When someone from Britain speaks, Americans hear a "British accent"...

[Nick Efford]

Grant Edwards <grante at visi.com> wrote:
> I'm an American who grew up watching plenty of BBC, and I run
> into afew native Londoners whom I have hard time understanding.
> I don't ever remember having troubly understanding people
> outside the city.

But have you encountered regional dialects? - e.g. from the north
of the country, where you get both a strong accent, very different
from London speech, and the use of different words.

For example, folk in parts of the north-east will say "canny"
instead of "careful", "gannin" instead of "going",  "bonny lass"
instead of "pretty girl".  The question "Do you know what I mean?"
expressed phonetically in Geordie (one of the north-eastern dialects)
becomes "Ya knaa what ah mean, leik?"


Nick