
also broad kent. I need an interpreter. Scottish accents on the other hand I understand perfectly.

Another example is "fall" for autumn.

Spoken English in Shakespeare's time was primarily rhotic as are most American accents. So there is that.

No

London burn and bred. Have lived around the uk, including S Wales, Newcastle upon Tyne and S Yorks. I've spent a lot of time in various parts of Scotland too. I've only once come across a regional accent so strong I couldn't understand the speaker, and that was a particular area of E Yorks with a strong historical connection to the Netherlands.

This is really interesting. I tune into most accents fairly quickly as long as I'm expecting them. So if someone code switched from RP to a regional accent I'd struggle, but if I knew that was how they always spoke I wouldn't. Same with english as a second language accents - I've actually had people comment on how easily I understand their strong non-English accents.

Interesting about Spain though, I always thought there were 5 co-official languages (castellano, catalán, euskera/vasco, gallego, and aranés). Maybe I'm mistaken. I speak a rather mixed Spanish accent due to having teachers from all over, although it's mostly solidified into a north Navarrean-Basque accent now I've spent a good amount of time there and made friends with native Basque speakers. They have a different accent to the non basque speakers in the same area, and the younger ones at least use different spellings in castellano (what we learn as Spanish), and some different vocabulary thrown in, based on the Basque language. For example using "k" in place of "qu" in a lot of words. That seems to be a conscious political choice as well as inherited accent, teens and early twenties who've benefitted from the renewed Basque language education.
Argentinian was the hardest accent to get the hang of out of the ones I've heard, it's very different phonetically, but again not so bad once I'd tuned in. Peruvian quite easy, although the different uses of ustedes vs vosotros got me a bit. I haven't really spent any time with people from Southern Spain though, so Andalusian accents might be another thing.

Meant to say - I have a very weak West Lancs accent, but I go broader when I'm in my home town and weaker most other places. Weirdly enough I also unconsciously go broader when I'm around people with a different strong regional accent, especially if they all have the same one. I'd go broader with my peers than at home as a survival/ fitting in mechanism, so I wasn't singled out as "posh" as much for having non-local parents, so I guess it's that. Had to significantly attenuate it when I went to uni down south to be understood.

I'm scottish, have a fairly strong accent apparently but I have only rarely come across an English speaking accent I've struggled with. I have family in the US, Canada, Australia and Ireland (including Cork!) and they're all fine. A non native speaker's English normally has to be very poor for me to be confused by it. I wonder if I just have an ear for it though as I can mimic most accents if I've heard them a handful of times.

It helps at work - I work in healthcare in a big city and can understand most people.

I once had to give up on a bloke from East London but I think that was more to do with dialect than accent.

Native Aussie who lived in the UK for 20 years.

OP, you made me laugh remembering sitting in a lecture with a Japanese friend listening to a Scottish Lecturer (in London) for about 10 minutes before she turned to me and asked "Is he speaking English?" She was totally baffled, and gave her a copy of all of my lecture notes for that subject from then on.

I'm pretty good with most accents, but a Glaswegian or strong Yorkshire accent will still be problematic for me.

What I find most annoying is when you ask someone to repeat themselves because you didn't catch what they were saying and instead of slowing down they just talk louder, and sometimes pair that with actually speaking faster. Sooooo helpful, not.

I can even understand most foreigners speaking English - used to transcribe interviews and then edit them into something more grammatically correct.

Interesting piece in the Guardian about accents - www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/03/can-you-lose-accent-england-southern

Well a lot of people in England are still rhotic speakers too.

That doesn't mean any of us sound like Shakespeare. None of us are pronouncing 'Measure for Measure' the way Shakespeare did for example.

Brummies who distinctly pronounce the 'g's in 'sing' or 'tongue' are probably pronouncing it as Shakespeare did.

twitter.com/BBCNews/status/1588042654712987648

Why have so many with strong regional accents agreed then? And nearly everyone else says something along the lines of "once I get my ear in" ie try.

I think a lot of English people are like that with accents, but also names and practices. The attitude seems to be ‘these are our accents/names/customs’ and everything else is silly’.

As a foreigner who now lives in England, I’m very surprised by how many English people haven’t bothered to learn how to pronounce extremely commonplace Irish names like Siobhan and Aisling. And by how many people in Southern England appear to find it hilarious that a lot of people in the North refer to the afternoon meal as ‘dinner’.

They might seem like entirely different issues, but I think they are all connected. It’s not very nice.

You're absolutely right

Original pronunciation Shakespeare is really interesting. You can hear things that have survived in all different accents. The rhymes and some of the word play work much better too!

You've explained it better and in a more neutral way than I was going to manage.

On the subject of usage, the study of sociology-linguistics is incredibly interesting..
So many factors come into play such as class and gender dominance etc and we are all subject to unconscious bias — though knowledge of what is involved enables one to so what avoid this or at lease to examine one’s motives

When I first came here I found colleagues were often impatient when I did not instantly understand them but sought to clarify. They looked at me as though I was simple minded.
The reason? Simply because English was my mother tongue but many of the terms and colloquialisms I was accustomed to were different. I think it is half expected from someone from North America, but not the Antipodes.

I was born in England and don’t struggle to understand any English accents that I can think of. I don’t struggle with Scottish accents, as my parents are Scottish, but I can certainly understand why some would .. the pronunciation of some words can be so different.

An irrational irritation of mine is the American pronunciation of words like basil, oregano, tomato, aluminium (or aluminum as they would say). If we’re watching TV and an American says one of those words, DH will look over at me and smirk because he knows I’ll be silently (or sometimes not so silently) irritated by it. I don’t know why, and no offence intended!

And your evidence for this is....?

As a foreigner who now lives in England, I’m very surprised by how many English people haven’t bothered to learn how to pronounce extremely commonplace Irish names like Siobhan and Aisling

There are loads of placenames in England that people from other areas of England don't know how to pronounce. Examples include Belvoir, Mousehole, Huyton to name but a few. Unless you've used the name or visited the place you won't know - it's like not hearing a word but only ever reading it so you didn't know how to say it eg hyperbole.

Mind you, my maiden surname is a place in the north west of England and nobody could ever spell it. Germans had no trouble at all, so maybe you're right

Living in the UK for 30+ years

I'm citing experience that's been echoed by quite a few itt.