Kira
Do Americans and British really have problems with understanding each other in conversations? Pardon my silly question, I always thought that Americans and British have just different accents and use some different words for the same meaning (and different slang of course), but it's pretty easy to understand each other. But the is someone who is arguing with me, so I decided to ask you guys)
Jul 31, 2015 11:32 AM
Answers · 16
1
We rarely have trouble understanding each other. There's the occasional usage variant or bit of slang that might cause minor confusion, or there's might be a need for repetition if someone has a particularly thick regional accent, but in general we understand each other easily.
July 31, 2015
I'm a U.S. native speaker. I have NO TROUBLE AT ALL communicating with British speakers when we are talking to each other and faintly aware of being from different countries. For years I worked at a company with offices in the U.S. and England and we'd have teleconferences and discuss all sorts of details with British colleagues and there was no language barrier. I didn't always understand everything the Beatles said in their movie, "A Hard Day's Night," for example. I always understand Alec Guinness, even in British comedies like "The Lavender Hill Mob." If I were to overhear young Brits speaking rapidly and colloquially to each other, using slang, yes, I'd could have trouble understanding. The same thing is true within the U.S. of regional accents and dialects, and across the generation gap. The first time I texted my 14-year-old granddaughter and she replied "k" I didn't know what she meant. The most serious transatlantic understanding I've ever had occurred when I worked at a company that was in the middle of a mass layoff. A colleague I knew well, who was from Northern Ireland, came by my cubicle and said "I got the chop" (I've been fired, laid off, let go). I thought he said "I got the job," because "got the chop" isn't U.S. usage. (The U.S. equivalent would be "got the axe.") I didn't say "congratulations" or anything terrible like that, but there was a brief moment when I had to ask him to explain, and it was embarrassing to me. Just for fun I took the Oxford Placement test here, and was surprised and humiliated to receive only a C1. It was due to the British/American language difference. In the spoken dialog I was aware of British turns of phrase and wasn't exactly sure what subtleties were being conveyed. In real life, this wouldn't be a problem because when a U.S. and British speaker are talking to each other, we would unconsciously simplify our speech just a bit.
July 31, 2015
As an Australian, I've never had any trouble understanding any American accent. In general most English accents sound 'clearer' to me than American accents, but I do have to strain my ears a bit to catch some sentences or phrases spoken by people with more exotic English accents. Extremely strong Irish or Scottish accents can be hard to understand and require a few minutes of adjusting, but I've never met an Irishman or Scotsman in person with an accent that strong. Scots is sometimes argued to be an English dialect, but it's generally considered a separate language. I can only understand about 50-75% of the Scots spoken in this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cENbkHS3mnY I should stress that while Scots is related to English, it is NOT the same as Scottish English, which most Scotsmen speak. English doesn't seem to vary nearly as much as, well, pretty much every other language. People from different parts of Italy, Germany and China (for example) need to switch to standard Italian, German and Chinese to speak to each other, but the idea of 'switching' to a 'Standard English' is completely absurd to English speakers. There's no such thing as standard English, and there doesn't need to be. English speakers from everywhere can talk to each other the same way they'd talk to their parents at home and they'd all be perfectly understood. The odd word or phrase might not be understood, but there won't be any serious problems that could impede communication.
July 31, 2015
By and large people from Britain have absolutely zero problems understanding American accents. If the accent is a very strong regional accent then it might cause one or two problems, but if the accent is that strong then it is likely that other Americans would have similar difficulties trying to understand. There is so much American English on UK television that it is nothing strange to hear and certainly not difficult to understand at all.
July 31, 2015
They understand each other quite easily. The difference (pronunciation, spelling, and word usage) amounts to 28 per cent.
July 31, 2015
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