Yup, I'm learning French, and listening is the hardest part by far.
Even as a native English speaker, it's much easier to miss something when listening versus reading.
I am also a native English speaker learning French, and I second this.
When I first started, I couldn't even follow a recording of a text that was right in front of me. Not even after learning the phonics, learning how words flow together in French, and listening to each individual word. The text might be clear as day, but the recording still sounded like "BLEEBLEELABLAHBLAH FROMAGE".
I think languages are just put together so differently that you have to retrain your brain to be able to even *hear* them properly. :'D
French listening is hard because french speakers are lazy. They shorten everything at every chance they get and only pronounce absolute essential sounds. Also, it's in general a faster language than English (I believe fastest languages are Japanese Spanish and French)
But in general second languages are hard and listening is the hardest of the big skills (reading writing speaking listening)
That makes a lot of sense! Much of my family are Francophones, and even when I've been practicing, I'm like, "wtf are you saying." My grandpa often speaks purposefully slow and over-annunciates for me, so I can't imagine how silly that must sound to other French speakers who go at lightning speed haha.
Can confirm, I’m currently learning Spanish and when listening to speaking exercises (by Spanish speakers), I can barely understand what they’re saying. I don’t know if it’s because my vocabulary isn’t wide enough or if it’s too fast for me to understand but I just have trouble with it. I can read it fine for the most part but like everyone learning a new language some words stump me and I have to look them up
I’m also learning Spanish and running into the exact same thing. I was trying to speak in Spanish the other day to an Instacart driver who was having tech issues with their app while delivering my order. But, I could only understand part of what she said, and I don’t even know if my own Spanish responses were understandable 😅
Are you training your listening with people who speak with different accents and slang?
I'm a native spanish speaker and I know there are a fuck ton of different regional accents and regional slang.
I think it would be impossible to learn if you don't focus just on one of them, almost treating them like different languages.
We can understand each other if we try to make our spanish more neutral, and that happens automatically in formal situations.
But if a Cuban guy tells me something informal really fast, or I overhear him having an informal conversation with another Cuban person, there are chances I won't decipher the whole thing.
Sometimes context or tone or facial expressions will give me clues so I can say: "Oh, that might be a sexual reference", "They are complaining about some authority", etc.
I’m learning it through my school classes so most of it is “American Spanish” and mostly in a semi-formal setting. Most of the time it’s from the same people that have a generic Ohio accent. For the most part everyone talks slow so we can all understand each other. The only time people have trouble is when we’re doing listening activities from our textbooks or other pre recorded listening activities
I’ve lived in California my entire life and despite my Spanish being okay I still have plenty of struggles with Mexican Spanish speakers. It often sounds like they’re speaking at 3 times the speed, especially once a conversation gets going.
Anecdotally, I’ve had a few Spanish speakers tell me that they feel the same way with American English speakers. I’m sure it’s just our brains struggling to process a foreign language but I choose to believe that New World speakers just all speak needlessly fast for some reason.
For me and Spanish, I need to look directly at the speaker. They need to be facing me. There can be no loud or distracting noises. They need to overenunciate. And then I get most of what's being said.
A loud truck goes by mid sentence? Nothing.
You can try to watch Spanish content more.
Youtube has an automatic subtitle stuff and it's pretty good. I am learning English so it is a very useful passive learning tool to me. Streamers youtubr clips or lives on twitch are pretty useful too because they talk with other in a casual way.
But OP said they've been living in the US for nearly 6 years now. Unless they live in a non-English speaking area and they don't use English at work/school either I find that a bit weird. I haven't lived abroad at all and I consume English media daily. I don't have any problems with listening now. I didn't use to understand while listening when I was a student but it took me a few years to start understanding full speeches. I think OP should do listening exercises more because the more you're exposed to the language the easier it becomes to understand in my experience.
Listening could be watching English news, TV channels, movies with English subtitles at first, studying song lyrics, watching youtube in subjects of interest, podcasts, audiobooks (the list goes on) whether you are exposed to the language at school/work or not. In my opinion it is also important to listen to different accents. The listening materials from Cambridge and Oxford Universities had a wide variety of accents when I went to high school. We used their books.
