orangemirror

I've got a mild Bristol accent and I've been told many times by Americans that they can understand me fine but they can't understand other English people.
When i was a kid we moved from Bristol to Nottingham and all the kids in Nottingham thought I was American! I thought they were nuts but I guess the West Country accent maybe does have some similarities. Emphasing the 'r' in words, etc.

jayde

snap, hubby tells me the same, and when my mil told me after 5 years, I have become far easier to understand, my jaw dropped.

Maybe its unconscious to gradually assimilate and change and soften the way we pronounce words, as in budder, and wadder etc I bet when I go home I will get told I have a yank accent!

dunroving

innit, tho?

N1cky

Lots of people struggle to understand me, I have a fairly broad Yorkshire accent. I'm so glad I have a job where I don't have to use the phone much as I just repeat myself over and over again. If I can get away with it I always get one of the girls in the office to make any phone calls for me

I must admit though, when I moved from Yorkshire to Milton Keynes, I spent 5 months repeating myself in the office while people got used to my accent

Steerpike

Do you make a conscious effort to keep the accent, or do you just naturally retain it?

I'm surrounded by Americans and it just sounds weird to my ears to be speaking with a UK accent, so I naturally 'adapt'. My mum has been visiting for 8 weeks, though, and everyone said my accent has changed while she has been here! The other day, a couple of the Americans in the office were cracking up and came over to me - "do you guys really say 'shhhedule' instead of 'skedule'?" - they'd been on the phone with a UK woman, and had never heard 'shhhedule' before; they thought it was hilarious! I explained that I had purged that particularly obnoxious sound from my vocabulary a long time ago! Certain words, though, will always come out the 'English' way - "can't", for example.

N1cky

I do make the effort with certain words that I know are a problem. I have adapted my Starbucks order to a scooone and say Ca-rib-ean at work... I cannot bring myself to drop the t in words and replace them with a d though or miss the h off herb.

My 7 year old daughter translates things for me why when we go out

merz

Talking of 'erbs, I can only say o-REG-ano and bAY-zil with an over the top really bad pretend American accent.

Merz

Sally Redux

I have trouble with 'hot', which needs to be pronounced 'haat'.

katnap8

My husband is a Middlesbrough lad and when we lived in the US, some people he met used to ask him to say something, anything just to hear his accent. But some times people couldn't understand him or thought he was Irish or Scottish so he had to keep correcting them by saying he was English.

Sally Redux

My Mum thinks my Geordie husband is Scottish

Titchski

What do you mean "here". I'm from Birmingham, my accent is a problem anywhere outside the West Midlands

penguinbar

My husband is from Scotland and we live in Manhattan where there is basically every accent you can think of. Lots of people can't understand him and he always gets asked where in Ireland he's from! It's frustrating for him.

merz

Penguinbar, I was on the train from Stansted Airport after my American OH had just been 'initiated'(see 'interrogated') into my vast/suspicious Irish family when two Scottish ladies got on and started chatting. My Husband asked where in Ireland they were from.
They pretended to be so offended, I was just laughing and he thought he had blown the deal haha!

Now he just whispers "where are these guys from?" before talking to anyone from outside America.

Merz

penguinbar

LOL!

zargof

I also have a fairly broad Yorkshire accent, so the first time someone said I talked posh was something of a surprise.

What I've found interesting is that here in Iowa I don't have nearly as much trouble with people understanding me as I did in Georgia.