This may sound like a strange thread but I am an American who often has a difficult time when listening to British English being spoken, especially movies, or television. In the states, I used to watch the Benny Hill show, or Coronation Street (I think that was the name of the program), and I simply couldn’t understand what was being said by the actors. This was not due simply to the words that were being used, although this was part of it, but I simply couldn’t understand what was being said.
So, has anyone, especially any Brits reading this, had a similar problem understanding American English? I would be very interested in reading what any of you have to say concerning this issue.
Peace to all
[quote=“cableguy”]This may sound like a strange thread but I am an American who often has a difficult time when listening to British English being spoken, especially movies, or television. In the states, I used to watch the Benny Hill show, or Coronation Street (I think that was the name of the program), and I simply couldn’t understand what was being said by the actors. This was not due simply to the words that were being used, although this was part of it, but I simply couldn’t understand what was being said.
So, has anyone, especially any Brits reading this, had a similar problem understanding American English? I would be very interested in reading what any of you have to say concerning this issue.
Peace to all[/quote]
I have no problem understanding American English. Except for Georgia. I have no idea what the hell they’re saying down there…
clearly a matter of exposure…our tv screens have been constanly pumping out american ‘material’ for decades. you just have to tune yourself in to other styles of english. not american bashing…but ive met americans that simply refuse to even try to understand non american strains of english
i also have no problems understanding accents from georgia becasue ‘the big boss man’ is from cobb county, georgia 
Victor Belenko wrote about getting a drink in a Southern diner; he thought the waitress was asking him if he’d like some “ass” in his water. . . .
Personally, I can’t understand Ozzy Osbourne at all. I don’t know how you Brits talk to each other.
I understand 99.9% of what Australians, U.S. Americans, Canadians, New Zealanders, South Africans and fellow Brits from all areas have to say. Sometimes the South Africans flummox me for a little while with their borrowings from Afrikaans but I’m getting used to it.
I’ve just finished reading “D-Day” by Stephen Ambrose; generally very good.
Perhaps he should have got a Brit to check some of his oral history transcriptions, though; he has somebody talking about the “Lord Mare’s show” (should be Lord Mayor’s show) and somebody else making a “cock-off” (presumably should be cock-up).
On a related topic, I do have a lot of Taiwanese people asking me about the differences between American & British English. Some of them try to butter me up by saying that British English is more correct/sophisticated/whatever. As a big fan of the David Crystal school of English linguistics, I immediately dissuade them of this notion.
It seems that some Taiwanese people may believe that Brit. and Am. Eng. are as dissimilar as Minnanyu/Hokien/Taiwanese and Mandarin. How else could you explain the new electronic dictionary which was proudly advertised as being two dictionaries in one - you could just press a button and it would instantly switch from one variety of English to another!
I would very much like to see some figures for the actual amount of difference between Brit. and Am. Eng. Surely, aside from pronunciation, it must be a fraction of one percent? I always point out to Taiwanese people who are concerned about the difference that native English speakers from all countries generally have no problems communicating with each other.
They say Mum.
We say Mom or Mama.
From what I’ve heard…
British speakers use “have” and PP verbs far more frequently, where as Americans slip in more "did"s and simple past in place.
Also, I think Americans like to use (be) + ing verbs in place of some PP.
example: I’ve been playing poker professionally for 6 years.
instead of
I’ve played poker professionally for 6 years.
I have some trouble understanding English speakers from South Africa… I remember one teacher at our school asking for a “blick pin”… I just stared at her for a moment like uhhhh…
I thought the English accent spoken in the movie Snatch was pretty cool… although I don’t know if people really speak like that in parts of London.
I’ve always wondered what American English sounds like. Australian English to me sounds very wavy… British English very… yawny…
hrmm
boot camp was very revealing just how diverse “american” english is.
yeah, the majority spoke “TV english”. we had cajuns and new yahkers and the southern good old boys and philipinos and a guy from guam…i could understand them all. there was one guy i couldn’t understand at all. i would swear to god he was speaking french. i asked a cajun if he could translate. the cajun was as lost as i. after a few more days our listening skills attuned to the frenchie. turns out he wasn’t totally french, but rather from northern maine. somehow, quite easily we learned to understand him til it got to the point we couldn’t even remember why we couldn’t understand him to begin with.
Thanks to everyone for the replies. Actually, when I have met some Brits, I usually have had little trouble understanding them but movies and television shows have really been a hugh problem for me. When I watched the movie Billy Elliot, for instance, I simply had no idea what was being said the majority of the time.
I think Southpaw has it right that my difficulty stems from a lack of exposure to the way British English is spoken. When I was living in the states, I don’t remember many shows on the air which originated from England. Monty Python, Benny Hill and a few others are all I can really remember ever seeing.