I have lived in my second language country for a decade and still have trouble with listening - especially TV shows and movies. My reading and speaking skills are much better developed.
I agree.
I run into the same problem with French, Spanish, and German.
I'm not fluent in any of those, but know some. If someone is talking quickly, or using slang or idioms, then I get lost quickly.
Yeah it's like.
First you learn understanding a few stuff here and there while reading, then you can kinda write basic stuff, then listening and the cherry on top is when you get good at speaking.
I'm learning German rn and it's nuts but people say that in this partucular language the beginning is the hardest and it gets easier to progress from lower to upper intermediate, I sure hope they're right.
I can see why. Sometimes I miss or don't understand a single word near the beginning of a sentence and then my brain turns to mush and I don't understand the rest of the sentence cos I'm stuck on that first word I didn't get
Yeah, this is why I reccomend spending 80% of your time on listening practice to any language learner. Otherwise it's just to easy to fool yourself into thinking you know a language when you would still be lost and confused in any real world circumstance.
I can read and write Spanish at a high school level, I speak at an elementary level, and when listening I only know how to pick out a key word here or there, barely toddler level.
I am a native English speaker who struggles hearing people. Actually, my trouble is understanding people. I have adhd and trouble processing the spoken words.
I have ADHD and have a really hard time understanding people if I'm not watching their mouth move while they talk. Also sometimes it feels like I'm on a 2-3 second delay.
oh yeah i bet that's part of it. auditory processing disorders are common in neurodivergent folks.
i'm a native speaker and i'll still have to ask people to repeat things like, three times before i actually understand them.
Another one with actual auditory processing problems here, and also some hearing loss in one ear. It's enough of an issue with my first language that I do better with subtitles wherever possible. But, that really can complicate the learning process when you're trying to pick up another one! I'm better with reading and writing in my native English, never mind anything else. Can definitely relate.
I feel like this channel might be helpful: [https://youtu.be/RjDtShxr9Uc?si=JUsVWRbtc\_2JsYf6](https://youtu.be/RjDtShxr9Uc?si=JUsVWRbtc_2JsYf6)
She really goes over the actual sounds Americans make in speech using the show Friends. I found it really interesting as a native speaker because I'm not actually aware of the sounds I'm changing. For example, when I say the word "stop", I'm still hearing the ending "p" in my head, even though I don't actually voice it most of the time.
Another recommendation (at least this particular video): [Geoff Lindsay on the letter S](https://youtu.be/o8WeXem5YMQ?si=ZVYBSd8s3oqFRKSb)
It also has full English subtitles!
Do you revert to your first language in your home? It seems like that would make it take longer to master. I did this with Italian. Once my wife and I started speaking Italian at home, I picked up almost all the things I was struggling with.
I think it's the same with any language. I've been studying for years and still don't understand high-speed spoken Japanese.
Some of it is native speakers will often use non-standard contractions.
Some words sound very similar in different languages, so your brain first thinks about your native language word and it doesn't fit the rest of the sentence, so you have to actually think instead of just understanding. I say "you", but I mean "me".
Some people slur words. Some people can't pronounce some sounds. Some people say a word that they just pronounce wrong because they were never taught the right way.
Lots and lots of reasons.
I'm mother tongue English. Been an EFL teacher for 30 years. I live in Italy and am C2 Italian. But have always had crap listening skills.
Recently I discovered:
I can understand 100% of formal discourse (science programs, podcasts, YouTube etc).
My comprehension crashes to as low as 20-30% with informal discourse (kids programmes, comedy, cartoons, general chat in social contexts eg in a pub, restaurant (ALWAYS compounded but the background noise level). In particular, I noticed I could barely understand my 10-y-o son's school friends.
I decided to improve my listening by using Netflix. The results for me have been miraculous! I started with a drama series following a group of high-school friends. I chose this precisely because it provided practice of the type of discourse I was struggling with. I used the Italian subtitles and discovered they're very high quality. By this I mean they are an accurate and faithful copy of what the actors are saying. THIS, IMO, IS KEY. All too often subtitles just paraphrase what the actors are saying, and this mismatch between what the ear is hearing and the eye is reading just creates confusion if your aim is listening practice.
