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.

Have you seen the hedge scene from Hot Fuzz?

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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)

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

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

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

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.

Ever seen this woman do English accents?

21 Accents

Impressive as hell!

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.

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

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.

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)

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.

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.