It's quite impressive that most English speakers across the world understand each other, despite variations in accents/dialects

I had a roommate from Manchester (UK) for a couple months back in college. I'm American (US). He seemed to have no trouble understanding me, but I usually couldn't understand what he said without him repeating it multiple times.

Idk, I recently heard some thick Scottish English and I couldn't understand literally anything. That might be in part due to the fact that I'm not a native speaker, but still I believe people outside the British isles would struggle with it.

Some of the uniformity is a result of cultural domination of specific centres and now unavoidable loss of original dialectal variation.

Have you seen the hedge scene from Hot Fuzz?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cun-LZvOTdw

Oh you've never had to deal with a Scottish person before I see.

Parisians will never stop complaining about québécois. They even show subtitles in France when they speak québécois on TV. None of the French Canadians I know seem to have any issue understanding traditional French though.

Edit: Spanish is another language where we can mostly understand each other despite very varied dialects

I think it's the harsh consonant sounds. I'm not a linguist and am sure there's some term for it, but it seems like we identify words in English more from the distinct "framing" of the consonants and are more flexible about hearing variations in how the vowel sounds in between are pronounced.

For example, it's the same reason that whispering (which largely takes out tone/pitch of vowel sounds) is super easy in English, but more difficult in some other languages.

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.

Have you ever heard Scottish person speak?

Like, seriously nards-deep into full Scottish brogue? It’s like a language that bears zero resemblance to the English language.

Although TBH, have a pretty readheaded lass talk to me in Scottish, and fuck me she could read the phone book and I wouldn’t give a shit I’d just be sitting there catching flies trying to soak it all in.

Relevant example

What's incredible is that an island of people who all watch the same tv and same radio can all maintain different accents

The overwhelming consensus here is that a strong brogue Scottish accent is the main exception.

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.

What is your native tongue?

Spanish has a pretty wide array of accents and dialects, but I think for the most part Spanish speakers understand one another.

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.

As an American, Scots are the most difficult to understand. Most Brits, Welsh and Irish are fine. Australians and New Zealanders, too. Canadians can be almost indistinguishable to me with the exception of a couple of words here and there.

I think maybe because english already standardised when the world decided to learn it, so it's mostly accent and less about dialect. Still impressive nonetheless.

On another note, chinese dialect sounds so different that it might as well be another language, then China decided to standardise the language into "common language"(mandarin) and basically attempt to eliminate dialect.

So i guess this impressive result is because colonialism.

I'm sure you're mostly right, but man... for me, trying to understand standard 'Ainglish' informed with various Scots / Celtic / Irish / British brogue (and sometimes Australasia brogue) is even harder than understanding certain American backwoods Appalachian dialects. 😵‍💫

For example, what's that modern show with the two twin, Irish, mobster brothers? (played by a single actor IIRC) I really do need an interpreter for that one, and various other series... oO

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.

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)

you forgot

• Scottish English. It took a solid 10 seconds each way to interpret to US English.
• someone from thhhpain talking to deep pinche Mexico cabron
• India where people from one of 35 languages have to talk to each other.

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've got virtual friends or acquaintances in different parts of Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Spain, etc. They all conjugate some verbal times 'weirdly' or say 'funny' things, but yeah, pretty normal communication. I actually adopted some words from their regions.

(No, I still won't celebrate a fucking day for the Spanish speaking world, friend from Spain that leans a little heavily into Hispanism...).

Are you talking about Arabic? I understand it changes a lot. It must be amazing to speak Arabic. The oceans of culture, of old philosophers, poets, etc.

Native speakers of my mother tongue do not all understand each other due to some pretty extreme dialects.

我觉得年轻一代已经懂国语了，现在重要的该是保留中国各地语言的 variety, 保留文化，保留不同种的声音，的特色。

消灭地方语言不值得，可双语教课。广州该教广州话，上海该教上海话。同时也教普通话。

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)

Yeah, like yesterday I was talking to my American friends about football, soccer and irish soccer on the telly, and then after I ate my crisps and chips, I went and had myself some tea with tea and muffins

Of course, It's nothing but fuck, shit, dick, wtf, ... etc

Ever seen this woman do English accents?

21 Accents

Impressive as hell!

Do we? I remember watching movies like Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels when I was younger and never having a clue what they were talking about.

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.

Speak for yourself! I'm horrible at overcoming accents that aren't from my zone.

Moved from south Florida to North Carolina and I could barely understand anyone that didnt live in a city. Took years to pick up, with weekly tests of my skills during Sunday schools :')

That's... simply not true at all, not only is a common joke how native speakers from a typical remote area are easily unintelligible to geographically close cosmopolitan native speakers, but me, as a non native, have problems to understand most of the accents in English if I have not been exposed enough to them (skill issue probably, but I found it quite common in European English speaking environments)

https://youtu.be/o6p0W4ZsLXw

A definite exception would be the Newfie accent from eastern Canada. People in the same country cannot understand them.

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.