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Accents
Hi I'm traveling to a different country in from the USA and I'm going to stay with my friends that live in Britain and they were over here last time and I had a little trouble understanding them and now Im going over to her families and I'm afraid I'm not gonna understand them bc her parents have thick accents
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The British accent isn't too hard to understand (i guess I'm bias being British ha.) it depends on where you go. My boyfriend is Jamaican and there is a slight accent problem when I stay with his family but they know that I am not used to it and will rephrase if I really don't understand.
Similarly, the people you stay with will also have that patience to talk clearly and rephrase when needed. Also, if you stay for longer than 2 days, you will find the accent becomes very understandable, you struggled last time because you were surrounded by american accents with some tourists, the table turns this time and you'll very quickly pick up the words, after all America and England are the same language essentially with minor differences E.G
Pants to you are trousers/jeans to us
Sneakers to you are trainers
But other than that, British people are commonly exposed to american through TV so don't worry too much, most people will understand the words you use :)
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Ah, Great Britain and the USA, two countries separated by a common language. My wife and I had the same problem. She could not understand the British and I could not understand the Scott's.
Fact was and probably still is that this was something they are quite use to and did there best not to get upset when we asked them to repeat something. We tried our best not to get upset when they asked us to repeat or explain something.
The funniest part for me was not the accents but the different meaning for some very common items. Take the word Napkin. To us it is something you put in your lap at meal time. To them it is a women's sanitary product. So be careful with some of your words and if someone looks shocked at what you say ask them what they heard as they may have heard something you did not mean to say.
As for the accent problem; I would not be worried about that. We two countrymen are close enough that accents should not come between us and is something we can even laugh about. If your there long enough the accent problem will start to melt away. Have a great trip.
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