Does American understand every pronunciation of British person?
 

Since I'm not an English speaker, I just wondered that thing.
It is really easy to understand American and Australian's English pronunciation.
But sometime It is hard to understand when British speaker saying something.
I think I not used to that..

For example,
"~some pots out of the cupboard"

sounds like (when British pronounced)
"~some pots out overthecovered(?!)"

I was wondered that American speaker could understand 100% from British pronunciation or not.

No, I have a hard time understanding some British accents as well. Scottish and Irish accents are also very tough to understand at times.

There's this series of British movies called the Red Riding Trilogy where I have to use the subtitles when I watch them. Same with an Irish movie called Bloody Sunday.

Nope. I have a hard time understanding them sometimes, too. :p

I can, but only because the only channel I watch really is BBC America. So I learned British from Jeremy Clarkson, David Tennant and Matt Smith, Gordon Ramsay, and Philip Glenister. And movies like Layer Cake, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Snatch.

Some English accents are hard to understand for British people.

This x100.

It mostly depends person to person, and accent to accent.

yea its like some britsh accents are diffrent you got the cockney accent the Yorkshire accent dorset accent and the brummie accent so all thoes are some times hard cause they use different words for there accent

List of all the accents I know (BTW, some will end up overlapping)

Cockney: London
Brummie: Birmingham
Geordie: Newcastle
Scouser: Liverpool
Dorset: Look over left a bit...
Yorkshire: ...

There's probably others, but I can't think of them of the top of my head. This doesn't include Welsh, Irish or Scottish

I'm from the Midlands but one half of my family are from London and the other half are Welsh. Due to the fact that my Welsh family are in...Wales, I've spent most of my life growing up with thick cockney accents and as such my speaking patterns are extremely lazy and very Guy Ritchie, especially if I'm tired and can't put on a 'radio voice'.

TL;DR half my friends can't understand what I am saying unless I put in extra effort to actually pronounce my words. So god help the Americans.

Still, I always find it oddly insulting for some reason when I hear about American's putting on subtitles for English TV shows. I mean come on now you can't be that hard of hearing or stupid to not decipher what they are saying.

Eeyup!

I'm usually surrounded by English-speakers with all kinds of accents, so I tend not to have trouble with that. It's definitely hard for me to discern different accents for other languages though. I can't understand Mexican Spanish at all, but I don't have much trouble with Spanish from a Spaniard.

Well, Howdy thar Pahtnah! How ya'll doin'? :p

I can typically understand British people. The only times I ever got confused were the first time I heard "Zebra Crossing" and I have heard "Aluminum" said very differently.

That's because it's "aluminium." The US calls it "aluminum" for some reason I've not understood since I learned of it...

American English is completely baffling to me. Not only are their changes in spelling and pronunciation nonsensical they are also completely pointless. It's like they changed it just so they could claim it, as America loves stealing things from other people.

Oh...I did spell it wrong. Oops. Well...I'll just pronounce it "A-loo-mi-num" since that's how I've been pronouncing it my whole life.

Someone's bitter...I think the reason may be something more like: After America got it's independence from England, they wanted to have as little to do with England as possible. Then again, I wasn't alive back then, so I don't know.

its like also like with Colour why take out the u

Just tired. But yeah, a little bitter, you get a lot of people on the Internet who act like American English is the 'correct' way to spell and that just pisses me off. I hate Americanisations.

It is such a pointless and unnecessary change. It doesn't even fit the pronunciation better.

i know its pointless deffently when i came to sega having to make 2 diffrent sonic Colour logos for the game US and UK

Any large amount of belligerence towards American English vs British English or vice-versa that I'm seeing seems to have huge racist overtones to it. A speaker of one dialect will obviously think of other dialects as strange-sounding, but saying that differences in American English proves that Americans love to steal things? That's not only absurd, it's offensive and insensible. Feel as you will about "color" vs "colour" or what have you, but if you want to insult an entire people for the language they speak, take it elsewhere.

Oh wow the word racism was dropped already? That has to be a new record! I guess some people still haven't tuned into my sarcasm here though yet...

And it still doesn't change the fact that American English is just English with a few arbitrary changes and the word American put in front of the word English.

i did not mean to jump to that one it just sound odd but i dont mind American English i was Brought with saying zee and on zed

American English is the superior version of the language.
Why? Because I declared it so.

See? I can do it, too. :\

Wow, you're pleasant.

Well come on, how hard is it really to decipher accents? I watch a wide range of American shows that feature thick southern drawls to heavy Boston slang and I've never once had to put subtitles on.

I guess I just have better hearing.

Try talking to someone from Sudan who speaks English sometime.

I'm talking about English people speaking English with their local dialects and accents, rather than a foreign person trying to speak a language that isn't their native tongue.

I'm sensing this thread might go down a dangerous road.

Well, Locke tends to like to speak his mind in a very straightforward way. :)

Well wouldn't it be nice if everyone had your gift of hearing. :p

I do use subtitles for British shows too, because try as hard as I might I don't get everything. But then again, I use subs for American shows as often as I can too.

Spoken language is so uninteresting. Accents and dialects form all over.
Written language is so much more interesting to learn about.

Yeah I'm very blunt and I forget how much that offends some people, even when I'm just being honest and not trying to deliberately tread on any toes. It is my fault this thread became so heated and I apologise for that everyone. The comment about America was a bit of bitter sarcasm I wrote when very tired and I didn't intend to derail the whole thread over it...sorry.

I don't think it's people's sensitivities, since you explicitly stated that you'd have to be deaf or stupid to use subtitles on an English speaking program :p

Well that is honestly what I believe. If I can process the slack jawed and the New York street dialects and slang as an English person, then I really can't understand how an American can struggle with our equivalents.

You'd have to have pretty bad hearing or be kinda slow not to be able to process what they are saying.

Again, just because YOU can do it, doesn't mean everyone, or even most can.

Oh I get that but that still doesn't mean I can fathom it. I mean I'd get it if they were like...Welsh, hell I can barely understand a word my grandparents said, but subtle dialects or specific slang, to me, really don't seem like something worth pulling the subtitles up for.

Where in Wales are your grandparents from?

Right on the cusp between England and Wales in Hereford.

I don't have trouble with British accents in general, or many others. Maybe it's because I grew up listening to a lot of British music from the 60-80s, and spent a lot of time listening to their lyrics and watching interviews. For example, I always read about how Mick Ronson (guitarist in the 70s) from Hull was very hard for people to understand. Every interview or recording I've heard of him speaking hasn't been hard for me to understand at all. So I think part of it is familarizing yourself with people's dialect and colloquialisms. If you rarely hear British people speak then it's not surprising that it could give you trouble (depending on the thickness of the accent). Once you are used to hearing it you probably won't have as much trouble. Now if they just have a problem speaking properly that's a whole different issue entirely. There are plenty of fellow Americans who I struggled to understand because they slurred when speaking, or mumbled, or some other issue.