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Thread: British people are hardest to understand?

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[quote=TOMSPENCER,266047]As has already been mentioned, Britain itself also has a remarkably diverse range of regional accents. To my mind, far more diverse than in other native English-speaking countries. I worked as a teacher for two and a half years in Guangdong, and saw more than thirty colleagues come and go. Some were from the US, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand and Australia, but most were from the UK. In the whole group I'd say just one or two had what you might call a 'BBC English' accent.

Younger students in particular would always find it difficult to understand a new teacher for the first couple of weeks, but could come to understand just about any accent in the end. (admittedly, I think the school avoided employing applicants whose accents were really, really strong)

In my experience, it has been my friends from the US who have had most difficulty in understanding English spoken in different accents. I learned a long time ago to differentiate Canadian accents from US, and New Zealand Accents from Australian, but on visiting New York in 1996 just about everyone I met asked me "Are you Australian?". For the record, I speak with a flawless BBC English accent.

Some British films shown in the US have to have subtitles so that they can be understood. This is particularly true of films which use a lot of uniquely British slang or strong regional accents ('Lock Stock' comes to mind).

If I were to venture a reason for this (completely un-scientifically, of course), I should say that the US is a net exporter of popular culture and a large proportion of US nationals are not subject to foreign cultural influence in their daily lives. Such is the power of the American cultural influence that many British singers, these days, sing in American accents. Can't think of any American bands singing in British accents, though.[/quote]

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