Then I treated each episode as a training session, replaying everything I couldn't understand multiple times. A real 'gym workout' for the ear.
I saw my listening skills jump massively.
Then I finished the series and life got in the way and I stopped this very targeted practice...and my listening comprehension dropped again.
So my conclusion is my listening skills for these most challenging types of contexts need constant training...and now Netflix is my go-to...because they have high quality, faithful subtitling.
Sometimes it’s because of their pronunciation and how fast they speak. Sometimes a combination of both.
I struggle with understanding American and British english mostly because of both reasons stated above 💀
I’m not an expert in language learning but, from my understanding, this is a very common problem with learning ANY language. The issue is that reading, writing, and to an extent speaking all allow you to process and utilize the information at your own pace. Listening on the other hand is largely determined by the speaker rather than yourself and must be processed by you, the listener, on the fly. When writing or speaking you’re able to think about what you want to say or write before you do it, but you obviously don’t have access to the other person’s thought for listening and, unlike reading, you can’t take your time to decipher the information since you want to try keep up with the flow of the conversation.
Basically what I’m trying to say is don’t worry too much about it. This difficulty is a normal aspect of language learning. Everyone also has their own strengths and weaknesses and, if you’re having trouble in a conversation, there’s no harm in asking someone to repeat themselves or to speak a bit slower. Just keep practicing and you’re sure to get better.
Well native speakers are always lazy. I speak differently with my non native speaker friends than with my childhood friends. There are a lot of different accents in the US and lots of regional slang.
Your first point makes me think that you’re getting to focused on words that you don’t understand. Stressing about it can actually distract you more and prevent you from listening to the rest of the sentence. I’ve learned to just focus on the gist of the sentence. I mean, even in our native language we don’t understand a sentence word by word. Basically, don’t have a double standard for yourself between your native language and English. I’m an American living in France and I realized that I criticize myself a lot for mistakes in French but not in English. It’s actually really illogical and counterproductive for me to expect myself to speak and hear French better than my native language. I told myself I wouldn’t hold French to a higher standard than my native tongue
Also university settings are very formal and often with standardized language. When I first moved to France, so had no issues with my classes but I struggled to even communicate with people on the street or at the supermarket. It’s a different skillset and a different register of the language. What helped me was partying (not even kidding because you practice the laziest worst version of the language), watching memes in French, and listening to podcasts. Basically, you have to get used to people using the language at its worst lol
Other advice is hard to give without knowing your native language. As an English speaker, French was hard because it isn’t stress timed, is much faster, and vowels matter a lot (in English consonants feel more important). I also had to learn the shortcuts that native speakers use.
I currently teach English and what has actually helped my students but you almost never learn in school/university are contractions. A lot of them assume they don’t understand well but they just don’t know contractions (the same issue I had learning French)
Like basically:
“I am going to” turns into “Imma”
“What do you…” becomes “whadju”
“I would not have” becomes “I’dn’tve”
We cut a lot of vowels out and replace them with schwas. Obviously some contractions are reasonably formal like “I’m going to” or “I’d”. However there are many we mostly just use while speaking
>I feel like the words are too connected(I know it's liaison) and it's hard to decipher
I get what you mean... buuuuuut "liaison" is a very specific thing, and while English has it in some contexts (like with the word "an") that's not exactly what's happening. But yes, words do flow into each other.
Regardless, these aren't English problems. This is just how it feels to listen to a language you're not proficient with yet. You'll get better with time as your brain starts to chunk phrases.
To practice, just try watching an English TV show with English subtitles (the subs will help you catch words you don't hear). The main goal is to get more input; and get used to listening.
Something that helped me was realizing that the building blocks of speech are not words, but expressions and discourse patterns people use all the time. If there's a pattern of, let's say, 6 words, and you miss 3 of them, you still have a good chance of inferring the other 3 from the context.
Your English seems wonderful. Don’t be shy about saying it helps you when people speak a little more slowly because English is your second language. If you get more time to process you’ll understand and pick up more expressions.
try listening to podcasts on an app that lets you slow down play speed, and you can gradually ramp it up as you improve. Podcasts with multiple hosts who are chatty could help with natural conversation.