Peace to all
[quote=“cableguy”]Thanks to everyone for the replies. Actually, when I have met some Brits, I usually have had little trouble understanding them but movies and television shows have really been a hugh problem for me. When I watched the movie Billy Elliot, for instance, I simply had no idea what was being said the majority of the time.
I think Southpaw has it right that my difficulty stems from a lack of exposure to the way British English is spoken. When I was living in the states, I don’t remember many shows on the air which originated from England. Monty Python, Benny Hill and a few others are all I can really remember ever seeing.
Peace to all[/quote]
I could never understand the songs on Benny Hill.
Absolutely! I often find it difficult to understand the dialogue in American films – it can be just as hard as trying to understand Mandarin spoken with a strong Taiwanese accent. In fact, I often have to resort to reading the Chinese subtitles to have any idea what’s being said.
On a side note, I thrill to the sound of a polished British RP accent, but I can’t say I’ve ever found very much pleasing to the ear about any kind of American accent. Of all non-British English accents, my favourite by far is the lilting tones of Singaporean English.
British English seems to have been transformed by American English in many ways. As somebody said above, there has been a constant influx of new words, phrases and accents for decades now, mainly through music, cinema and TV. We really can deal with just about anything thrown at us from across the pond. I would say only relatively obscure accents and slangs are a problem nowadays. Having said that though, I have more of a problem with references to domestic politics and TV shows. Occasionally Will and Grace or Friends will throw me a curveball (nice American borrowing there 
).
I don’t think we are in any danger of losing our local flavour just yet, if ever, but for example, the all-pervasiveness of the American accent in music does grate after a while. It’s a pity you don’t seem to have access to everything we have to offer here in Britain. I really think you are missing out on a lot of richness, and perhaps more importantly a different cultural perspective.
[quote=“coolcave”]
It’s a pity you don’t seem to have access to everything we have to offer here in Britain. I really think you are missing out on a lot of richness, and perhaps more importantly a different cultural perspective.[/quote]
I agree 100%.
Well, in Australia we are subjected to plenty of American and British TV, so I pretty much have no problem, except with exceptionally strong accents - very deep Southern, extremely broad Scottish or Irish or Welsh. Nothing I’ve seen on TV has fazed me with the notable exception of South Park, where I swear the first time I watched I could not understand a thing Cartman was saying. It was fine thereafter though! The movie Trainspotting took a while to get into as well. I’d like to know how it played in the States 
Obviously I’m fond of the Australian accent, but I’m a sucker for a nice British accent as well - a middle class one, not the ‘I have a poker shoved up my ass’ nor the ‘I’m upper class but I’m trying to sound like a cockney’ type Americans often sound “loud” to me - I don’t know whether that’s due to actual pitch or to something about the vowel sounds of the accent. Anyway, they’re easier to hear in pubs
Oooh, “Billy Elliot” is a tough one for beginners. As an American, I recommend “Mary Poppins” (thank you, Disney 
). Julie Andrews’s accent is different from the chimney sweep guy’s (was that Dick Van Dyke?). Baby steps, baby steps.
It did quite well. The Scots English was rather interesting.
When I hear RP, it seems so fucking contrived to me. I’m sure there are people who speak with an RP accent “naturally,” but most RP accented speakers really get up my nose. They always seem to be the same pretentious gits who go to great pains to avoid using a prepostion at the end of any sentence, no matter how cumbersome or silly it sounds to do so. Just my observation.
That’s because we just are loud, I guess. A lot of people say we have a more nasal accent, too. Many Canadians I’ve known have said this; to me, Canadians sound just as nasal or more nasal than the average American. IMO, some Americans sound nasal, some do not. Saying that another speaker of your language sounds “nasal” seems to be meant as nothing more than an insult (thus, I said the Canadians are nasal 
). “Nasal” has nothing but negative connotations. Back to being loud. While I was studying in England, my mother came to visit me. I had been there for a while and had unconsciously adjusted my speech and volume so as not to attract too much attention to my superior American English 
. I remember being very uncomfortable when riding the tube with my mom because she was so loud. At first I didn’t even realize why I was uncomfortable. I eventually asked my mother if she had noticed that she was much louder than everyone else on the train.
I think there is a lot more variation in accents within Britain than in all of the U.S. It seems to me that immigrants to America did a lot more mixing than the classes in Britain, but I think there is now a lot of mixing in the UK, too. When I was a child, my mother would always criticize my English. She studied an English degree and she taught school for one year, so she thought she knew it all. However, she has always lived in the southern U.S. and she has a very heavy southern accent. She’s not a redneck and she speaks grammatically, but native English speakers from outside the states have difficulty understanding her. She still doesn’t understand why. My wife can’t get her at all. I think it’s a personality clash as well as the thick accent. My mother tries to talk like a polite little southern bell, whereas my wife is more direct. When they talk on the phone, I can just hear the tension building in my wife’s voice. My mother always starts with a bunch of small talk, whereas my wife prefers to cut through the small talk as quickly as possible and actually talk about whatever is on her mind.
