Additional context:
Native speakers of my mother tongue do not all understand each other due to some pretty extreme dialects. Now that I’m in Europe, I’ve noticed multiple instances of people sometimes not understand the dialect of someone from a village 10-20 km away…
In contrast, for example most American, British, and Australian people can just… understand each other like that?? I never thought much about it before but it’s pretty incredible
Edit: thanks everyone, and clearly I didn’t think of certain parts of the UK when I was in the shower and thought of this…
I live in the US Midwest with almost no accent. Anytime I go somewhere where people have strong accents, my brain really has to work to understand them. It’ll take a couple of days of immersion before I really start to understand people.
You guys…
My favourite (northern?)mid western saying is «uff da»
“With almost no accent”
You have an accent
When I first did tech support 30 years ago, I could nail what state an American was calling from, but not the Midwest, all same same.
Midwest is classic “broadcast English”. It’s considered an almost neutral accent without a strong sense of place associated with it.
“Broadcast English”
Interesting term
I’ve always noticed that In movies and TV shows, North American accents mostly sound “normal”. But when I talk to Americans/Canadians in person or online over voice chat, I cannot pinpoint the accents, it just sounds “American” to me.
I almost never hear the
“I’m walkin here”
“Folks won’t take kindly to you around these parts”
“I pahked my cah at the Hahvahd yahd”
“I’m sorey aboot that”
I’m totally down, I just need to, like, check my schedule?
etc.
kinds of exaggerated accents
everyone sounds like someone from CNN to me and then they say they’re from Arkansas or something
West coast people really hear a Midwest accent. I upvoted because it made me laugh.
Yeah lol I will agree that it’s less heavy of an accent, for the most part, but most people can still tell unless you literally talk like a news anchor. Same with West Coast accents tbh.
A so-called “neutral accent” is still an accent.
I never really understood it until I met people from Iowa for the first time. They didn’t have an accent in the way that San Diego doesn’t have weather, just a climate.
I thought that was the Mid-Atlantic Accent?
Not for about 80 years…
Never really. Mid-Atlantic was taught in elocution lessons but didn’t really exist outside film and theatre.
I thought it was native to wealthy families from Jersey/Virginia/Maryland. People that grew up in Martha’s vineyard.
Only if they copied the movies. Stewie in the Family Guy speaks in a Mid-Atlantic accent which is why he pronounces his H’s etc.
I’ve always preferred calling it “trans-atlantic” to avoid confusion with that “Mid-Atlantic Region” of the US which is on the East Coast roughly from New Jersey down to Virginia, maybe even the very northern Coastal parts of North Carolina. Some people include New York/NYC but I can’t agree. Ok, maybe parts of New York bordering Pennsylvania.
Oh I actually thought the comment I replied to replied to your comment about broadcast English xD
If anyone’s interested, languages follow similar differentiation patterns as species in evolution. Ways this occurs include: allopatric (barrier separates past equivalents), peripatric (migration), and sympatric (subcultures), etc.
It’s the same reason Matthew Rhys can do a spot-on American accent despite having an outrageous Welsh accent irl: people are more likely to grow up on the media of more mainstream languge so it becomes the lingua franca. (love Rhys to clarify)
I can still barely understand the dialect where I have now lived for ~4 years. I can just about follow the topic of the conversation if I focus hard enough. And this is in the same country that I grew up in (Scotland).
It’s a very isolated place, which has allowed the old language to survive till now, though it’s only the older people that still speak it, and even then it’s likely still closer to english than their parents spoke.
In the larger towns nearby, the dialects have turned into an accent, with a few “cool” or useful words sprinkled in. The dialect here however, has different vowel and consonant sounds, maybe 30-50% different words (I’m just guessing), and a slightly different word order. Sadly it will die out in the next decade or so.
I guess this is pretty normal in some parts of the world, but quite rare in english.
The overwhelming consensus here is that a strong brogue Scottish accent is the main exception.
Oh you’ve never had to deal with a Scottish person before I see.
Binging limmys show will fix that for you
About 30 years ago I went to the Edinburgh festival and in one of the bars met a farmer from the north of Scotland. I literally talked to him for 10 minutes before I made out more than a word of what he was saying.
that’s the exception that put “most” in the title
Most English speakers certainly do not understand the bloody Scots.
and you certainly appear to not understand the meaning of “most” and how it was used in that sentence lol
I think at least part of the reason why English has become an agreed upon international language is because these variations are permissible. If everyone had to speak RP, then the language wouldn’t be as accessible.
There are parts of the United States, where I am from, where the English is almost unintelligible to me. Also, I have only been to England once, for a layover that would last 24 hours. I could barely understand any of the white service workers, however the Indian service workers? I could understand them very very well.
The white service workers probably had working class accents, while the Indian workers likely learned English in India, and therefore had a different accent
Yea I live in the Netherlands and there is a fishing village just a 15 minute bike ride away from me. If the people there speak in their own dialect I can’t understand anything they say. If I drive to the north to the province Friesland, less than 100 km away, they have their own official language besides Dutch that only around 400k speak. That’s less people than half of the inhabitants of Amsterdam yet Frisian is fully recognized and official and you can spend your daily life there without speaking a word Dutch even though you are still in the Netherlands. Some kids there don’t even learn their first Dutch words until they go to school.
There’s something about a thick Scottish accent that requires a translator for me. (West coast, Canadian)
Luckily the few I watch on youtube add subtitles for the rest of us.
I remember having to interpret for my boyfriend when we drove through the Western end of Virginia. The accents get thick out in Appalachia. We’re both native speakers, he’s even from Virginia, but by the coast.
me and my wife have this dynamic. i’m from southern appalachia and she cannot understand the shanendoah or allegheny accent at all. if i say something particularly idiomatic she’ll ask me what i mean because our verb syntaxes carry a little extra information AND we have tonals
Of course, It’s nothing but fuck, shit, dick, wtf, … etc
As an Australian, it’s Irish accents that I struggle with the most.
Scottish I can deal with, probably from watching shows like Still Game and Burnistoun.
Most other UK accents are not to difficult to understand.
One odd thing, I was watching an USA wildlife documentary that was set in South Africa. I noticed they put forced subtitles on when ever the South African’s spoke in English. I found that bizarre as I’ve never had any trouble understanding when South Africans speak English.
I’ve seen subtitles on both Aussie and nz English in US shows
Wow, lots of people picking out whole regions to say they cant understand and i… Have never had that problem. Honestly, really, english is easy to catch the ear and even people who barely speak it can usually get legible words out. You never make the sounds accidentally.
I’m not a big fan of mumbly accents, its just lazy about the sounds but if you’ve ever understood grumbling and mumbling you can get any accent.(Note: not true for dialects that have their own local words for things)
The definition of a dialect is having it’s own words for things.
Well look at that, pronunciation, grammar and vocabulary.
Didnt realize that slang was part of dialect and only associated the first 2. Learn something every day.
Every dialect has their own words for things
I had associated that with only localization and slang. Didnt realize that was dialect. That being said, you can still understand the words just and get enough cintext to realize you dont say “fanny” in UK
