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American here...always thought the NL/Dutch accent was weirdly the most American-like accent? Which I assume is universally fairly easy to understand because
by nervousvarun 3y ago
American here...always thought the NL/Dutch accent was weirdly the most American-like accent? Which I assume is universally fairly easy to understand because of all the media content? I've been around Dutch natives before where it took surprisingly long before realizing they weren't from the US.
In my opinion the Scottish accent is the most difficult accent to understand.
"Introduced" the Scottish accent via Youtube to some Mexican co-workers who are fluent English speakers and they freaked out. Will never forget one saying "WTF is this? How can this possibly be real?". Guy generally thought it was some sort of fake prank way of speaking and couldn't grasp that people actually spoke like that.
- netbioserror 3y agoI'm American and concur with this. Aside from some slightly accented tweaks here and there, the Dutch speak a remarkably clear and rhotic English that feels quite comfortable to listen to. It's odd because Dutch itself, being a Germanic language, has a lot of pronunciation commonality with the most conservative of all English accents, Scottish. You can hear it in this video, where a sentence composed of common Germanic words is spoken in every Germanic language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVG5LHRMJ4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryVG5LHRMJ4
- devilbunny 3y agoThe Dutch accent is closest to the American; if you didn't know English or Dutch, you would be hard pressed to tell the two apart. They sound a lot alike from a distance. If it weren't for Trainspotting, which I adore, I'd be utterly useless at understanding Scots accents. As it is, I can just barely manage.