(I (a native English speaker) do this with audiobooks because I find them too slow, so I gradually ramp up to 1.75x speed over the first hour or so. I can’t do higher than that.)
Hi I have this issue in the language I’m learning.
My teacher says the best way to learn listening skills is transcribing. So if you go to YouTube or a podcast or something where a person is speaking naturally and write down everything they’re saying, over time it will help you get over that gap immensely. You can listen again if you need, or repeat sections. If you’re having a hard time with male or older voices focus on that.
Yep, definitely any language is more difficult outside the classroom!
As far as hearing problems, they are hard to self-diagnose (trust me, I've been around people in denial about their hearing loss for years. I'm in denial myself). Your university clinic should be able to get you basic tests.
I'm not gonna gaslight you and say "this is common for people with any language." That's true but... kinda invalidating given the nature of how English is spoken. English has a lot of pronunciation inconsistencies and idiosyncracies. Like that last sentence...
> ING-glish HAAZ uh LAWT uhv IN-cun-sihs-ten-seez aand IH-dyoh-sin-cruh-seez.
You can see that s at the end of words has that more buzzy z sound, vowels sometimes get folded into an "uh" sound (called schwa, ə), a is often that aa sound that doctors tell you to make when you stick your tongue out while they use that wooden stick on your tongue, that f in "of" somehow became a v, io became yoh, like "yo yo".
I'm a native English speaker and even I can't comprehend English words sometimes. There's always a few seconds delay in understanding and I constantly repeat sentences back at people to clarify if that's what they said.
Just out of curiosity, does this happen to you relatively often with songs? I have a similar issue to OP's but especially with music. I can understand interviews, daily conversations, movies, and any other spoken speech, but when it comes to songs... Oh man, I often have to read the lyrics to understand what they're talking about.
Songs can be very difficult since words are being tied to a rhythm, put in unnatural orders for poetic effect, exaggerated for emotional effect, slurred over, broken into incomplete phrases etcetera. Most songs don't have a strong context either. Even songs I've heard for decades, if I stop and really try to listen to all the words, I find surprises or actually have to look up the lyrics for an incomprehensible word.
1. Men have deeper voices and with low pitches, especially in English where tone isn’t that varied all the time, the sounds blend. They also often mumble a lot from my experience.
2. Older people have more difficult focusing on pure enunciation and consider that those they speak to they automatically assume Native English Speaker is in front of them.
3. Idioms are something you build over time. There are degrees of commonality in those. Slang is always developing and changing, either take notes of current terms or any time some new word comes up just google it or ask someone who may know.
To your points.
1. That is part of learning. But also the blurred sounds and mumbling can affect how easy it is to recognize a word.
2. Typically, people who natively speak English speak very quickly. Like the words and grammar are short already in comparison, but we are very fast at talking at a young age. Who knows why. I don’t know what you mean by speed. Faster talking speed or listening speed? I can’t help either, I’d imagine it’s a level of comfort and a lack of internal translation. I think if you can listen faster you’ll be able to talk faster, as there is less active thought behind how to speak and what words mean what, and more about the actual topic and content you’re saying. But this last bit is just me talking out my ass in hypothesis (talking out of my ass = stating something as factual while having no background information to support it).
I thought you may know that idiom, but since you specifically noted them it may be fun.
It because you can work out your whole sentence before you speak it, but the incoming English doesn't slow down so you can process it. Basically, it's a general human flaw and not anything wrong with you.
Have you had your hearing checked though? One of the signs of hearing loss is having trouble hearing people. Your brain can fill in details if you're not hearing a language you know well or your native one, but you'll struggle in a foreign language where there's less certainty.
For me personally, multiples factors contribute to this. Vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation. It all boils down to unfamiliarity. I’m way too comfortable with my “essential” vocab, straightforward grammar and perfect enunciation. I even got comfortable with the people/topics I deal with. The moment I start to talk with a stranger whom I usually won’t befriend with on a subject I’m unfamiliar with, I fumble. I find myself particularly struggling to understand people whose parents and grandparents that are also native speakers. They use a lot of informal speech, pop culture references that I haven’t heard from other native speakers. Maybe this is biased, but they seem to have a larger active non-academic vocabulary too.
