fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #3002 ]

[ SECRET POST #3002 ]

⌈ Secret Post #3002 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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[Transformers: More than Meets the Eye/Transformers: Robots in Disguise]

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[Gary Barlow, Take That]

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[Sherlock Holmes]

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[Criminal Minds/Law and Order: SVU]

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[Gekkan shoujo Nozaki-kun]

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[Buffy the Vampire Slayer (episode: Prom Night)]

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[Breaking Bad]

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[Night Shift]

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[Neil Patrick Harris, Stephen Fry, Neil Gaiman, Stephen Colbert]

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[clockwise from bottom left: Dinosaur Comics, Romantically Apocalyptic, Homestuck, Nedroid, Sfeer Theory, Bite Me!]

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[Dragon Age]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 066 secrets from Secret Submission Post #429.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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To non-Americans, I've always wondered this. Have you ever heard of an American accent that sounded too thick or unusual for you to understand? Like most non-American have no problem understanding Californians or New Yorkers because for the most part, their ears are used to it thanks to American media. But have you ever heard of an American accent like say, backwoods Alabama that made you go, "What the hell is she saying? Her accent is too thick." And what did it sound like to you?

I ask because I've heard from time to time Americans saying, "I have no idea what she just said. Her accent is too thick," when talking about non-Americans. Not even ESL non-American but English speaking from birth non-Americans like Scots. For some reason, the Scottish accent trips some Americans. I wonder if the reverse ever happens.

Oh god yes. Like Cajun accents can be hard to understand if you are not used to it. https://youtu.be/BRXcpBIteEM

edit: I am American but have non-American friends.

Edited 2015-03-24 23:22 (UTC)

I am American and have a hard time understanding a really thick Cajun accent.

Re: American accents

kaijinscendre - 2015-03-25 00:48 (UTC) - Expand

Woooow.

And I thought Kelantanese was hard to understand. Is that even English? It sounds more like French to me.

yes, I am ignorant. My bad.

Re: American accents

kaijinscendre - 2015-03-25 01:36 (UTC) - Expand

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-25 01:56 (UTC) - Expand

ESL speaker with a C2 level (That means I'm basically considered bilingual) here to say, yep.

Many teaching materials use "standard" (Read: white, middle class) English with either American or English accents, so the accents I have the most problem with are stereotypically redneck/southern accents and AAVE. I'm getting better at AAVE but very recent slang can still trip me up. I also have problems with Australian English, Scottish English (I went to Glasgow last summer. My God.) and Indian English, all for the same reason. I really wish English classes would account for all these different accents more often.

I'm getting better at AAVE but very recent slang can still trip me up.

I think that's the same for 90% of American native speakers.

There are some American accents that I can't understand as an American. See in fiction Boomhauer from King of the Hill.

They're not nearly as common as they used to be, though, because of the growth of media and internal migration (which is true to an extent in many countries but perhaps more so in the US). And also they tend to be, well, rural accents that don't show up in media much.

People with very thick accents from Appalachia, for me.

There's Cajun, which a lot of people have trouble with, since it's very French influenced.

Yooper (UP of Michigan) is not really unclear, but the intonation throws people off like crazy. English with a whole lot of Finnish in it, so I think it sounds pretty cool.

Outer Banks English (Carolina coast) link is really unknown, and nearly incomprehensible to most Americans. It's a brogue!

Various AAVE/Deep Urban dialects can be very slang/jargon heavy. That seems to mostly be a vocabulary issue, though, not pronunciation.

I'm American and I listen to a lot of country music. I'm from NJ but I have family all over so I'm used to various accents and can usually understand most. But one of my friends, who is a native English speaker and grew up in the Northeast can't always understand the lyrics to the song "I Could Kick Your Ass" by Justin Moore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjlicBcvw-o

I'm ESL and yes, I have trouble with some English language accents. But more to the point, my native language is Brazilian Portuguese and I have more trouble understanding some Portuguese accents than run-of-the-mill English, so yeah, it's not unusual to have problems with accents of your own language.

I'm from Minnesota (I apparently have the Fargo accent myself) and I recently had trouble understanding someone with a Philly accent. It's mostly fine, but I thought he said "I'm going to cough" when he actually said "I'm going to golf", and that sort of thing.

But overall, I don't think any "American" accent is difficult to understand, unless you count Americans who are ESL or have an accent from a different language.

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-24 23:42 (UTC) - Expand

Sometimes genuine Midwestern accents sound fake to me. Like I think, "There's no way you could really be speaking like that, you're trying really hard to cover up the way you really sound." It sounds especially like the sort of wonky accent a British or Irish actor would come up with as an "American" accent-- think Aiden Gillen's mystery accent in The Wire (it's not terrible, but it's not Bawl'mrr).

