Austrailian British and American

I watched a British movie that was hard to understand, but I think the actors mumbled. I'm sure I could understand a Brit or Aussie in person if they spoke clearly, though I might have to ask them to repeat themselves sometimes.

I find that Australian english often sounds like a merge of {England} English and American Southerner kind of english.

I think that the American , Austrailian and a British guys would understand each other very well after conversing with each for a whole day too. If they had never ever been exposed to each others' countries' regional pronunciation of some words, they'd encounter a bit of the 'What !?! Pardon?' banters, I suspose. If they all spoke lightening fast that be another story, ha ha.

I'm going to have to find out if the consecutive use of the possessive [ ' ] is grammatically correct in this¦ sentence, I'm not really sure.
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<<.. each others' countries' regional pronunciation ..>>

<<American , Austrailian and a British>> should be: American, Australian and a British

<<that be another>> that would be another

I'll try to make 'proofreading first' a habit.

Yes, they would understand essentially everything. All but the most bizarre American, British, and Australian regional accents are fully comprehensible to other speakers of American, British, or Australian English. The differences are extremely small and concern mostly colloquial vocabulary and a handful of idioms.

Mxsmanic, if the differences're so small, then why are there quite appreciable grammatical differences between the informal and formal registers (especially if the formal register is in a literary context) right here then? Of course, these differences do not get in the way of understanding at all, but if there are significant differences just between /registers/, with the same location, then how likely is it that differences between North American English, English English, and Australian English dialects would be *less* than such?

<<I mean, in the US, they have subtitles when watching British TV programmes>>

Where the hell did you get that idea? I live in America, and I have never seen subtitles used in a British program.

Same here -- no subtitles for British programs in San Francisco (or New York or North Carolina, where I've also lived).

I must say that I've never seen subtitles on any British programs or movies, Trainspotting included (but then, Trainspotting was in extremely watered down Scots to begin with, if you can actually call it specifically Scots in that case).

"If an American , Austrailian and a British guy..."

If the rosbif is Adam, then mutual intelligibility is bound to boil down to peanuts, I'm afraid.

<<Publicans or clients of a pub >>

I thought Publicans were the people who run the pubs. You know, like the pub manager.

I'll join the others who've said that all three would understand each other fairly well. I'm from the southern United States, and I've been watching British TV shows for years (with no subtitles). Occasionally I hear something that I don't understand (especially slang that I haven't heard enough to learn from the context) but in general the meaning is clear.

I found the Scottish accents on the detective show Hamish Macbeth more difficult than most, though. Maybe it's because I didn't watch that show enough to get used them. Also I once worked with a Scot for a short while, and sometimes we'd have to say things a couple of times before the other person understood. In that case the problem wasn't just that we were using slang. It was that the pronunciation itself was so unfamiliar that we needed to hear it clearly before it was understood.

I had more trouble with him than he had with me. My Southern accent is noticeable, but it's fairly close to the ordinary American announcer's accent (basically Midwestern), the closest thing we have to a standard. Some Southern accents (especially the "Low Country" ones) would be more difficult, but still communication would take place.

"...get used them" is not a Southern idiom. It's just a mistake. I meant to write "get used to them."

Have any of you Americans ever had difficulty understanding any Irish accent? I haven't, but maybe there are some I just haven't heard yet.

Deborah,

I've found the Irish accent to be easy to understand, and I think that's because it shares a lot of the qualities of the American accent.

On the other hand, a strong Scottish accent is like a foreign language to me a lot of the time.