Hello all. I love this forum. I have a question for UK natives that will probably be of interest to those who are learning English:
A few years ago I was having lunch at a McDonalds fast food restaurant in London, near Harrod's. Sitting at the table across from me were three individuals who were speaking a "language" I couldn't understand. My travelling companion was a native speaker of French who also spoke Dutch and English. I'm a native speaker of English and I also speak French, Spanish and farsi. Between the two of us and the languages we speak, neither of us were able to identify the language spoken by the three people sitting across from us. We listened for abotu 5 minutes, fascinated... the language was beautiful and definitely of Germanic origin. Then, suddenly, one of the people passed the salt to another person and she (the person receiving the salt) said, "thanks". My friend and I looked at one another in amazement. We kept listening and after a few more minutes we could tell the people were speaking English, albeit with an accent that was virtually unintelligible to my American ears.
I wish I had asked them where thery were from. To this day I have always wondered what dialect they were speaking. It was rhotic and the "Rs" were rolled similar to a Spanish "R" as in "pero".
Do any of you in the UK have trouble understanding your fellow speakers of English when they speak in the accent of their region? What are the regions where the accents are more difficult for you to understand?
Thanks to all!
A few years ago I was having lunch at a McDonalds fast food restaurant in London, near Harrod's. Sitting at the table across from me were three individuals who were speaking a "language" I couldn't understand. My travelling companion was a native speaker of French who also spoke Dutch and English. I'm a native speaker of English and I also speak French, Spanish and farsi. Between the two of us and the languages we speak, neither of us were able to identify the language spoken by the three people sitting across from us. We listened for abotu 5 minutes, fascinated... the language was beautiful and definitely of Germanic origin. Then, suddenly, one of the people passed the salt to another person and she (the person receiving the salt) said, "thanks". My friend and I looked at one another in amazement. We kept listening and after a few more minutes we could tell the people were speaking English, albeit with an accent that was virtually unintelligible to my American ears.
I wish I had asked them where thery were from. To this day I have always wondered what dialect they were speaking. It was rhotic and the "Rs" were rolled similar to a Spanish "R" as in "pero".
Do any of you in the UK have trouble understanding your fellow speakers of English when they speak in the accent of their region? What are the regions where the accents are more difficult for you to understand?
Thanks to all!