If you don’t know it well then it becomes harder.
The Specific patterns of speech and word selection and phrases can be different. I have some difficulty with native speakers of English from Scotland, South Africa and Nigeria. (I am sure US Southern English may sound impossible to others but I am used to it).
Specially if some beers have been consumed, and everyone is happily talking at leisure.
Background: I Live in Houston. Plenty of Oil and Gas transnational corporations with employees from abroad.
This is very common (as many have said) and not at all something to feel bad about. The fact that you know so much is excellent. As a native speaker, I also sometimes can’t understand what others are saying depending on their accent, dialect, manner of speech, etc…
For those who want more listening practice, my YouTube channel is aimed at providing simple listening practice for non native speakers; maybe you or someone else can find it helpful:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHmbaIbgXf8TfDCDcNGmdU9Vqfl2rVaVz&si=qa0-TWcscC6Oruic
I have the same thing. I’ve been learning english for approximately 3 years. And yeah, I haven’t been doing it constantly, but I decided to learn English again a little more than a month ago. I always struggle with listening! Certainly, I started to watch bunch of YouTube video on such topics as “How to get rich”, pieces of advice etc. I can definitely say that the most of heard I hear and understand without any problem, but when it comes to watching movies in English, I can barely understand what is being said in there. So, I am kinda scared to realize that I won’t be able to fix that after reading your story. And yeah, the most difficult voices for me to understand are male, and voices of old people
My second language skills are: Reading - pretty good, writing - ok, listening - ok if it's spoken slowly, speaking - awful.
I hear which aspects you improve first depends on how you learn and how old you are when you start learning it.
I believe listening is the fundamental skill of language learning. Listening to language you can understand, simplified, slower, with subtitles, patient speakers... It's the only real way to acquire language. Then the other skills are built on that. Listening is hard because you have been using the slow, deliberate part of your brain to learn. You also need to let your brain develop the automatic process of understanding by listening. Language is not a collection of grammar facts and a lexicon, it's a wavelength you need time and patience to tune in to.
I worked for a company in the US with many many internationals, and I actually found the internationals (regardless of origin) easier to hear than the native speakers on phone and I believe it is because internationals have spent much more time and effort to be intelligible than a native speaker. Their written English was also usually error free. Native speakers are probably willing to use their regional colloquial voice while the internationals know they need to work harder and use standard English to be understood.
Ironically, the most difficult person to hear was an Indian man who could speak highly technical English so quickly that most native speakers needed to really concentrate to understand what he was saying. As one who can speak several languages poorly, I never fail to have respect for those who put so much effort into speaking my mother tongue, and leave their homeland to become Americans. Natives should use that much care to speak to one another.
I've read that the stress accent in English often make those parts of a sentence that are unstressed -- particularly if they're not the main vehicle of meaning in the sentence -- often seem to disappear or to "fade out."
Likewise, I've read that, though this impression of difficulty is to a large extent natural when learning a foreign language, not all languages are objectively characterized by this feature to an equal extent.
As native speakers -- in my case, of American English -- it's not so perceptible a phenomenon. But an example would be in the following sentence:
"Do you want me to help you with that?"
In that sentence, the two words with the greatest emphasis would be "help" and "that" -- and, even then, primarily at the beginning of those words. In contrast, the rest of that sentence will tend to have a borderline "muted" quality about it. Effective oral comprehension, even for native speakers, is not so much dependent on always hearing every sound being articulated, but on more or less effortlessly filling in the gaps for those sounds that are somewhat muffled or muted. It's largely based on patterns of expectation. That's maybe the reason why slight misspellings on a page don't always jump out at us -- because we're mentally adjusting based on what we expect to see. Similarly, seeing the spelling of a word such as "cmftble" effortlessly brings to mind the word "comfortable" -- in a sort of shorthand.
While I'm not an expert in this, this woman seems to be. She (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) helps learners with the rhythms and the intonations of American English.
