r/ENGLISH • u/thslightofmine • 5d ago

Problems with Accents

I have an online friend from Scotland. She’s one of the sweetest people I’ve ever had in my life, I love her with all of my heart. But in all of honesty, I’m having hard times, I may only understand like >75% of what she’s saying whenever we have phone/video calls, due to her thick Scottish accent

English is not my first language, I still have a very long way to learn. I have communicated my difficulty with her, and she took it very lightheartedly, telling me to not hesitate to ask her repeat her words if I didn’t catch something. I’m learning to accustom myself with Scottish accent and I’m getting better and better. But it still pains me to this day, knowing that if I may have another friend with accent, I may not understand them right away

Dear native English-speaking people, what do you think / how do you feel when a non-native frequently ask you to repeat the things you said because they didn’t catch it?

And to those who might have similar experience, how do I get better at understanding different accents?

Thank you in advance

3 Upvotes

71% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

View all comments

3

u/IanDOsmond 5d ago

It's not you. I watched a BBC documentary about sheepdog trials once.

They subtitled the Cumbrian and Scottish people they interviewed.

Seriously, native speakers of English have trouble with that accent, too, to the point that the BBC expected their viewership wouldn't be able to understand them.

Scottish people are mostly bilingual in Scots and English, and Scots is probably the most closely related language there is to English, but it's not English. And Scottish people often have some of their Scots slip into their English accidentally. If you're only missing 25% of what your Scottish friend is saying, you're not doing much worse than most English speakers.

1

u/LanewayRat 1d ago

As an Australian I definitely put on the subtitles on for any shows from (/set in) Scotland and northern English cities.

A recent one was Legend. Brilliant show but there were 3 or 4 characters with northern English accents that made it impossible to pick up every word in fast natural conversation.