American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can" and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory (cot/cau

American people are really hard to understand. The way they pronounce "can" and "can't" the same, and the paucity of vowels in their phonemic inventory (cot/caught and Mary/merry/marry) is most perplexing. (Which is another way of saying: that to which one is unaccustomed is difficult. British people understand each other perfectly well, and some of us even find American English a bit difficult to understand out of familiar contexts.)