Sometimes Americans can't understand me...

[Moosenogger]

I always feel terrible when I have to ask someone with a foreign accent to repeat something for me. I don't want to make them uncomfortable, but some dialects are just impossible for me to understand.

I once had a little English girl ask me where the toilet was. But the child-voice along with the accent threw me for a loop, so I had to keep asking her what she needed. Poor girl used every word she knew for "toilet." I finally got it when she said "bathroom". xD;

[Can I Help Your A$$?]

My husband is Quebecois, and when we watch British, Irish, Scott, Australian and New Zealand movies, we have to use "English for the hearing impaired" subtitles. Although maybe he's just a little daft, because he can't understand Southern US French, either.

[Gizmo]

I always feel terrible when I have to ask someone with a foreign accent to repeat something for me. I don't want to make them uncomfortable, but some dialects are just impossible for me to understand.

I had this on Thursday - I rang a customers Irish call center and got the nicest Irish gentleman who went through about 20 invoices with me to sort out why they weren't getting cleared.

I felt terrible because I kept having to ask him to repeat it because his accent was just slightly too melodic* and his speech pattern was a little fast for me to keep up with. He was very patient with me.

*When a noise is to melodic and repeating my ears/brain seem to repeat it even if it stops. Its totally distracting and if its a voice I seem to cease to hear the actual words being said.

[crazylegs]

The fun I've had in the Americas!

I have a presentation style and accent made for morse code. However, when not flustered I have a sort of refined Yorkshire accent.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB3ieNhEsDY for a very cute broad Yorkshire accent.

I've dodged a bullet.

The region that I'm from has spawned this accent: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zwwq...eature=related

I appear to have no accent at all - I might one day get around to putting up an audio though to see how much of an accent I don't have!

[Andara Bledin]

I normally have your typical southern California/Hollywood accent. Completely boring.

But I can mimic a Texan or British accent without trying to the point where natives of said area ask me where I grew up, and then don't believe me when I say southern California.

So far, I have only ever been forced to resort to spelling with a single person, however. The word I could not understand was "Sales" and once I knew what the word was, it was like the rosetta stone for her accent.

It turns out that the woman was originally from an Asian country (not sure which), and then had moved to a heavily accented area of Texas. So, if you take your stereotypical heavy Asian accent and then put it through a filter of your typical heavy west Texan accent, you would have this woman's accent. It was truly something to behold.

I took a message for her to save everybody the trouble of someone else trying to understand her because most of the rest of my coworkers are hopeless.

^-.-^

[EricKei]

Although maybe he's just a little daft, because he can't understand Southern US French, either.

Southern US English or Southern US French? If, by the latter, you are referring to Cajun French, then that would actually make perfect sense that it's difficult, but not impossible, to make out....IIRC, It's a linguistic divergence from a 200-year old dialect of old-world French. I would not be surprised at all if he found it difficult to work out at times. (I wouldn't know -- non me parlais (sp?) -- but I've been told that Modern "standard" (read: Parisian) French speakers liken Cajun to 'waaaaaaaay out in the country French that only the 90-year old farmers still speak')

[Moirae]

That really sucks.

But to be honest, I'm Canadian and used to British accents, but even I sometimes have trouble understanding the British accent depending on what part of England they're from.

I live in the US (married to an American). I have to say, I really miss the British accent. One of the reasons I like watching Dr Who so much is that I'm much more comfortable with the French and British accents than I am with with Spanish accent so common down here.

Its really weird though. I've been here for 3 years, and I'm actually starting to have trouble understanding the French and British accents.

Damn, now I want to watch Dr Who.