Difficult accents

[Guffe]

Alrighty, this thread is like my fourth on the Escapist, yay, and I am making this after watching a scous stand-up comedian (a scouser being a person from Liverpool, England, UK).

Spoiler: here's the clip

Now (as my avatar suggests) I am a fan of Liverpool Football Club, even thou I'm Finnish, but that's another story. //unimportant

Now to the point of the thread.

Many people warned me before I went on my first trip to Liverpool that the accent is strange and whatnot. Well I had watched some interviews with Steven Gerrard and Jamie Carragher (two LFC players from Liverpool) and I understand them without trouble so I thought "what's this bollocks about scouse beeing a hard to understand accent"

Then I arrived in Liverpool. It struck me like lightning, it's never been this difficult to understand what the person behind the counter, in the coffeeshop, is tryin to ask me. I understand the comedian just perfect, the Gerrard and Carra interviews go just fine, but live, on the spot, the accent is crazy-ass hard to get. Even on my fourth visit to Liverpool in 4 years the accent from locals is still hard to understand.
I hope to meet "The Artificially Prolonged" in real life one day, but please speak slowly and clearly the day we meet!!

So for you Esacpees/Escapists/Escapians/Escapimons
What are the most difficult accents for you? either live, or on TV?
Could be any language you speak, there are also a few Swedish and Norwegian accents diffult to understand, but scousers... oh my God -.-

 

[SckizoBoy]

Alrighty, this thread is like my fourth on the Escapist, yay, and I am making this after watching a scous stand-up comedian (a scouser being a person from Liverpool, England, UK).

Spoiler: here's the clip

So thought it would be John Bishop! He gets a bit repetitive in his schtick, but he's still hilarious.

As far as British Isles accents are concerned, the only one I may have difficulty with is a strong Ulster Scots accent. Most of the others I'm perfectly fine with. For English accents in general, only mid-West (I think it's the mid-West) accents fly over my head, everything else is OK.

For Cantonese, I general fail to understand anyone unless they're from Hong Kong.

-_-

 

[Guffe]

Alrighty, this thread is like my fourth on the Escapist, yay, and I am making this after watching a scous stand-up comedian (a scouser being a person from Liverpool, England, UK).

Spoiler: here's the clip

So thought it would be John Bishop! He gets a bit repetitive in his schtick, but he's still hilarious.

I'm that predictable, am I??!! -.-

Haven't had with too many other British accents to do but everyone else I've talked with from over there I've understood, at least reasonably well.

Well another one I just remembered for difficult accents are the Swedish speaking Finns from western Finland (the villages around Vasa), their Swedish is hard as hell before you socialise a bit (a year) with them.

 

[General Twinkletoes]

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 also have trouble understanding French Canadian accents. I have no problem with English Canadian, but French ones are quite hard for me. EDIT: I mean French Canadians speaking French, not English.

 

[Zhukov]

I struggle to understand a lot of Asians when they speak English.

Also, some Aboriginal Australians (myself being a white Australian).

 

[an annoyed writer]

I've met a few Asian folk who I've had a hard time understanding because of a thick accent. I've also met some Rastafarian guys who can be completely incomprehensible half of the time. Think like Little Jacob from GTA 4.

 

[PanYue]

I have trouble understanding indian accents sometimes, mostly the deeper ones. One of them was a doctor and was asking me if I smoke. Awkward conversation, had no idea what he was asking. And when you don't understnad what your doctor is asking, you get concerned.

 

[Muspelheim]

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.

"Jäe jae haeh speld h'affe pa myyyersluee."

It's just difficult to note where a word ends and another begins, for a start. Of course, you do get the hang of it the more you hear it, but at first, it's like being trapped in a maelstrom of A's and E's.

(Still love you, all you Danes out there! Keep being awesome! I'll get the hang of it.)

Edit: Not that Swedish is much better, though. I can imagine what a nightmare it could be for someone who doesn't speak it as a first language, since there are many words that are spelled exactly the same but are pronounced slightly different and mean very different things when they are.

 

[loc978]

I still have a harder time understanding "deep south" or "dirty south" accents than anyone I've ever met who speaks English as a second language (or any British Isles accent. Honestly those are some of the easiest to get)... and I was stationed overseas with the US Army for three years. I actually worked under a guy from Jamaica for a year... far easier to understand than the one from Alabama.

 

[Beffudled Sheep_v1legacy]

Ever since I moved to an American white dominated area I've lost my ability to understand thick Asian and Hispanic accents.

