Serious said:

ZombieKitten said:

what about the swiss german speakers?

I can hardly understand one word when they talk. When I was in Switzerland I understood their French better at times than their "German" and my French isn't good at all . Germans hardly understand them either, Austrians are a lot easier for them to understand.

probably because I lived there 5 years Austrian sounds more understandable to me than German, you are right

ZombieKitten said:

Serious said:

I can hardly understand one word when they talk. When I was in Switzerland I understood their French better at times than their "German" and my French isn't good at all . Germans hardly understand them either, Austrians are a lot easier for them to understand.

probably because I lived there 5 years Austrian sounds more understandable to me than German, you are right

5 years in Austria?

Serious said:

ZombieKitten said:

probably because I lived there 5 years Austrian sounds more understandable to me than German, you are right

5 years in Austria?

Switzerland!!!

ZombieKitten said:

Serious said:

5 years in Austria?

Switzerland!!!

Okay, you got me really confused !

Serious said:

ZombieKitten said:

Switzerland!!!

Okay, you got me really confused !

I was just little anyway, long time ago

I live in the north of England and it took a few years before I could understand the accents as there are so many. Many different dialects in as many areas. As I came originally London it was so difficult but the Northerners thought that when I spoke I was telling them off all the time as my accent sounds very harsh.

I really don't have difficulty with any of them now. When I first met a friend's family years ago I had some problems understanding their very thick Vietnamese accents...but not now.

I was down South a couple of years back, and a guy driving a Winnebago struck up conversation with me at a gas station. He had a very, very thick Southern accent (Tennessee? West Virginia?) and for the life of me, I could NOT understand 75% of what he was saying. I was embarrassed but had to keep asking him to repeat himself until finally I just nodded & smiled, pretending to understand.

blueblossom said:

I live in the north of England and it took a few years before I could understand the accents as there are so many. Many different dialects in as many areas. As I came originally London it was so difficult but the Northerners thought that when I spoke I was telling them off all the time as my accent sounds very harsh.

It is amazing the different dialects there are in this tiny country. I some times have trouble with the northerners when they talk but it is usually a combination of accent and the slang they are using.

Shanti0608 said:

blueblossom said:

I live in the north of England and it took a few years before I could understand the accents as there are so many. Many different dialects in as many areas. As I came originally London it was so difficult but the Northerners thought that when I spoke I was telling them off all the time as my accent sounds very harsh.

It is amazing the different dialects there are in this tiny country. I some times have trouble with the northerners when they talk but it is usually a combination of accent and the slang they are using.

Where I live there is the Lancashire accent, the Yorkshire accent, the Manchester accent and in those areas there are variations on those accents as well as the slang. I think that I have a cockney accent but my family who live down South say I sound northern!

blueblossom said:

Shanti0608 said:

It is amazing the different dialects there are in this tiny country. I some times have trouble with the northerners when they talk but it is usually a combination of accent and the slang they are using.

Where I live there is the Lancashire accent, the Yorkshire accent, the Manchester accent and in those areas there are variations on those accents as well as the slang. I think that I have a cockney accent but my family who live down South say I sound northern!

Ha! Do you say "Calm Down, Calm Down!" ? We have a friend who is from Yorkshire but lives near London now. She is hard to understand when she has been drinking.

I knew the way I phrased the title wouldn't be clear enough. I meant accents by people whose first language is English. Of course French, Chinese or other accents where the speaker is used to speaking a different language would be difficult to understand. But no worries, carry on.

Serious said:

West Indian ! If you can call that English !

My cousin's accent is so thick that even a few of us in our own family have trouble understanding her sometimes.

If I listen to Jamaican dancehall music, it might as well be in another language.

edit: spelling

[Edited 6/24/11 11:29am]

vainandy said:

You don't have to listen to overseas accents to find some hard to understand ones. There are some hard to understand accents right here in the States. We get phone calls from Northerners all the time at work and they talk so fast. They talk ninety miles a minute. Sometimes, I just have to stop and tell them...."Hey, slow down. You're talking too fast. We talk much slower down here".

