I’ve never heard of a “Kahn” of soda. 
Back in my college days, a bunch of us were at a summer camp reunion. One guy, originally from the Bronx, had moved to another country just a couple of years earlier, and was back in the States for a visit. He came over to the table that I and a few other friends were at.
He said a bunch of things, but it all went over our heads. We just sat there, silently with jaws dropped, until one of us told him, “Chuck, do you realize that you said that entire paragraph in a perfect [xxx] accent?”
His words, his voice, but the accent was as if he had been born there. So bizarre!
Maybe the retention of a strong accent has to do with language acquisition. I’ve heard that one generally loses this ability over time, but some may lose it earlier than others. Having the ability to hear the sounds of the language around you and adjust your speaking to match, is not just “code switching” but also indicates a generally better ear for language.
I guess that those who learn to speak one way and then never change, probably don’t have a good ear for language. Probably also lack the ability to easily parse what others are saying and control the sounds they use when speaking.
I was born in North Carolina, but both my parents are from Wisconsin. I acquired an accent that was sort of in between Southern and Midwestern. Native Southerners thought I sounded like I was from the Midwest, but people from other regions thought I had a Southern accent. But by now I’ve lived in California long enough that I’ve probably lost whatever semblance of a Southern accent I once had.
I was at a party years ago, and the host’s boss/wife were there. They were both British (with names like Beryl and Graham, not too hard to guess), and I was chatting with the wife. She mentioned that she was really proud of her kids and their American accents. I thought that was slightly weird, because I would think I would want any theoretical kids of mine to talk like me, but I guess she was a happy transplant.
Even longer years ago I was on a jury for a group of Scottish guys that were suing each other for a fender bender outside the local Scottish hangout. The judge had to keep stopping the witnesses to tell them to slow down and speak more clearly. They would…for about three or four or words, then, they’ start getting all het up and the Scottish accent would rev up to incomprehensible again. It was like a comedy routine. They finally settled out of court. Two groups of drunk guys crunch each others cars? Ridiculous to go to court for that.
Many Brit shows I really want closed captioning on.
And why oh why do so many recruiters have accents that are hard to understand over the phone?
When I (briefly) taught adult English literacy, I found fascinating the literature about why different cultures could/couldn’t make/hear different sounds, and how much of it had to take place when young. Made me less judgmental of folk who retained very strong accents despite decades of living in a country different from their birth.
I spent must of my childhood in St. Louis, Missouri, but the family went to Wisconsin for summers. I picked up the Wiscahnson accent (it has mild notes of Scandinavia), until my mom told me to stop doing that. I was just trying to blend in and not sound like a ferriner, but she thought I was mocking the natives.
Is that similar to what would be thought of as a Canadian or Fargo-ian accent? Because I didn’t get any particular German (or Irish) vibes from what I’d thought at the time was an overexaggerated Great White North accent.
I’m ok with a lot of accents heard in North America but the French Canadians are some of the most challenging.
Definitely this. Our two Australian children quickly picked up New Zealand slang and accents at daycare when we moved here. Now they sound more Kiwi than I do.
No, it’s nothing at all like a Fargo-type accent. It might have a few standard western Canadian characteristics (which aren’t really the same as the Minnesota/Dakota patterns), but it’s predominantly Low German, keeping in mind that they’ve been isolated from other Plattdeutsch speakers for a few centuries and no doubt there’s been a bit of drift.
Yes, absolutely. This is related to the more general counterintuitive fact that the principal thing parents contribute to their children is genes, and the rest is things like where the parents choose to live and what schools they send their kids to. The in-home environment (parenting) contributes almost nothing. It’s roughly 50% genes, 50% outside-home environment (i.e. peers at school etc.).
This. Dakotans have different accents from Saskatchewanians.
One big one (of course) is the -oo- sound. Dakotans talk about the “ruff” on a house. Saskatchewanians talk about the “roooof”.
Mrs Piper and I flew into Glasow once. The Customs agent said something. She said, “Pardon?” He repeated it. She looked at me, helpless.
I said, “He said to form a line to the right.”
“How on earth did you understand that?!?” she asked.
Then we went to Wales…
Singapore has its own version of English, which can be challenging. At Changi Airport my girlfriend asked an official where she should go to check in. He replied and pointed, but she was quite shocked and insulted by what she thought he said.
She heard
‘Take your body parts over there’.
What he said was
‘Take your boarding pass over there’.
They tend to jam words together.
‘credit card’ sounds like ‘kedicut’.
Takes a while to tune your ears.
From a British perspective the most challenging accents are Northern Irish and Glasgow. There are a lot of unfamiliar dialect words that trip you up.
I need to switch the subtitles on if I watch a show like ‘Derry Girls’ which is a sitcom set in Northern Ireland and quite hilarious.
Exactly. Otherwise, I’d be fluent in French (I am not), having watched many French movies with English subtitles. Interaction is key.
(This is what makes that movie trope of learning a language by watching TV — e.g., in “Splash*” — so implausible).
*The mermaid learning English, not the John Candy character learning a few words of Swedish from watching porn. Now THAT’S plausible! 
Do you think this is because strong regional British accents are intrinsically harder to understand if someone is unfamiliar with them, as opposed to strong American accents (I’m assuming you’re American, apologies if not!)? Or is it more that Brits are more attuned to US accents due to being fairly saturated with US culture, which I assume is not the case the other way round? Being a Brit, I think the only US show I’ve seen where I had trouble was The Wire, although I quickly got used to that and managed to cope without subtitles.
Yes, Yank but also Canadian.
And yes, that is likely part of the problem.
I am not sure that broad American accents are so easy to understand: an Indian who passed through the southern U.S. told me she could barely comprehend a word people were saying. OTOH, if you are from North America yourself, and/or are used to American movies+TV and if the accent in question is not too “extreme” then it is probably less of an issue.
I loved Justin! i watched his show with my roommate back in the mid 80s in college. I loved the way he never actually seemed to measure anything. I could understand him just fine.