[quote=“Bam_Boo_Gut, post:140, topic:462903”]
I hope someone is able to unearth the Strabane charachter - it was hilarious!
Scottish Sobriety Test - I’d say most of us could understand this one… or even this one - sorry!
Gown all the way.
pdts
I think this guy is a bit special, even for the West. He was in the top ten funniest moments on TV as chosen by Mel and Sue IIRC.
I’m not sure what you’re trying to say here. No, there isn’t an official Academy of the American English Language that explicitly defines the standard, but there isn’t one in any English-speaking country. However, there is unquestionably a standard. If you look to any formal document or text or speech, you will find pretty much the same variety of the language spoken. Perhaps there are some minor variations, and there is always evidence of evolution – all standards, just like any other dialect, change over time.
And when you look at it from a broader perspective, while you can define differences between Standard American and Standard British – they’re pretty damn close and could fairly well be considered just minor variants of the same standard.
Look at the situation with Hindi and Urdu – they are essentially two different standards of the same language (Hindustani). They are arguably more different from each other than Standard American and Standard British are, if for the sole reason that they’re written in different scripts.
My family came from Scotland a couple generations ago. That clip took me back to concentrating hard to grasp the meaning. like I did when my grandparents talked. I can still do it. I understood him well.
I saw this on DVD, and tried to watch it with the subtitles turned off. I had to concentrate, but I found I could follow most of it…except for the scenes featuring that one kid, Kenny (the one who liked animals and wore an RSPCA pin). For the life of me, I couldn’t understand a word he said. I ended up watching the entire film a second time, with the subtitles on, just so I could figure out his lines (and to prove to myself that I really did understand the other characters’ dialogue, other than some slang).
I’ve never had any trouble with the dialects in Trainspotting.
Incidentally, I’m an American who’s spent a little time (2 years + numerous shorter visits) in England, and the one place I’ve found the accent a bit baffling was Liverpool. I had just come from Manchester, where I didn’t have any trouble understanding the Mancunian accent. From an American perspective, it was striking to observe such different dialects, separated geographically by only about 30 miles.
Really! Except for valley and Angelino slang I always thought we southern californians spoke more or less pronounce-as-spelled standard American English… Dude 
Whenever I’m in San Diego, the blacks speak with a black accent, the Latinos with a Latino accent, and mostly everyone else with a correct Michigan accent.
I remember as a child back in the 60s (UK), a good way to save up for a new toy and be sure of getting it before it sold out, was to ask for it to be “put by”, pay by weekly instalments and collect when it was paid for.
I don’t know how common this was for larger items, though.
Fit like?! Seeing that Rab C clip makes me cringe! Im from the north east of Scotland and thanks to my love of Amercian tv shows I can understand most Americans pretty easily. However, there are times where certain phrases can through me off. I work in car rental and sometime explaining the insurance excess can cause confusion. If I through the word deductable in it usually clears the matter up. I love Scootish and Irish accents but at times find I have to concentrate more than usual to understand someone who has a particulary strong accent. The city where I stay does not have an overly confusing accent and only have a few words that may confuse others (doric is still fairly common). If you go just forty miles north of where Im from sometimes I need a translator to understand! Ats ah I hae tae say noo, ahl sae nae mare aboot t’ matter! 
I’m from Northern Ireland (Hey Pushkin!). Something interesting struck me while I was at university in England, quite a few English people had trouble understanding me while people from further afield usually didn’t. Granted during one conversation with a Chinese woman she asked me, “What part of America are you from?” and a Pakistani man thought I was Australian but still… 
What about ye
I get that confusion too from my fellow natives, I’ve been asked at various times if I’m from Ireland, Scotland or England 
To me this sounds like someone doing a bad impression of a psychiatrist with an Austrian accent!
Regarding Trainspotting, when it was originally released in the US parts of it were dubbed so as to make it easier to understand. I seem to recall that there used to be a DVD version with both soundtracks but the film has been released and rereleased so many times it’d be a nightmare to find.
I always found it more amusing that the US version of the book (well the one I found in the US anyway) had a sizeable glossary at the back to explain a few things. Some, like Subbuteo, were probably needed but I did find others, like the difference in use of cnt and doss-cnt, really quite funny.
I’ve heard that something similar was done for The Commitments (1992) when it was released in the US.
You’re kidding, right? I’m originally from California and I live in Michigan and if you can’t hear the difference between the CA and MI accents, you must have cotton up your ears. There is absolutely a distinctive Michigan accent, although not everyone in MI has it. My parents tease me about my Midwestern accent when I visit them in CA. The most easily-describable-over-the-internet difference is that Michigander (and Midwesterners in general) make a distinction between the vowel sound in “pond” and “pawn” and “Dawn” and “Don”, whereas Californians do not.
(I use those specific examples because I’ve had miscommunications with coworkers with those words. I once told a coworker that there was a heron in the pond in my apartment complex, which led to a bizarre and confusing conversation for a couple minutes until I spelled it for her.)
My understanding is that, along the Great Lakes region, the distinction is maintained, but in the rest of the Midwest, the merger is making strong inroads or has even taken over (see here, here, and here).
I don’t think we really have an accent in California; people just speak with accents based on where they came from. I’ve lived here all my life and make the “Dawn/Don” distinction. In fact, I’m married to a Dawn who as lived here since the age of 2, and she does as well.
On the other hand, while willing to defer to someone who lives there, I always thought it was the Midwestern accent that merges “aw” and “o”. It certainly seems to be true for my uncle and cousins in the Chicago area. I thought the broad flat “ah” sound was characteristic.
It is, and the Chicago “caught” sounds like many others’ “cot”, but the Chicago “cot” sounds different as well. They make a distinction between the “aw” of “caught” and the “o” of “cot”; just not the one you expect or may be used to perceiving. See here.
As I said before, though, the Inland North is an anomaly in resisting this merger; the rest of the Midwest generally has it.