That's why I mentioned Bostonians in the first post. It's one of the strangest American accents I've ever heard.

vainandy said:

You don't have to listen to overseas accents to find some hard to understand ones. There are some hard to understand accents right here in the States. We get phone calls from Northerners all the time at work and they talk so fast. They talk ninety miles a minute. Sometimes, I just have to stop and tell them...."Hey, slow down. You're talking too fast. We talk much slower down here".

You took the words right out of my mouth! I find that today's young people, teenagers and young adults especially, sometimes I can't understand a damn word they're saying. Like you said, they talk too damn fast! And forget those little 14 and 15 year old "Valley Girls!"

Ottensen said:

The bayou swampland region of the United States.

New Orleans and its' surrounding region...one of the reality shows they're doing there right now actually uses sub-titles

Are you talking about that show "Swamp People" or something like that? Yeah, their accents can be a bit challenging.

Shyra said:

vainandy said:

You don't have to listen to overseas accents to find some hard to understand ones. There are some hard to understand accents right here in the States. We get phone calls from Northerners all the time at work and they talk so fast. They talk ninety miles a minute. Sometimes, I just have to stop and tell them...."Hey, slow down. You're talking too fast. We talk much slower down here".

You took the words right out of my mouth! I find that today's young people, teenagers and young adults especially, sometimes I can't understand a damn word they're saying. Like you said, they talk too damn fast! And forget those little 14 and 15 year old "Valley Girls!"

Like Vanessa's friend...

However, being a "Northerner" I find it slightly annoying when I call somewhere for customer service and it ends up being the south or the midwest. There's no rush and everything is so drawn out, and chit-chat about the weather, etc. etc. A two-minute phone call ends up taking 5 or 10 minutes.

jone70 said:

However, being a "Northerner" I find it slightly annoying when I call somewhere for customer service and it ends up being the south or the midwest. There's no rush and everything is so drawn out, and chit-chat about the weather, etc. etc. A two-minute phone call ends up taking 5 or 10 minutes.

Aren't you from the midwest? You don't like talking to your own people?

Shyra said:

Who was the chick that Simon Cowell fired from the X Factor before it even airs here in the states? They showed a clip of her talkiing, and I couldn't understand a word she said, and she was speaking English! I find that Asians can be quite difficult to understand if they have thick accents, but of course, I digress. That wasn't your question, huh? I think Aussie's can be tricky.

That was Cheryl Cole she's a (Geordie) from Newcastle, a tough accent to understand...wey aye man!

[img:$uid]http://i215.photobucket.com/albums/cc1/Joyinrepatition/e09b259c.gif[/img:$uid]

sextonseven said:

jone70 said:

However, being a "Northerner" I find it slightly annoying when I call somewhere for customer service and it ends up being the south or the midwest. There's no rush and everything is so drawn out, and chit-chat about the weather, etc. etc. A two-minute phone call ends up taking 5 or 10 minutes.

Aren't you from the midwest? You don't like talking to your own people?

Compared to a native New Yorker, yeah, I don't sound like a "Northerner". People can tell I'm not native, but they can't usually guess where I grew up. However, I have better grammar (I don't say, "Where's that at?" for example) and do not have the long "Scandanavian" 'O' that is prevalent where I grew up. When I call my parents or visit my friends that still live there, the way they talk sounds funny to me. Did you think I had a strange accent?

jone70 said:

sextonseven said:

Aren't you from the midwest? You don't like talking to your own people?

Compared to a native New Yorker, yeah, I don't sound like a "Northerner". People can tell I'm not native, but they can't usually guess where I grew up. However, I have better grammar (I don't say, "Where's that at?" for example) and do not have the long "Scandanavian" 'O' that is prevalent where I grew up. When I call my parents or visit my friends that still live there, the way they talk sounds funny to me. Did you think I had a strange accent?

The way you spoke did not jump out at me at all. It was very pleasant.

jone70 said:

Shyra said:

You took the words right out of my mouth! I find that today's young people, teenagers and young adults especially, sometimes I can't understand a damn word they're saying. Like you said, they talk too damn fast! And forget those little 14 and 15 year old "Valley Girls!"