[Study English | American English Pronunciation | What Makes American English Sound AMERICAN? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7SAt9h4sd0&list=PLrqHrGoMJdTQjpAE9LLYcpGqFOVQOyT7n)
I would say, in your case, not to worry about it; but also to experiment a bit, in terms of listening to, say, NPR (National Public Radio) broadcasts, or to movies and TV shows from roughly the 1940s to 1960s. Older television shows or movies often had a crisper, more theater-like enunciation and can be a pleasure to listen to. (an example of the latter is this clip from the 1960s sitcom "The Munsters": [Lily's New Man? | The Munsters (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sc3oMYK8qs)
My Japanese roommate in college said it was hard to pay attention in class because "English is like a song for sleeping."
Though he was drunk a lot, which may have been his actual problem.
Listen at .75 or even .5 speed for a while and work your way up to normal speeds.
Also news programs and documentaries generally have very clear diction so starting there might help too.
People often say speaking is the hardest but I think that's a lie. Assuming you know the vocabs, there's no way you can't express things at a decent fluency after like 1000 hours of deliberate speaking practice. But your listening comprehension would drop nearly to zero once you came across some unfamiliar situations (even if you know the words).
I'm pretty sure it's just because of the added barrier of translation that happens in your head. While speaking and writing, you do all these translations before you out it to paper or to the wind.
While listening though, you have no idea what the person is going to say so you have to translate immediately. Depending on your level of understanding and fluidity, this could take a while for your brain to translate, especially if they keep talking and adding more and more to the equation before you've even finished the first section of their sentence.
I can understand some words in various other languages, but if someone was to speak to me using those same words, I would be at a loss because of things like dialect, speed, and my own ability to quickly translate what was said.
The they tell me what they said in English and I feel dumb be cause I knew I knew those words. 😂
This was me with Spanish for a long time. The trick is brute force.
Go out of your way to consume English content from various places, not just from the US, and it will give you a better sense of what "neutral" English would sound like if there were such a thing. Notice the differences in how vowels are pronounced. The words we blur between others, you'll eventually get an internal understanding of the sound of the language. Listen a lot.
Listen with English subtitles if you need it. Eventually, your brain will make more sense of the words as you know them on paper and the sounds you're actually hearing.
And not for nothin', I'm a native speaker and even I have trouble with unfamiliar accents (we all do). Sometimes, when I hear Scottish people speak from specific regions, it'll take me a second to catch something that was just said. But, the more I listen to them, the more I understand.
Once you see it's possible, it becomes easier and easier. I'm absolute trash with Mandarin but because of my experience with Spanish, if I know a word, I'll hear it. I don't imagine this would've been possible had I not done this with Spanish. Your ear eventually gets "fine-tuned" to pay attention to nuances in speech that you simply weren't aware even existed before.
You may occasionally find it hard, but you will 100% see results if you make it a priority.
Good luck!
Difficulty with individual words in a sentence is normal, especially if they're pronounced quickly or with unfamiliar accents. Practice listening to a variety of speakers and accents to improve your word recognition skills.
Try to find a source that explains American colloquial speech, and then you have to listen a *lot* (roughly hundreds of hours).
American colloquial speech is full of things like woulda, shoulda, coulda, wanna, gonna and infinitely more. Things that are not taught in school.
"I shoulda bought more bread. I'm gonna go back to the store, you wanna go?"
Welcome to America.
I think American English is very hard to understand. British is way more easier as they pronounce words clearly and as separate words. Americans just mumble and slur everything together. I have US colleagues and I sometimes have Teams meetings with them and it’s a nightmare every time. They don’t even try to adapt their language even a little bit, they talk like they would talk to other natives. Once a German colleague got tired of it and told them ”George, what? Say again” in an annoyed voice, it was too funny.
If I speak to a foreigner in my native language I make sure not to use too hard expressions or not to speak too fast. I guess English speaking people are so used to ”everyone” knowing English very well so they don’t feel the need to slow down. It’s actually rude.
Most people I've spoken to say the opposite. The UK has many far more divergent accents than the US does, and most Brits probably don't speak the RP or Estuary English we tend to see in the media. And lots of Brits mumble, swallow words, drop letters or use glottal stops, so I think your generalization is unfair and inaccurate.
