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Post by empress of self-improvement on Jul 7, 2021 7:53:17 GMT -5
I can't understand Southern English most of the time. My Aunt has lived in Virginia for most of jer married life so over 50 years. We talk every once in a while and sometimes it's just like, huh? I completely tune out when it's someone from the Carolinas or Alabama. The drawl kills me.
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TheOtherMe
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Post by TheOtherMe on Jul 7, 2021 8:08:23 GMT -5
British English is also different from American English. It usually takes me a couple of days to get used to it again.
Last trip I had Scouse, the London accent and Scottish. They are each different. My Scottish friend made a point to speak slower around the Americans on the trip.
There is an old episode of House Hunters International that takes place in Glasgow. The Glasgow accent is much different than the Edinburgh accident. The buyer was American and the realtor from Glasgow. The guy who was going to do repairs was from Edinburgh. There were subtitles for the two Scots.
I also have difficulty understanding Southern English but I've never lived where I heard it daily. I rarely hear it.
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Post by The Walk of the Penguin Mich on Jul 7, 2021 8:18:50 GMT -5
I went to a research meeting in Glasgow with 2 coworkers, then we spent the following week tooling around Scotland in a rental car. One coworker was from TX and had a heavy accent, the other from Germany and had an accent, but spoke English clearly.
I wound up being the spokesperson for the group. No one in Scotland understood them, and they didn’t understand the Scots.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Jul 7, 2021 8:20:51 GMT -5
I can't understand Southern English most of the time. My Aunt has lived in Virginia for most of her married life so over 50 years. We talk every once in a while and sometimes it's just like, huh? I completely tune out when it's someone from the Carolinas or Alabama. The drawl kills me. There was an article on accents in Toastmasters Magazine once that included a young woman who came to the US form India to work. They paired her with another person from India to help her get acclimated. She met with her new boss, who was from NC. After the meeting she went frantically to her mentor and said, "I couldn't understand a word he was saying!" I always tried to speak clear, slowed-down, jargon-free English when on conference calls with people in other countries for whom English was a second (or third) language. One of the things BF and I had in common was that we continued to maintain fluency in the languages we learned in HS. He's of German extraction but learned Spanish and served for 2 years in the Peace Corps, which really shaped him. He now has a PT gig translating in the local courts- he's also a retired lawyer and took special classes in legal translation. It was harder to maintain fluency years ago, especially in languages other than Spanish, in the US- foreign newspapers and magazines were scarce and very expensive and it was hard to find other people who spoke the languages. SO much easier now with the Internet and podcasts.
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chiver78
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Post by chiver78 on Jul 7, 2021 8:25:58 GMT -5
I went to a research meeting in Glasgow with 2 coworkers, then we spent the following week tooling around Scotland in a rental car. One coworker was from TX and had a heavy accent, the other from Germany and had an accent, but spoke English clearly. I wound up being the spokesperson for the group. No one in Scotland understood them, and they didn’t understand the Scots. I had a similar experience outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had to "translate" for the poor Italian contractor who was working on the machinery I needed. his English was decent, but the Brits spoke even faster than I do with a very strong accent. lucky for me, the wife of my dad's BFF is from that same area of NI. I grew up hearing her speak loud and fast when her son did something stupid. 🤣🤣
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gs11rmb
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Post by gs11rmb on Jul 7, 2021 9:46:33 GMT -5
I went to a research meeting in Glasgow with 2 coworkers, then we spent the following week tooling around Scotland in a rental car. One coworker was from TX and had a heavy accent, the other from Germany and had an accent, but spoke English clearly. I wound up being the spokesperson for the group. No one in Scotland understood them, and they didn’t understand the Scots. I grew up just outside of Glasgow (central west of Scotland). My Dad is a retired engineer but when he was working he went on a business trip to Peterhead (north east) and was meeting with two Belgian colleagues. He could understand the Belgians perfectly well but couldn't understand a word said to him by the Peterhead tea lady! There's less than 200 miles between Glasgow and Peterhead but the accent (and speech patterns) are widely different. All that to say... your colleagues shouldn't have felt bad about the language barrier .
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gs11rmb
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Post by gs11rmb on Jul 7, 2021 9:49:14 GMT -5
I went to a research meeting in Glasgow with 2 coworkers, then we spent the following week tooling around Scotland in a rental car. One coworker was from TX and had a heavy accent, the other from Germany and had an accent, but spoke English clearly. I wound up being the spokesperson for the group. No one in Scotland understood them, and they didn’t understand the Scots. I had a similar experience outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had to "translate" for the poor Italian contractor who was working on the machinery I needed. his English was decent, but the Brits spoke even faster than I do with a very strong accent. lucky for me, the wife of my dad's BFF is from that same area of NI. I grew up hearing her speak loud and fast when her son did something stupid. 🤣🤣 Have you watched Derry Girls? It's hysterical but my husband definitely requires the subtitles!
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chiver78
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Post by chiver78 on Jul 7, 2021 9:55:14 GMT -5
I had a similar experience outside of Belfast, Northern Ireland. I had to "translate" for the poor Italian contractor who was working on the machinery I needed. his English was decent, but the Brits spoke even faster than I do with a very strong accent. lucky for me, the wife of my dad's BFF is from that same area of NI. I grew up hearing her speak loud and fast when her son did something stupid. 🤣🤣 Have you watched Derry Girls? It's hysterical but my husband definitely requires the subtitles! that sounds pretty good, actually. I only recently got a Netflix login back, this is going on the list, though!
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gs11rmb
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Post by gs11rmb on Jul 7, 2021 9:59:58 GMT -5
Have you watched Derry Girls? It's hysterical but my husband definitely requires the subtitles! that sounds pretty good, actually. I only recently got a Netflix login back, this is going on the list, though! We both loved the show. It's so funny but also poignant in places. One of the things that tickles me is when the subtitles are wrong. My favourite was when one girl described the other as "shite for tights" and the subtitles interpreted it as "sugar tits"
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