Poll: Which English accent is the most difficult to understand?

monte

it was quite funny

Dalriata

Which British accent? There are many, very distinct, British accents.

Brenda

It's true that Indian accent is the most difficult one in the world to understand.

Fabby

In my humble opiniom, I finf the indian accent harder to understand than the others, especially when many of them speak fast, but I must be honest that it's very interesting. Of course, India has many dialects, so it's very hard to say that, and I don't like to stereotype anyone or anything.

FlyingToaster

I'm American, and American English is my native language. I think the Indian English accent is hardest to understand. When talking to people with very thick Indian accents sound, I often have to keep having them repeat what they said, and often I still can't understand what they said.

uaroma

I think british accent is more difficult to hear. I love the accent though.

archid

I find, the British accent is the most difficult to understand. Mainly those who are from other places in England apart from London, difficult to understand while speaking.

whaeve

it's true, im an indian and i can't understnd the indians here in the uk, tbh i cant usderstnd anything tht anyone says here anyways lol, but indains seem to put on a fake *oh im british* accent, and its true. :/

faouzi lazari

Actually,British English has lots of accents,thus to me the most complicated english accent ever is Irish one

John

I think Indians also have a lot of accents and some are way better than others.
Also, we do not come across many accents that are way more difficult to understand. Effecively, we are comparing only British, American, Canadian and Indian accents here.
I have been throughout the world and African, Middle-Eastt and South East Asian (Korea, Japan, China) accents are the most difficult to understand. Further, Australian and New Zealand accents are difficult as well.

apg

I am a native of India. For me American accent is the most difficult to follow. They speak very fast and words are difficult to pick. Indian accent is very slow,unattractive but easily understandable.

HarveyS

Scot's

Chuck Newman

how about Bostonian ?

Larah

I think that New Zealand accents are the hardest. But I feel like the most difficult accents are generally due to how much slang is used. Certain parts of the United States would definitely be difficult to some people. But New Zealand accents are very strong.

kiraat

I am from Nepal. I understand pretty much all accents but find some british people who pronounce less word in some cases. I also find some aussie speaking. Eg "good day mate" is pronounced as " goodai mite". Some might find Indian accent hard to understand because most of they use "nd" at the end of some words say for example "and" is pronounced as "anddu". American they say "blood" as "blad" , "economics " as "econahmics" . Chinese for "think" they say "sink". English is all about stress of sound. Western people say "danyabad" for "dhanyabaadh" because they don't speak from epiglotis very often. By the way the word "dhanyabaadh" is a word from Khas language which is marketed as Nepali which means "thank you"

stop

To be honest its Australian that's hard.The poll is biased

lei

indian is the hardest accent to understand.

american guy

english is my second language and i mastered it completely almost forgetting the language i learned when i was a child. i find british english so hard to understand because some words are not announced with all the bells and whistles the words are suppose to have making it very difficult to decipher. i can't believe indian is the highest i i can understand them perfectly. listen to depak chopra his indian first i thought it was a british accent that i understood then i found out he was indian. maybe he is an indian with an understandable english accent from Britain i don't really know but i understand indian accents just fine. i say after british people it might be american accents i live in california and if i go some places in the USA i would have a difficult time understanding most people. thats how the USA i love it.

IrishRegulus

Hmm, last time I checked the good people of Ireland spoke English, and were probably speaking English before the colonies were established - to be omitted when India is included...that's just insulting (no offence to my Indian friends) Me thinks that someone needy checky geography. Saying the Irish are the same as the British is, well, as insulting to an Irishman and it would be to an Englishman I'd imagine Is the desginer of this poll aware of just how MANY regional dialects exist alone within the U.K alone, nevermind Ireland.

IrishRegulus

Sorry *typo* above should read "as insulting to a Britishman" Apologies to Welsh, Scots and Northern Irish folk

andy

Indian accent is really really hard for me to follow.

Tdol

@IrishRegulus
Yes, I am, but the are only so many options available in the software and we cannot add hundreds of choices. No one's saying that Irish English is the same as British English, but we have a limited list. India's a big place with many speakers. You'd probably have a better case arguing against the inclusion of New Zealand, which has a population closer to Ireland's.

Maruda

I am an Indian, so of course, I don't have difficulty understanding Indian accent. I don't know about other non-native English speakers, but I find all British accents very hard to understand. Also Chinese; I just can't say if they're trying to speak english or chinese.

Bhuvan pulami

India is our neighbour so in my feeling i could not find it would be so.

bhuvan pulami

This is my guess.

Subhankar Zac

I m from India, n I spoke in an Indian accent for many years, But Now i m Learning to talk in irish accent.
Doesnt mean that I m 'putting on a fake accent', It just means that Indian accent is the worst of all english!

Ronald

Interesting Bravo!

Phonz

Hmmm .. from the choices above I would say Indian english accent or Hindu English is so hard to understand comprehensively in Speech and somewhat the way they compose their correspondence thru email. Say like instead of using engage they alter it with "Intimate". Also, the frequent usage of "the same" and "revert". Indians on this thread will normally answer that they do understand Hindu-English, guys are you with us? Not on the list I would say, Chinese is kinda hard to reciprocate. Anyway that's my two cents. By the way, I'm Filipino .. ;o)