However, being a "Northerner" I find it slightly annoying when I call somewhere for customer service and it ends up being the south or the midwest. There's no rush and everything is so drawn out, and chit-chat about the weather, etc. etc. A two-minute phone call ends up taking 5 or 10 minutes.

Whenever I call customer service, I always end up getting someone in India or Pakistan. I can usually understand their accents, but sometimes it just gets on my nerves when they don't understand me! Once I got a guy in Saskatchewan, which shocked me. I didn't think people lived there!

[Edited 6/24/11 12:16pm]

sextonseven said:

Serious said:

West Indian ! If you can call that English !

My cousin's accent is so thick that even a few of us in our own family have trouble understanding her sometimes.

If I listen to Jamaican dancehall music, it might as well be in another language.

edit: spelling

[Edited 6/24/11 11:29am]

Yeah I often hardly understand anything when it comes to that. Sometimes I ask David to "translate" it for me and when I hear the song the next time I probably already forgot and still don't understand the lyrics .

But you are not bad with Jamaican lyrics, remember that you helped me with a song that was played in the car in a video I took . After you told me I could hear it clearly suddenly .

JustErin said:

I really don't have difficulty with any of them now. When I first met a friend's family years ago I had some problems understanding their very thick Vietnamese accents...but not now.

Same here, dealing with cases in Asia as a healthcare agent wasn't easy because of accents until I got used to it.

I speak swedish, badly, but I have a lot of trouble understanding NON-swedes speak swedish, EXCEPT if they are native spanish speakers, then I have no trouble at all!

ZombieKitten said:

I speak swedish, badly, but I have a lot of trouble understanding NON-swedes speak swedish, EXCEPT if they are native spanish speakers, then I have no trouble at all!

¿Qué?

Shyra said:

Ottensen said:

The bayou swampland region of the United States.

New Orleans and its' surrounding region...one of the reality shows they're doing there right now actually uses sub-titles

Are you talking about that show "Swamp People" or something like that? Yeah, their accents can be a bit challenging.

Shyra, I'm talking about Toya's reality show

I could understand her just fine when she had the show with Tiny in Atlanta, but once she went into her N'awlins dialect with her family & friends for the new show I had to shut that down. I couldn't understand a damn thing

Lord, what on earth btw is the show Swamp People about???

Ottensen said:

Shyra said:

Are you talking about that show "Swamp People" or something like that? Yeah, their accents can be a bit challenging.

Lord, what on earth btw is the show Swamp People about???

Alligator hunters who live in Louisania.

sextonseven said:

vainandy said:

You don't have to listen to overseas accents to find some hard to understand ones. There are some hard to understand accents right here in the States. We get phone calls from Northerners all the time at work and they talk so fast. They talk ninety miles a minute. Sometimes, I just have to stop and tell them...."Hey, slow down. You're talking too fast. We talk much slower down here".

That's why I mentioned Bostonians in the first post. It's one of the strangest American accents I've ever heard.

My boss is originally from Boston but she's lived down here since the 1970s so a lot of us has rubbed off on her. But her accent still comes through in certain words sometimes. For instance, when she says "cards", it sounds like "cods".

jone70 said:

However, being a "Northerner" I find it slightly annoying when I call somewhere for customer service and it ends up being the south or the midwest. There's no rush and everything is so drawn out, and chit-chat about the weather, etc. etc. A two-minute phone call ends up taking 5 or 10 minutes.

You sound just like my boss who is from Boston.

She is constantly listening to me when I answer phone calls and I can hear her in the other room saying..."Hurry up...wrap it up".....Sometimes, I will put the phone on hold and say...."Do you want me to hang up on them? I can't just cut them off but I will if you want me to".... She's always telling me that we spend too much time answering the phone calls. Just give out the information and end the call. When someone's being pleasant to me though, I get pleasant with them right back and it does sometimes turn into a five minute call sometimes. I have little old ladies sometimes telling me that their granddaughter is graduating high school and I'm like...."Well, congratulations. I bet you're so proud"....and the call will go on and on. But that's just how we are down here. Y'all are just some mean asses up there.