English accents comprehension

I didn't find the Glaswegian adults in the movie "Sweet Sixteen" as difficult to understand as the kids. They reminded me of the teenaged son of one of my friends. He speaks with a typical San Francisco Bay Area accent, but rapidly and slurred. He also tends to mumble. At times even I have difficulty understanding him, and I think a foreigner might find it impossible.

Tom K.,

The accent Brad Pitt uses in Snatch is actually quite close to some varieties of Newfoundland English which is spoken in some of the outports(small fishing villages only accessible by boat). I found it amazing, when I watched the movie, how much his Pikey accent sounded like a Newfoundland accent.

I'm not sure where you could hear a sampling of speech from someone from an outport, but if you could, you would immediately know what I mean.

Last week, there was a documentary on CBC (the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) about some Belfast kids (Catholic and Protestant) who were brought to Newfoundland to spend a summer together, forging friendships and (possibly?) future tolerance of the other side.

Anyway, whenever the Northern Irish kids spoke, there were subtitles on the screen. I found myself reading them more often than not. Let me add that I normally don't have problems with educated Irish accents from the Republic of Ireland.

Understanding Scottish accents often verges on impossible for me. The last Scottish movie I saw was "Morvern Callar" and, after struggling with what the characters were saying for ten minutes or so, I capitulated and switched the subtitles on.

I didn't need the subtitles for "Morvern Callar," but I did rewind pretty often.

What a huge relief it was for me when the two English characters appeared toward the end of the movie...

I am from southern England, and this is my take on various accents:

Southern English: very easy
Cockney: very easy
Liverpudlian (where I lived for 6 months): very easy
Yorkshire (where I lived for 5 years): very easy
Manchester: very easy
West Country: very easy
Geordie: harder but comprehensible
Northumberland: harder, but lovely, and comprehensible
Welsh: very easy
Standard Scottish: very easy
Broad Scots: harder and often incomprensible
Northern Ireland: easy and lovely, but I have never heard Ulster Scots, probably as difficult as Broad Scots
Southern Ireland: easy and lovely
Canada: very easy
US: very easy, except for some very Southern accepts
Australia: very easy
NZ: very easy
South Africa: very easy
Rhodesia: very easy

You do mean Zimbabwe, eh?

No

Then you're refering to some fictional place? Rhodesia does not exist.

He's using the term Rhodesia to refer to that which is now named Zimbabwe, which was formerly part of the British Empire, and then which had a white colonist-based government which unilaterally declared its independence, and was subsequently under white rule until the defeat of that government in a civil war in the late 1970s/early 1980s.

I know to what he's refering, but he said he doesn't mean Zimbabwe...hence, fictional place.

american nic,
Even though Rhodesia no longer exists as a political state, there still exists a Rhodesian "nation", made up of displaced Anglos who speak a Rhodesian dialect of English. I believe this is what DJW is referring to. You really can't call their accent "Zimbabwean" because that accent is a different accent altogether. Rhodesian accent is British-based, while Zimbabwean accent is influenced by the native Bantu substratum.

It seemed as if Rhodesia was a pleasant and peaceful place to be in under the "white colonial" rule....civilised. Now look at it.

I've heard white Zimbabweans (former Rhodesians if you like) speak and the accent to me seems undistinguishable from the white South African.

Do all South Africans (black or white) speak or at least understand Afrikaans?

please visit www.rhodesiawassuper.com

my message is not related to the above topic.i didnt know how else to post a message.iam an indian and i have been learning english for,say 5 years now but my problem is i get stuck.i sometimes just cant speak,words wont come out.is it because of inconfidence or should i learn more about the language.
i need help and also has anybody faced this sort of problem.