Austrailian British and American

If an American , Austrailian and a British guy had been placed in a room and had to have a conversation for a hole day would they understand pretty much everything?

99% of the time mate.

Unless the Brit is a Scotsman.

Pretty much. Especially assuming they were all pretty typical "general" speakers of their respective dialects. Even if we tested the bounds of intelligibility a bit by having a "broad" speaker of Australian, a Cockney, and maybe a speaker of Southern US English or AAVE, I think after a few minutes they'd all for the most part adjust to hearing each other and largely understand what was going on. In cases where someone didn't understand a word or utterance, each one of these hypothetical speakers would likely revert to a more enunciated and as formal a register as they were familiar with, which would likely increase intelligibility in extreme cases.

But going back to assuming a "general" speaker (vague term, I know) of American, Australian, and British English, I doubt few consistent problems in comprehension would arise. Has anyone ever been in such a situation?

Kirk in a bar but we three were drunk and man we couldnt understand a word from each other lol. The poor American had this slow motion thing in his speech, the Australian spoke too fast and jumbo his words and me been the Brit I cracked jokes (British ones) that they couldnt get. LOL the main thing we had fun!!!

All day is a long a time, so no, it wouldn't create any problems. It's nothing like a non-native accent such as sub-continent Indian or something exotic which I consider to be extreme.

And publicans who are drunk are generally hard to understand, regardless of their nationality.

> Publicans or clients of a pub

Generally yes, maybe apart from a few local sayings - but it could figured out pretty soon after a bit of explanation.

No wuckin' furries! :)

The language is English in all 3 countries so yes i think so :)!
It's a reason that its could English that it is almost the same :p

I can answer this question because I've actually done it--well, I spent an EVENING with a Brit and an Aussie at least. No problem with comprehension, although all three of us are pretty "standard" speakers of our respective countries' dialects.

Just like SPanish and Italian: they would understand each other after some hours of ''exposure'' with virually no problems.

It's not like comparing Spanish to Italian.
English is English.

"The language is English in all 3 countries so yes i think so :)! "

Not necessarily. Even within just England, each region has difficulty understanding each other. Lots of people don't understand the Newcastle or the Liverpool accent. And in Britain, English people have difficulty understanding the Scottish accenty. When we hear Scottish people say "Hello, how are you?" it sounds like "Yjdu hdyuf hd?"

So just because we all speak English, doesn't mean we can all understand each other.

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.

Adam, I don't know where you have come up with this myth, but I can tell you from living in this country for all 24 years of my life, that Americans do not subtitle British programming. The only time I have ever seen Brits subtitled on American TV is on the show "Nanny 911," but that's only because it's a reality show where the sound levels are bad (they do the same with Americans).

First of all, major networks don't show British TV, only PBS, BBC America and numerous other cable channels. Any American who is watching "Cracker" or BBC World is probably not the kind of person who's going to need subtitling.

You will occasionally see some Scottish films subtitled, but I'm fairly certain that even a Brit could understand why we would do that.