Native English speakers: are there any dialects or accents of English that you cannot understand?

[Hulu]

I'm learning my British accents from Love Island

[barnumandbailey]

Please tell me which ones. Are there any that are much more difficult to get your head round?

As a non-native English speaker / user I have a hard time to follow / fathom some Cockney, extreme Yorkshire speakers, and Afro-Americans using their slang.

Might as well be another separate language entirely. Here in the United States the politically correct term is 'African American Vernacular English'.

[Creoda]

The pronunciation remains odd though. My female cousin who is as fluent as I am in English very often could not understand their speech. I noticed that the vowels vary crazily between various English (especially British) accents. I've heard many native Britons pronounce like ... like ... laaawik /lɔɪk/ instead of the standard /laɪk/ I think.

That's how some Southern English, Irish (Oirish), and Australians pronounce it.

[Ellethwyn]

Non native and comfortable with all accents except the ones straight from the Indian subcontinent (outsourced call center employees).

Yes! I wish i would've recorded the last call i had with someone with a very thick Indian accent. I was so lost. I felt horrible for having her repeat what she had said over and over.

[coolfrenchguy]

Scottish accents...




especially Glaswegian Scottish accent...

damn, it's sounding like dutcho-scandinavian yogurt but certainly not like english

[coolfrenchguy]

I am not a native speaker. I never meet any difficulty when faced with somewhat special Anglospheric dialect.
Except for: GLASGOW, Scotland.
Glaswegian is the most obscure gibberish ever inflicted to mankind.

you can add the low life londonian suburbian accent ,like the chavs for example,the chav accent and their argotic expressions it's the shittiest english and accent than you can find in UK with maybe the accent from liverpool

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chav

[coolfrenchguy]

Please tell me which ones. Are there any that are much more difficult to get your head round?

As a non-native English speaker / user I have a hard time to follow / fathom some Cockney, extreme Yorkshire speakers, and Afro-Americans using their slang.

personally i understand pretty well the north american mainstream standard accent most of the time aside the deep south like william burroughs for example ,but where i have many difficulties it's with english from UK from low life people with very bad education meaning all the cockney/east end londonian accent
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney

for example i understand very well Trent Reznor from Pennsylvania of Nine Inch Nails without the lyrics

[Petalpusher]

I don't know which one is it exactly within Scottish variants but i need an extra layer of attention and decoding as he speaks. The flow sounds totally different than other accents (like the girl)

[Creoda]

I don't know which one is it exactly within Scottish variants but i need an extra layer of attention and decoding as he speaks. The flow sounds totally different than other accents (like the girl)

It's not Scottish, it's Northern English (Yorkshire).

[coolfrenchguy]

Scottish accents...




especially Glaswegian Scottish accent...

it's more SCOTS than english https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scots_language https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_dialect

i believe it's because when people live in a partial autarcia/autarky ,but it's quite common in many parts of the oldest parts of europe,in the rural areas