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Dialects you can’t understand? | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| Tupiniquim Senior Member Brazil Joined 6088 days ago 184 posts - 217 votes  Speaks: Portuguese* Studies: English, Russian | Message 9 of 54 02 June 2009 at 10:44pm | IP Logged | ||
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. Edited by Tupiniquim on 31 July 2009 at 11:42pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Julie Heptaglot Senior Member PolandRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6908 days ago 1251 posts - 1733 votes 5 sounds Speaks: Polish*, EnglishB2, GermanC2, SpanishB2, Dutch, Swedish, French | Message 10 of 54 03 June 2009 at 12:22am | IP Logged | ||
Kashubian is considered to be a separate language, so no wonder... :). With Silesian I may have some problems with vocabulary, and the prosody is definitely something one has to get used to. Mt German is helping here, though. I wonder where you come from and where you moved - I've never experienced such huge differences (even in vocabulary). In other languages: German - as long as it is Hochdeutsch (even with a strong regional accent, some local vocabulary etc.) I don't notice differences in comprehension. "Real" dialects are still problematic, and Swiss German would be a good example here. English - I generally understand American English much better than anything else. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| jbbar Senior Member Belgium Joined 5805 days ago 192 posts - 210 votes Speaks: English | Message 11 of 54 03 June 2009 at 1:34am | IP Logged | ||
Same here. That's one of the reasons why I decided to stick with American English myself. I do understand Queen's English very well but that's obviously not how most British speak. I think Irish English is okay but Scottish is harder for me to understand. But Indian English is probably the hardest of all. I generally do understand it but it often depends on the speaker. Of course, many Indians who can speak English might have a different native language so perhaps it doesn't fully qualify as a dialect of English. Many Flemings don't understand West Flemish very well but they can understand it if they have a trained ear by being exposed to it enough. East Flemish people would have least problems understanding West Flemish. The varieties spoken in the westernmost part of West Flanders are probably the most dialectical and most difficult ones to understand for those who are not from West Flanders. However, I think that to the Dutch (except those from Zeeland), West Flemish would sound like a different language altogether, sort of like Frisian in the Netherlands. jbbar 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Lizzern Diglot Senior Member Norway Joined 5914 days ago 791 posts - 1053 votes Speaks: Norwegian*, English Studies: Japanese | Message 12 of 54 03 June 2009 at 2:08am | IP Logged | ||
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Norwegian - I guess we have some difficult ones. The dialect in Trondheim took some getting used to. A friend of mine told me that his wife, who grew up in Trondheim, refuses to speak to certain people from other parts of Trondheim by phone cause she just can't understand them. Granted, some people slur more than others, but still... Some people up here are impossible to understand.
My dialect (from the Stavanger area) was jokingly referred to as "the language nobody can understand" in a recent comedy skit :-) Obviously I understand it just fine and don't see why anyone would have difficulty but from what others have told me, it's not really that straightforward... Some people from smaller places on the west coast can be difficult to understand at first, but not really that problematic. Most dialects are fine though, just tends to take us a bit of adjustment sometimes before we can make out what people are saying! Liz 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| mick33 Senior Member United States Joined 5929 days ago 1335 posts - 1632 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Finnish Studies: Thai, Polish, Afrikaans, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Spanish, Swedish | Message 13 of 54 03 June 2009 at 2:12am | IP Logged | ||
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I'm usually pretty good at understanding spoken English; even very thick foreign accents aren't a problem, but there are two North American English dialects that I have had trouble with:
New York City English: Ten years ago I met a man from NYC who sounded like his mouth was full of marbles and I could not understand one word he said, when I told him this he just spoke faster and louder so I had to walk away as I couldn't make sense of anything he said. Later someone else told me he was from New York City. Newfoundland English - In the Canadian province of Newfoundland, the people speak what at first sounds like a bizarre variant of Irish accented English; they drawl out the vowels and slur words together in such a unique manner that I had trouble communicating with many people for the first week I was there. Fortunately my ears and brain did adjust to "Newfounese" within a few weeks, and now I actually miss hearing this dialect. Edited by mick33 on 03 June 2009 at 6:58pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Halbarad Triglot Newbie France Joined 5670 days ago 8 posts - 9 votes Speaks: French*, English, German Studies: Arabic (classical), Kazakh | Message 14 of 54 03 June 2009 at 11:01am | IP Logged | ||
yeah, it's the cajun dialect. I visited an old crocodile hunter near New Orleans who told me stories about the country and it was a very strange accent. Sometimes I understood words but I had to make lot of efforts... Edited by Halbarad on 03 June 2009 at 11:01am 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| LanguageGeek Triglot Senior Member GermanyRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 6112 days ago 151 posts - 159 votes 4 sounds Speaks: German*, English, Hungarian Studies: French, Russian | Message 15 of 54 03 June 2009 at 11:06am | IP Logged | ||
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Due to lots of exposure throughout the years almost no English accent can trip me over. Though I might me catched off guard at first if the person shows no intention whatsoever to attune their accent to the ears of a not native speaker, that is making an effort not to speak to strong a dialect.
Most Germans will do precisely that when speaking German to foreigners. What I really have problems with are Indians. Even those of the educated bilingual variety, they have terribly thick sing-song accents and their consonants sound weird. But Indian guests are rather rare in our hotel. I can absolutely not understand Alsatian and any kind of Swiss German. I could just as well try to understand spoken Dutch. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| Tyr Senior Member Sweden Joined 5787 days ago 316 posts - 384 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Swedish | Message 16 of 54 03 June 2009 at 12:00pm | IP Logged | ||
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Glaswegian, Cockney, Indian, Nigerian, Scouse, West Country. One or two Irish dialects too but I couldn't name them right now.
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