Seeing herself as the Chief of the Language Police, my mother thought it was great when I told her I was going to study in England. “Oh, you’re going to go learn the Quain’s English.” Haha. I guess she assumed that everybody in Britain has a perfect RP accent or that they all speak like a grammar book. She was quite shocked when she visited and discovered reality. She didn’t even understand why someone from Scotland would have a different accent from a Londoner. “But they’re both British, so they should both have the same “British” accent, right?” Very good entertainment value, that was. A year or two ago, we watched that movie Gosford (sp?) Park, the one about a weekend party in a late Victorian mansion ; during the movie, you see the lifestyle of the upper class on one hand, and the life of the servants on the other. The dialogue was brilliantly done; lots of dialect. Well, mom couldn’t understand any of the dialogue, not even the conversations among the upper class people.
I have a few questions for the Brits here. I have almost never heard nor seen any American use the word “whilst.” We will just say “while.” I’ve noticed that some Brits use it all the time, but others never use it. Are students taught to write “whilst” in composition classes in Britian?
What about beginning a sentence with “firstly” instead of just “first,” as in "There are three reasons why Canadians should just stop pretending they are an independent country and unify with the U.S. Firstly, … " I think most teachers in the States would get really annoyed if a student used the word “firstly.” I have noticed some Brits use this a lot, while others never use it.
My last question for this post regards the word “query.” I don’t recall having heard or seen this word very often while I was in England. However, in Hong Kong I hear and see both Brits and HKers use it all the time. “Don’t hesitate to contact me should you have any queries.” What is wrong with the word “question?” Of course, the Chinese in HK love to use this word. I’ve seen students raise their hands in class when they don’t understand a lecture and say: “Excuse me sir, I have a query…” This usage of whilst, firstly and query seems so archaic to me. What do you Brits think?
[quote=“Omniloquacious”]On a side note, I thrill to the sound of a polished British RP accent, but I can’t say I’ve ever found very much pleasing to the ear about any kind of American accent. Of all non-British English accents, my favourite by far is the lilting tones of Singaporean English.[/quote]I like a lot of different accents. Of U.S. American accents, I like some New York and southern ones. I do like Singaporean and Malaysian ones, but also Indian and Pakistani. My father has lived in England for a great many years but comes from Glasgow. Apparently when I was very little I also spoke with a recognisably Scottish accent. I still find Scottish accents and Glaswegian ones in particular very soothing to listen to. I can even understand and enjoy listening to most of Rab C. Nesbitt’s rantings. And why do so many people have it in for the Birmingham accent? I find it very pleasing to listen to, especially when spoken by a comely Brummie lass.
You can listen to examples of English speech by both native and non-native speakers from many countries here;
classweb.gmu.edu/accent/
Of the non-native speakers I really like the Brazilian accents, particularly the one from Bahia. But then I think that Brazilian Portuguese is one of the most beautiful-sounding and expressive languages in the world.
who’s loud?
in hawaii, kanaka (natives) say haolis (whites) are loud.
taiwanese say philipinos and thai are loud.
when i was in scotland, the scots were definately loud.
chinese peasants are much louder than city folks.
american urban youth are louder than suburban counterparts (sorry for speaking in “code”)
after being in a location awhile, the loudness seems to go down. are they reallly louder or do we just notice them more because of the difference? maybe our minds want to understand even when we know we can’t and turns up the volume nonetheless.
or maybe, it is a quick and dirty way of sorting people out. in all the examples cited above…the people describing themselves as quieter than other groups also held themselves in higher esteem and looked down upon the “louder” folks.
JT, your post brings up some interesting issues. Among people who are interested in language, there are some fussy, prescriptive-grammarian pedants, some people who like to use long words where short ones will do and some who prefer ‘plain English’ - language that is as simple and accesible as can be without destroying meaning. I tend towards the last of these types although I’m not shy to use a long word where it’s necessary.
None of those terms are archaic if they’re in common current use. I think what you are implying is that they are fussy and unnecessary.
I sometimes use firstly, secondly etc. in writing. It’s what I’m used to. The bulk of formal writing I’ve read uses that form rather than just first, second, third.
I’m not sure whether it could be argued that ‘whilst’ and ‘query’ have any slight semantic differences from ‘while’ and ‘question’. I normally use the latter forms, but I’m used to seeing the former ones as well. The students saying ‘Can I ask a query?’ does seem unnatural and I wonder if they use it because they think it sounds more intelligent or distinguished or something.