Difficult accents

[Wadders]

Bishop has a pretty watered-down accent by now, I've heard Scouse that's considerably less intelligible than that.

I'd also say accents from South Wales can be horrendous to understand, Cardiff, Swansea, the valleys etc. I had a flatmate from there, and she sounded like she was from a foreign country (well, Wales is foreign, but you know what I mean...)

 

[Imperioratorex Caprae]

I used to study accents in High School for Drama (to be honest it was for my TTRPG characters and also to further my DM immersion... and it worked well) and I haven't had trouble understanding accents when spoken to me, but I did have trouble speaking in some. Mostly Welsh because it ties my fucking tongue. Or Eastern Euorpean/Russian accents baffle me from time to time.
You want accents you can't understand, speak to someone from the mountains in Tennessee or Kentucky. Holy fucking shit they make Boomhauer from King of the Hill easy to understand.

 

[Anathrax]

I find scottish accents to be difficult to understand while being awesome.

 

[Guffe]

I used to always think it was ridiculous that some Americans would turn on the subtitles in movies when people with British accents spoke, and then I watched "Attack the Block".

Holy crap, the slang terminology and "borough" accents they had were so thick they may as well have been speaking Japanese.

Really?
I can't remember it being that bad...

Come to Yorkshire. You'll tear your ears out.

Can't remember it being difficult...
Been to the city once, went into a GamesWorkshop and played some Warhammer while mum was out in the city
Maybe the guy just noticed I was foreign and put on the "good English" mode...

I struggle alot with Danish. The language itself is not very difficult at all, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian being practically the same language. I can read written Danish without any problems. But it's the accent. The Copenhagen Danish in particular is more or less all wovels.

On the other hand, my perception of Swedish is mainly a lot of R's rolling into each other.

Swedish is easy
Norwegian depends a lot on the dialect, some speakers I understand perfectly well while others, not so much
Haven't heard Danish in a long time but remember it being a lot of mumbling

 

[Ironside]

As soon as I read the thread title I immediately thought of the Scouse accent before even opening the thread. There are a lot of accents in the north of England that are damn near unintelligible, but I have also met a lot of Scots and Irish who I couldn't understand a bloody word of what they were saying - I just had to nod and pretend I knew what the hell they were saying . I find that if you are exposed to the accents for long enough though you eventually manage to tune your ear into what people are trying to say - or at least that's what happened at Uni when a lot of the international accents were pretty hard to understand.

 

[Plinglebob]

I find scottish accents to be difficult to understand while being awesome.

My friend has a Scottish girlfriend and we were using here as a translator for the character in Brave with the indecipherable accent.

While I generally have no difficulty understanding accents from the UK and Ireland, I really struggle with Asians speaking English for some reason.

 

[Quaxar]

Liberian accents (and probably most of that area in Africa), damn those are hard to understand. Liberian accents sound like a different language half the time.

I agree, I once met a guy, I think he was from Nigeria... anyway, that general area at least. I only noticed he was speaking English after a few sentences when I managed to recognize a few clearly English words. By Jove, that guy was crazy hard to understand for the first few minutes until I got the hang of it.
That and pissed Glaswegians, or, as they're more commonly known, Glaswegians.

 

[someonehairy-ish]

I used to always think it was ridiculous that some Americans would turn on the subtitles in movies when people with British accents spoke, and then I watched "Attack the Block".

Holy crap, the slang terminology and "borough" accents they had were so thick they may as well have been speaking Japanese.

A lot of people speak like that where I come from. I got on fine with it until I spent a few months at uni and all the slang changed. And then it gets even more confusing when the middle class people who don't use the slang already have a different set of slang terms parodying the other ones.

Like when 'peng' meant fit. Some friends of mine decided it sounded like penguin, so they took it one step further and came up with a whole bunch of sealife based nonsense words to describe appearance...

As soon as you're out of the loop for 5 minutes it becomes completely impossible.

 

[RhombusHatesYou]

The accent I have the most difficulty with is fake Australian accents... it's not understanding them, it's restraining myself from choking the fuck out of the cretin attempting it.

 

[Ulquiorra4sama]

Ahh, John Bishop. He's like the dad among all comedians.

Out of curiosity: I find the geordie accent pretty awesome when Ross Noble is talking. Is being in Newcastle as confusing as being in Liverpool even if you understand what the entertainers from those areas are saying?

 

[Relish in Chaos]

Fast-talking Irish men.

 

[FamoFunk]

Scottish. Being Welsh and being in a long-term relationship with a Scot many years ago, who had a thick Scottish accent. It was seriously impossible for us to understand each other.

 

[Lord Kloo]

If you think a scouse accent is bad you should come to the countryside.. when Hot Fuzz took the piss out of 'farmer' or country accents there were not exaggerating, everything is said at lightning speed and spaces between words do not exist.

Unless you're talking to some well to do country folk, then its basically just Queen's English..

 

[BrotherRool]

Come to Yorkshire. You'll tear your ears out.

Can't remember it being difficult...

I had a Yorkshirian friend who wasn't a particular clear speaker and it made it pretty darn hard to hear.

... and then there's Yorkshire dialect
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScELaXMCVis

I think it's pretty much dead now sadly

 

[LetalisK]

Is it possible the guy in the OP's video is just drunk? He sounds pretty hammered. Or maybe his accent is that fucked up.

 

[Sir Christopher McFarlane]

I can't understand thick Highlands accent.

 

[maninahat]

Come to Yorkshire. You'll tear your ears out.

No, no, I adore it! So much so, in fact, that when I used to play WoW with a lot of Yorkists, that coloured my English accent and made it even more hideous. :3

I don't know why, but a thick Yorkshire accent tend to make me smile.

Wahay! Actually, I've got a Hull accent, which is a thing unto itself, and genuinely tragic:

Accents I have trouble with? Not many, to be honest. My partner is Indian, and so I've gotten used to the fast, patter style of speaking (which for some reason, is specific to Scousers and Indians).

 

[Headsprouter]

Here in Ireland we still have some wierd words and sayings, like craic (crack), which is virtually synonymous with fun and "what about ye?" Which means "how're you doing?", also "suttin" which is just us saying "something" in an odd way. Also, a "melter" is an annoying person/thing.

I was on a plane once next to a guy from down south (I'm from Northern Ireland) and I could understand him, but only just. The woman next to him was much easier to understand. You'll notice I use a lot of 'll, 're and in's even in my typing, because that's just how I say stuff. Belfast accents are comparable to American, and thus, I must use American Siri in order to be understood. Her voice is so annoying...

 

[Exius Xavarus]

Indians. Just Indians. I can understand whatever accent I hear with relative clarity. Until an Indian starts speaking English. Then I haven't got a clue what they're saying.

 

[ScrabbitRabbit]

I find strong Cumbrian accents totally impenetrable. For those not in the know, Cumbria is a county in northern England, right near Scotland. My Dad originally hailed from there but I still can't understand a single word that people with particularly strong accents from the area are saying. It's partly the dialect, though. Fortunately, my Dad doesn't speak like that anymore. He's developed a fairly neutral-leaning-Manchester accent over the last few decades.

So I guess this makes me an Englishman who can't understand an English accent.