The UK is known for having a bunch of different dialects that often some are barely intelligible to one another. The US happens to also have a large landmass and numerous immigrant-descended people.

34 comments

  1. There are a large variety accents but the vast majority of them are easily understandable by the average American. I think there are only a couple very rare ones in pretty isolated areas that are considered difficult to understand.

  2. I have watched a lot of UK programing (Programming) for over 20 years and it seems as if accents are more noticeable there. However, if you go to rural areas in the US, accents are much more noticeable – in urban areas, not so much. I grew up in the deep south but no one in my family has a THICK southern accents except my once nieces and hers is so pronounced I have trouble understanding her.

    Back in the early 60s when we moved north to Chicago, no one could understand us and we could not understand the Chicago accented people. TV has leavened regional accents since then.

  3. Not to the degree that you’re describing. Code switching happens a lot (where even people with strong accents will often speak differently in different company), for one thing.

  5. The city I live in, Baltimore, is known for its accent. It gets made fun of sometimes. I hear the General American accent (spoken by almost everyone my age), the Baltimore accent, and African American Vernacular English regularly.

    Growing up in Texas I would hear a Southern accent, but not the Southern drawl of the deep south.

    I hear the New York accent sometimes if I’m watching TV.

  6. I went to New Orleans and could barely understand a specific single worker at Parkway around 2 years ago who was chatting up while I waited for my PoBoy. Other then that people speak noticeably different but I can still understand easily.

  9. I remember moving to Florida a couple of decades ago and riding the bus, everyone was talking but I could not understand what anyone was saying. It was pretty surreal. The more I relaxed into it the more I could start to differentiate between Louisiana cajun and creole, cuban cuban and cuban/*american,* Texas east and Texas west are really different, Mississippi is *totally* different, etc. Then I got that they all understood each other but me coming from Seattle would take some time.

  10. Daily! Especially if I chat with some of my neighbors. I’ll hear quite a few different accents just going to the grocery store.

  15. The common television & movies accent (general american) is actually a very specific branch called North Midlands American. It’s native territory runs between Ohio and Nebraska. Most national news anchors are promoted up from that part of the country.

  16. There are hundreds of dialects of the English language. So, how often do I speak to someone who speaks a different dialect than I do? I live in a large metropolitan area, so this happens multiple times daily.

  17. I have lived in 3 different places known for particularly strong accents

    Recently I was out with a group of foreign visitors (mostly Brazilian, some French and german), the amount of “why do you speak different than other americans?” I got

    But people from America often claim I have an odd accent as well

  18. Appalachian accents aren’t only an accent, but it’s also a dialect. We use triple conjunctions for example, should’nt’ve

  19. I went to school In Pittsburgh. My friend across the hall had to sometimes translate my Long Island accent because many of the midwesterners could not understand me.

    Now I live in the Midwest, when I talk to strangers I usually get a “you’re not from around here, are you?”

  20. I used to work with a guy that had the thickest Southey accent and a guy that was from the swamps of rural Louisiana.
    When we traveled for work I had to translate for both of them.
    It was fun trying to explain to a server in China that they were infact speaking English.
    The look of bewilderment on her face is still amusing all these years later.

  22. Only every time I encounter someone from New York City. A Bronx accent in particular may as well be a foreign language to me. That was a real issue when I was in the military and one of my superiors was from the Bronx. I was constantly getting in trouble for “playing stupid” or disobeying orders when the fact of the matter was I could only understand about every fifth word that asshat said.

  23. Somewhat regularly. Until I became a working adult who had to deal with certain teams repeatedly I couldn’t understand either Oklahoma or Georgia accents. I had the hardest time. It sounded like “twang twang twang blah twang twang blah twang*.

    ​

    I’m from California so I’m sure I’ve got some glottal fry. I pause and sigh a lot so I probably just sound like an insufferable brat and potentially unintelligible to others. I am regularly told I don’t “look” like my voice and it shocks people so that perhaps adds to anything.

  25. Very often. I live in Miami so it’s a mixed bag. The main accent groups are Northerners/non-Cubans (born in the US but often not florida), first gen Cubans (born in Cuba) and second gen Cubans (born in the US).

    Non-Cubans either sound like they’re from the North or they have a super generic accent that you can’t place. The first gen Cubans have a strong cuban accent and the second gen Cubans sound mostly American but they have different phrasing (I.e. “get down from the car” instead of “get out of the car”). Some first gen Cubans sound like the second gen Cubans if they arrived in the US as kids.

  26. I was raised in the upper midwest and have worked all over the country. I’m now in Alabama and have been here for 6 months and still can’t understand a goddamn thing some of my coworkers are saying.

  27. Surprised nobody has mentioned southerners, to many they’re impossible to understand

  28. I used to work as a cashier at a gas station that was off I-90 and during that time I came across many different types of of english spoken in the country. I spoke with people with strong southern drawls, New englanders who had a non-rhotic accent, people with the New York accent. Not to mention AAVE, and different Midwest and Canadian accents. So I generally come across different accents often

  29. This is a weird one, but my brother says that Asian-American girls from California have a distinct accent.

    Like, he says he can distinguish their laughs from a white girl’s laugh. I still think it’s BS because I can’t hear it.

  30. When I attended a small private college, numerous years back, I was surrounded by people who all spoke English. But we all had differing dialects. Not only dialects, but also phrasing & other parts of speech. I loved it. Before then, I had only heard the version I had grown up with…rural northern California.

  32. I knew a mechanic who’s southern accent was so thick I could barely understand him. He was a great mechanic though

  33. I lived in NJ for the first 23 years of life, and have no real discernable accent. But there are some wild-ass accents in this country and region. Boston, NY, Alabama, West Virginia, Baltimore, different parts of Texas, Minnesota… There are a ton.

  34. I don’t think I’ve ever met someone IRL who speaks so differently that I couldn’t understand them, but! I stay in large cities.

    I know virtually nothing about linguistics, but I think isolation is essential to regional dialect development. The vast majority of American regions were not isolated long enough to develop full on dialects.

    eta, changed “regional isolation…to dialect dev” to “isolation…to regional dialect dev”

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