Additional context:
Native speakers of my mother tongue do not all understand each other due to some pretty extreme dialects. Now that I’m in Europe, I’ve noticed multiple instances of people sometimes not understand the dialect of someone from a village 10-20 km away…
In contrast, for example most American, British, and Australian people can just… understand each other like that?? I never thought much about it before but it’s pretty incredible
Edit: thanks everyone, and clearly I didn’t think of certain parts of the UK when I was in the shower and thought of this…
I live in the US Midwest with almost no accent. Anytime I go somewhere where people have strong accents, my brain really has to work to understand them. It’ll take a couple of days of immersion before I really start to understand people.
“With almost no accent”
You have an accent
Midwest is classic “broadcast English”. It’s considered an almost neutral accent without a strong sense of place associated with it.
A so-called “neutral accent” is still an accent.
I never really understood it until I met people from Iowa for the first time. They didn’t have an accent in the way that San Diego doesn’t have weather, just a climate.
West coast people really hear a Midwest accent. I upvoted because it made me laugh.
“Broadcast English”
Interesting term
I’ve always noticed that In movies and TV shows, North American accents mostly sound “normal”. But when I talk to Americans/Canadians in person or online over voice chat, I cannot pinpoint the accents, it just sounds “American” to me.
I almost never hear the
etc.
kinds of exaggerated accents
everyone sounds like someone from CNN to me and then they say they’re from Arkansas or something
When I first did tech support 30 years ago, I could nail what state an American was calling from, but not the Midwest, all same same.
You guys…
My favourite (northern?)mid western saying is «uff da»