Have a genuine American with this accent in a cast of British actors, and the effect is fucking doubled. It happens to me constantly with Elizabeth McGovern in Downton Abbey and Jeremy Piven in Mr Selfridge-- both were raised in Illinois. They sound so weird to me.

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-25 01:13 (UTC) - Expand

I guess I'm technically a non-American (Canadian) and when I moved down to the Southern USA, I had a lot of trouble understanding really heavy Southern accents. It didn't matter that I'm a native English speaker. I've gotten a lot better with it now that I've lived here for over 10 years, but it was kind of a struggle at first.

I ask because I've heard from time to time Americans saying, "I have no idea what she just said. Her accent is too thick," when talking about non-Americans.

I hear that a lot and don't get it at all. I'm American and have been on forums for non-American shows (Top of the Lake and The Missing are the main two I can think of right now) where half the people posting were complaining about how they had to have closed captioning on to understand what anyone was saying, but it's weird to me. Maybe I'm just especially good at understanding accents or something, but as long as someone's speaking English I never have a problem understanding them, regardless of accent (unless they're drunk or high and slurring their words or something).

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-25 00:13 (UTC) - Expand

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-25 00:43 (UTC) - Expand

Re: American accents

(Anonymous) - 2015-03-25 03:41 (UTC) - Expand

Only accent I ever had trouble understanding was a lady in Scotland who I swear to God talked Danish except her words was English, but the second she slowed down her speech a bit I understood her.

But the people on TV and/or films that I hear people saying they have trouble understanding I tend to understand just fine.

Off course I haven't heard every English accent ever so I can't say with certainty, but even broken* English aka non-native speakers are easier for me to understand than their equals in Norwegian.

*Is that an English expression that isn't offencive? If it is I am sorry and I didn't mean to offend you.

Edit: Talking about not understanding accent, my dialect is very hard for people not from my part of Norway to understand when and there are Norwegian dialects I have bigger trouble understanding than the English accents I hear.

Edited 2015-03-25 00:36 (UTC)

Not that often, actually, but I think people on Tv make an effort to be understandable.

According to my mom (Michigander born and raised), she once met some people from somewhere down south who talked exactly like Boomhauer from King of the Hill and she couldn't understand a thing they said

Not really one specific accent, just that they're so much thicker than actors use them on tv, and regular people aren't as mindful of speaking clearly.

Hilariously, Americans and Canadians I met travelling always think I'm British.
British people always think I'm American or Canadian.

Re: American accents

diet_poison - 2015-03-25 05:28 (UTC) - Expand

Re: American accents

belladonna_took - 2015-03-25 05:59 (UTC) - Expand

Southern accents and far Northeastern (like, Maine, et al.) accents are impossible for me to understand sometimes. And if the voice is deep enough, a NY or Jersey accent is basically mush to me.

As a Malaysian that studies British English and consumes American media, I've rarely heard an American accent that I can't understand. That being said, after hearing Kaijin's Cajun video I can see why some Americans can't understand each other.

Heh, kinda reminds me of my own country's dialects.

I'm American but I work with foreigners, and I've had to take phone calls for them because they weren't able to understand the accent of the person on the line. Nine times out of ten it's a Southern accent when that's the case.

I'm kind of a weird person in that I have no problem understanding accents. Granted, I speak 3 languages so my facility to understand speech is pretty good anyway. Aside from that I like to thank the fact that living all my life in various parts of New York state has given me access to all kinds of weird, varied dialects and accents.

For example, I'm very comfortable with all accents from the Inland North, because some of the outlying towns and the lone city in my home county speaks Inland North. But as I grew up in a very rural, isolated area, the dialect I grew up hearing is pretty similar to some dialects of Appalachia, and some dialects in Western New England. If you pronounce half the consonants in a sentence, you're doing it wrong.

When I went to college, I went to a little town not far from the Canadian border, so I got a heavy dose of borderlands American/East Coast Canada. Nice round "o"s and high, raised "i"s.

Now I live in the Capital Region, which has a lot of weird accents. One of my favorites is the working class white accent that sounds straight up NYC but with all the "r"s in place. If you're wondering wtf, go look for any work by James McCaffrey. The man is straight up Irish Albany.

Granted, none of this really incorporates some accents like from the South, but for whatever reason, I've never had a problem with even some of the thicker dialects.

I'm an American from Michigan, working customer service for a national chain, and I've occasionally been defeated by a thick Southern accent.

For some reason the word "Louisville" seems to be a particular problem. Sometimes I literally have no idea what city people are saying, and have to ask them to repeat a few times before I can figure it out.

Re: American accents

ginainthekingsroad - 2015-03-25 06:33 (UTC) - Expand

I actually have problems with most accents that aren't British. Even the "standard" American one, and the local one (this one actually causes me problems).

I suppose it's because I grew up with very little exposure to spoken English due to being an overly bookish kid, and even when I started watching/listening to things that aren't books it was almost all British.

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