Used to have no problem with them when I lived in a city but now I can barely understand "hello".

I've never had any problems with thick accents of other places though. The various russian, english and african accents I have no problem with.

 

[The Funslinger]

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

 

[Muspelheim]

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.

 

[The Funslinger]

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.

I think the only sort of person who can carry it off is a sufficiently grizzled middle aged man, like my father and uncles. Case in point, Sean Bean.

And to carry on the Game of Thrones metaphor, my own Yorkshire accent is mild to the point where according to one of my American friends, I sound like Robb Stark. I'm glad to have it more mild, because it means it'll sound less weird when I leave Yorkshire, though for now I'm labelled posh. D:

Young people with strong Yorkshire accents just sound like arrogant, juvenile dickweeds the majority of the time.

 

[Ihateregistering1]

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.

 

[XzarTheMad]

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.

"Jäe jae haeh speld h'affe pa myyyersluee."

It's just difficult to note where a word ends and another begins, for a start. Of course, you do get the hang of it the more you hear it, but at first, it's like being trapped in a maelstrom of A's and E's.

(Still love you, all you Danes out there! Keep being awesome! I'll get the hang of it.)

Edit: Not that Swedish is much better, though. I can imagine what a nightmare it could be for someone who doesn't speak it as a first language, since there are many words that are spelled exactly the same but are pronounced slightly different and mean very different things when they are.

As a native Dane, I can't help but smile at this. You have it quite right about the Copenhagen dialect, luckily I've lost mine since moving away. If I remember my phonology lessons correctly, Danish is one of the most "diverse" languages when it comes to the number of vowels. Something like 23, compared to 14 in English. Roughly. So, good luck with that! On the other hand, my perception of Swedish is mainly a lot of R's rolling into each other.

 

[IamLEAM1983]

I also have trouble understanding French Canadian accents. I have no problem with English Canadian, but French ones are quite hard for me.

I can definitively see why, even myself as a former French Canadian, I have a hard time understanding my follow French Canadian when we speak in English. It really depends on the person, some ''get'' the English accent but some really don't (pronouncing the ''th'' sound, ''h'' sound etc. are the worse offender here).

It's even funnier when we speak in French, ask any former French (from France) or French speaking Belgian or Swiss and they will all tell you how we're a pain in the ass to understand.

Misunderstood we are.

OT: I have a hard time understanding Indian people both in English and French. I've worked with quite a few of them and they are by far the hardest to understand.

"Former" French-Canadian? I wasn't aware ethnic backgrounds had an expiration date.

The main problem with us Frenchies is that there's two generations of kids who grew up with English as a second language (my generation and the one following it) - and then there's the baby-boomers and everyone else. Most Boomers were stuck at the tail end of the "White ******" movement and didn't really benefit from bilingual programs or strongly structured English classes. The end result is you've got two kinds of folks originating from Quebec on the auditory or linguistic spectrum.

There's us, who speak French like any other native and who also speak English fluently. I'm told by American friends I sound like a Texan, but I haven't set foot there before in my entire life. Maybe I took a couple cues from my friends without noticing.

Then there's the older generations. The sterotypical French-Canadian accent then starts to come on pretty strongly, if you're lucky enough to find someone over fifty who isn't from the West end of Montreal and who speaks English fluently. Head up north towards Saguenay and English practically drops from the map.

And yeah, the "TH" sound is a ***** if you haven't spoken Shakespeare's tongue often, or if you're well and truly smashed. Most of my older relatives take a shortcut and pronounce it as a dry D, as opposed to the stereotypical French "Z".

So conversations with my grandfather used to go something like this:

"Dose Canadiens, I tell you, all these immigrants are no good! Dey were good team back when we could pronounce dere names!"

As yes, casual racism is a bit of a thing in some corners of society up here. My grandmother sees anyone who happens to be fairly well tanned during summer and immediately starts muttering how we've gone and "allowed Niggers everywhere"... My parents and I choose to laugh it up, seeing as her point of view is far too solidly ingrained to be changed.

Try getting an eighty-three year-old to not get a fix on someone else's Otherness or general ethnic difference. That's an uphill battle if there ever was one.

 

[LarenzoAOG]

Several of my uncles have incredibly thick accents, it sounds like they are speaking Spanish rapidly, even when speaking English slowly.

 

[snappydog]

I'm a Brit, from Devon but with an accent closer to RP than anything else... I moved to Wales recently for university, and it turns out that the difficult accent to understand in Wales is... mine. Seriously, Welsh people do not understand a word I say sometimes.