Do you ever have trouble understanding other accents?

I dunno if it's because English isn't my first language or what, but I often struggle to understand people with really thick accents. Like today, I had to speak on the phone with a French guy, a Nigerian woman and another guy from Palestine. I felt like such an idiot asking them to repeat themselves several times. I find speaking on the phone daunting as it is, there's no need for these extra communication problems.

So what about you?

 

i have trouble understanding other people with my own accent, let alone others.

 

That sounds like the beginning of a joke.

A French guy, a Nigerian woman and another guy from Palestine walk into a bar...

I'm the same as you though, I've always had trouble understanding people with really thick accents. I think all Americans do. That's why we keep bombing those people.

 

sure. if i'm around it often i can pick up on it easy, and some are easier than others, but not always...

since english IS my first language, i'm sometimes uncomfortable if i have to ask them to repeat themselves more than once, because i dont want to embarass them. its not always due to a lack of understanding the language so much as pronunciation.

 

Yeah.

 

i have a hard time understanding most accents. even some people with different accents within the US (where i live). i have teachers and lots of classmates that are chinese or indian. they are the hardest to understand.

 

Haha yeah!

My friend Alice's boyfriend is Scottish. I can never understand what he's saying, I just say yeah and smile a lot, because I get tired of asking "what?". He probably thinks Im a dummie
It really depends on the accent and what the people are saying.

When I used to work for a timeshare company I had to talk to people from all over, a lot not only with an accent, but that barely spoke English. So many times I hung up the phone without having ANY idea what that person wanted. I just told them if they could please send me an email.

It really makes me feel dumb when I cant understand people. It happens a lot when Im on the phone with a person speaking normal English too, I just get distracted very easily.

 

I usually get most accents, but for some reason I struggle really badly with Irish. Some Irish people talk so fast I just can't make out what they are saying, they seem to have this ability to compress entire sentences into short 1-2 seconds blurts.

 

The worst people are the British. They mangle the English language to the point of complete incomprehensibility.

 

It's our flipping language!

 

Finders-keepers

 

Some.

 

haha.. I'm with you on this one. Americans English isn't the same as English anyway, especially not when written.

I don't generally have problems understanding people, sometimes of course, but not as much as some of the people I know. They're just crazy. I know a lot of people with accents though.

 

Thick Scottish and some weird English dialects are hard to understand sometimes.

There are too many dialects in Great Britain anyway, some of them sound ridicu-larse.

 

I've always had a hard time with heavy asian accents....I really have no idea what they're saying, not one word of it

 

It depends on the accent, and the time I have around the person. My boss is from Hong Kong, and when she hired me I had no idea what she was saying, but now I've got it no issue.

 

then how did you know you were hired?

it would have been awesome if actually, she told you she didnt need help at the time...and you showed up anyway, and a good work ethic eventually led to her deciding you were an asset to the company :tongue:

 

I can but my grandparents cant its embaressing.

 

U ah fie-ah!

 

i never really have had troubles with accents. i have been the "translator" at times for other not understanding someone with an accent.. that's always odd to me.