I am not a native English speaker, though I'm pretty used to listening to Americans. However, I had a tough time trying to understand their pronunciation in this movie. Same for other Southern accents in movies. Do you natives face the same issues? Is it sometimes difficult for you too to understand these regional variants?
Thanks!
I was born and raised in the Boston area. I understood most of what everyone was saying. But there were maybe a half dozen lines or phrases I missed. Could have been the sound level I was listening at.
I had a tricky time understanding exactly what was being said for a few minutes but find that my ear adjusts to the accent and drawl.
Good film.
I am from the South, and I had no trouble at all understanding the dialogue. These characters sounded quite authentic, albeit a touch too heavy.
The thing that really chaps me is the phony -- obviously phony -- Southern accent that most actors learn in Drama class that makes everybody from the South sound like we are on the plantation, sipping MINT JULEPS ON THE VERANDAHHHHH with The Old Colonel, while Miss Sally serves us up some FRIED CHICKEN AND TURNIP GREENS, mm-mm-m-m-good!!
I have a faraway worse time understanding the accents and dialects from the upper Northeast / New England area, and because I've traveled there many times, I know they have an equally hard time understanding me! Two of my daughters-in-law are from New England, another from upper Northern regions, Wisconsin. They all just stared at me like I was insane when we first met!! Even moreso when they'd found out that I have several degrees and actually "cleaned up" to go to work every day!! LOL!!!
That's disturbing, Loving Brooks.
Actually, the USA is pretty linguistically cohesive compared to most areas of the world of this size. It can be tough but we can usually understand each other with a little work.
You take comparable sized areas like Europe, India, China and Russia and you'll find groups of people who speak completely different languages and can't understand each other at all, no matter how hard they try.
I'm from Western North Carolina and I can understand the film just fine.
I agree with you about the fake overdone accents. Actors fail in their Southern accents because they don't commit to them with every syllable. They just pick a few vowels to twang up here and there in an over-the-top fashion, but the rest of their speech sounds plain unaccented Midwestern English.
And I can't understand British accents about 60% of the time.
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Aussie here, and I had no troubles understanding the accent. How strange!
shareI am not from the South, but I still had no issue. If English is not your first language, the difficulty is more understandable. My friend's first language is Russian, and she speaks fine here in the Pacific Northwest, but if she watches a movie from the UK or something, she'll need the subtitles on.
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Hey folks,
Born and reared near Harrisburg Pennsylvania, as I young lad I went to military school in central Virginia over fifty years ago. My fellow cadets came from every state plus several other countries, so we had a diversity of accents. I never had a good ear for accents, but I could tell a Southern accent from a Boston accent very well. I could not, however, tell the difference between any of the Southern accents - they all sounded alike to me.
In the years since then, my work and my retirement has taken me to many places in all 48 contiguous states, and I believe most of our accented speech has decreased over these fifty years. Yes, there are Virginians who still speak "Southern," but I think the percentage of those speaking that way has dropped considerably, and I think that is probably true for other regional accents. I suspect part of the reason for this has been the mobility of our society and the explosion of television on our society. In a way, I think our national society has become more "homogenized" over the past fifty years. With this in mind, I would also suspect regional accents were probably much more magnified 100 years ago.
In my travels around our nation, I have never had a problem understanding our different accents. Could I stumble on a word or two? Yes, but it was never a real problem anywhere.
In our travels in Canada, we never had any problems conversing with our English speaking Canadian neighbors. When it comes to British and Australian folks, however, I usually have to listen a bit more carefully with them. Of course we are speaking the same language, but there are some different tones or qualities of speech with which I may not be accustomed, and it a wee bit different for me. Sorry, but I am not able to explain it better than that.
When speaking English with someone from a country other than the USA, Canada, England, and Australia, I usually find it a whole lot more difficult to understand because of their accented speech. It seems like the farther I get away from my native home and my English related "cousins" it becomes more difficult.
For those folks from other countries outside North America, please do not interpret any of what I said above as having any negative connotation on any of you all. My statements are simply a reflection on my ability to understand English as spoken by others. Since I do not speak another language, I certainly do appreciate those who are able to do so and are willing to speak with me. I truly do thank you all.
Best wishes,
Dave Wile
Is it sometimes difficult for you too to understand these regional variants?
I'm from Ohio, lived here all my life, and found most of the movie understandable. There were maybe half a dozen lines I had to rewind to get; more that they just flowed on so quickly and were so natural for the actors to say than the accent was too thick. Watching Brit movies tend to give me less trouble than this in comprehension, although they have some cultural references I might miss. Toughest movie to understand that I've seen recently was Under the Skin with Scarlett Johansson. The thick, urban Scottish accent might as well have been a different language entirely.
Not really talking to the OP who's a non-native speaker, but I think some people are just better at understanding people who accents better than others. I think it has to do what you experience growing up. When I was in school I had friends from the UK, Pakistan, China, Peru, etc, plus teachers from all over the world too. I just got used to listening to accents. The only movie I had to turn on the subtitles for was Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. But about half way through I got used to it and could turn them off. But a lot of people have trouble with accents. We're all different and that's ok.