Austrailian British and American

<<I mean, in the US, they have subtitles when watching British TV programmes, but in Britain we don't, because Brits find it easier to understand an American accent than Americans do to understand a British accent.>>

I know others have commented but I just thought I'd take my turn to scold Adam, because we just had a discussion about this the other day on the forum and everyone said the same thing--British English is almost never subtitled in America. I'm not just talking about RP, either, even British sitcoms with fast, informal speech are almost always fully comprehensible to Americans. I've heard some pretty different UK varieties on various shows on BBC America, yet after a few seconds my brain adjusts and gets used to even the most "out there" accents.

<<The differences are extremely small and concern mostly colloquial vocabulary and a handful of idioms.>>

"Extremely" small, Mxsmanic? Then the volumes and volumes of linguistic research outlining the significant differences in all linguistic aspects of English varieties must be for naught. Just because they're (usually) mutually intelligible doesn't mean their differences can't be significant.

"The differences are extremely small and concern mostly colloquial vocabulary and a handful of idioms."

I think I could string a whole sentence of colloquials together and no one could understand me!

I think all three guys should be able to understand each other after a day of conversation, however, I do believe that it's a simplification to say that all native English speakers will be able to understand any other native English speaker. I'm from the southern parts of the UK and I sometimes find it difficult to understand some people from the northern parts with their pronounciation of words and/or local colloquialisms.

On a different aspect. I am beginning to find myself more receptive to the Aussie accent, but that may be because I have a few good friends from there (east coast). However, I must say that I have sometimes heard an Australian speaker on TV and thought it was a mix of mild American and South African accents...

Si

<<Publicans or clients of a pub >>

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

I would say that too. Publicans are the people who run the pubs.

>Have any of you Americans ever had difficulty understanding any Irish accent?

Not that I can recall. Do the people on the Father Ted show (Craggy Island) have real Irish accents? They're not hard to understand (though some of their actions don't make much sense :-).

Re: Irish accents

Southern Irish is pretty easy to understand. In New York at least, Irish has contributed a good deal to the local dialect (particularly the word "youse" and the dentalized /T/ and /D/ sound), so many of the quirks of Irish vernacular that might be odd to a Brit are much more readily accepted by an American.

Northern Irish, I find, is a bit of a different story. Like Scottish, South African and New Zealand, t's a very "clipped" dialect. The vowel-split is also somewhat confusing, a rather complicated set of rules that make the accent seem "inconsistent" to outsider's ears. Also, like NZ and S. African, the /I/ in "bit" and "limited" is centralized (in Belfast it almost becomes /}/), which is one of the more confusing aspects of any dialect.

I used to work with a woman from rural Northern Ireland who had quite a strong accent, but I never had any trouble understanding her. I really liked listening to her because she had a very pleasant voice in addition to her intriguing accent.

I work with an Irish woman and two Brits on a daily basis (neither speaks RP). None of us have any trouble understanding each other. In addition, one of my best friends is Australian (met in school) and we understand each other perfectly...

But the three guys would be able to speak in a dialect from their respective country so that they wouldn't understand each other? That would be funny.

No one got "no wucking furries" did they :)?

<< No one got "no wucking furries" did they :)? >>

Of course we did! Very cute.

< No one got "no wucking furries" did they :)? >

I thought it was clever, too :)

It's meaning hit me in one swell foop.

A common term used amongst close friends, also abbreviated to "no wuckkas" here too.

LOL :) On Google, it appears quite commonly.

http://www.google.com/search?q=%22no+wucking+forries%22&hl=en