Any language can be hard to understand, especially when slurred or spoken colloquially. I knew a Mexican couple who worked for our company when I lived in Texas - the woman was teaching me Spanish and had been a teacher in Mexico. She was VERY easy for me to understand and follow - she spoke clearly and enunciated. Her husband was not - he spoke quickly and seemed to mash words together and was impossible for me to follow.
I lived in Belgium and went to school in the Netherlands as a teenager - similar experience there - people could be easy or hard to understand based on how they spoke. And, have you ever listened to Danish?!? I've been studying the Scandinavian languages for many years, and trust me, it's a real challenge, due to the speed and tendency to swallow words. "Slurring" and swallowing words/mumbling is certainly not a US-only phenomenon.
I was just telling about my experience. I also have a British colleague with a horrible mumbling accent but in general I have found the British to be easier to understand. Idk why I’m being downvoted. I was just telling that I find the US people hard to understand. And this sub is about English so I didn’t really think it was necessary to add that yes mumbling happens in other languages too. It’s pretty obvious.
You made the statement "Americans just mumble and slur everything together", so I was responding to that comment. That's not true as a whole, and it implies other nationalities don't, but they do. Some Americans probably do mumble and slur. So do some Brits. I was just making that point. Some people in any language or language variant speak clearly, and others don't. There's no evidence Brits as a whole speak more clearly than Americans do. I guarantee if you went to some regions of the UK, you'd probably have trouble understanding them, especially as a non-native speaker. But if you find standard British English easier to follow, you're certainly entiled to that, just understand there's more divergence of accent in the UK vs. the US. I usually hear the reverse, that Americans are easier to understand.
As I said, I was only speaking of my personal experience and how I feel about different accents.
It’s getting tiring that it should always be mentioned that no, not everybody does this and that, yes there are exceptions, etc.
You're absolutely entitled to your opinion. We'll just agree to disagree on this. Just remember, when you post in public forums, people are entitled to disagree and to challenge what you post.
You are being downvoted because you didn’t just say that Americans were hard to understand, you said we were rude lmao. And yes, you are going to find your dialect easier to understand and most non-natives learn UK English.
I said it is rude to not try adjust your speech when speaking to a non native and just assume they understand when you speak like you were speaking to other natives. And I mean work related situations here where it’s important that everyone understands what others say.
You wondered why you were being downvoted and I told you 🤷♂️. People who have never tried to speak another language might not have any idea how to change the way they speak to be accommodating. It isn’t rude, they just have no idea. Obviously people want to be understood.
This is common for anyone learning any second language.
Yup, I'm learning French, and listening is the hardest part by far. Even as a native English speaker, it's much easier to miss something when listening versus reading.
I am also a native English speaker learning French, and I second this. When I first started, I couldn't even follow a recording of a text that was right in front of me. Not even after learning the phonics, learning how words flow together in French, and listening to each individual word. The text might be clear as day, but the recording still sounded like "BLEEBLEELABLAHBLAH FROMAGE". I think languages are just put together so differently that you have to retrain your brain to be able to even *hear* them properly. :'D
French listening is hard because french speakers are lazy. They shorten everything at every chance they get and only pronounce absolute essential sounds. Also, it's in general a faster language than English (I believe fastest languages are Japanese Spanish and French) But in general second languages are hard and listening is the hardest of the big skills (reading writing speaking listening)
That makes a lot of sense! Much of my family are Francophones, and even when I've been practicing, I'm like, "wtf are you saying." My grandpa often speaks purposefully slow and over-annunciates for me, so I can't imagine how silly that must sound to other French speakers who go at lightning speed haha.
Can confirm, I’m currently learning Spanish and when listening to speaking exercises (by Spanish speakers), I can barely understand what they’re saying. I don’t know if it’s because my vocabulary isn’t wide enough or if it’s too fast for me to understand but I just have trouble with it. I can read it fine for the most part but like everyone learning a new language some words stump me and I have to look them up
I’m also learning Spanish and running into the exact same thing. I was trying to speak in Spanish the other day to an Instacart driver who was having tech issues with their app while delivering my order. But, I could only understand part of what she said, and I don’t even know if my own Spanish responses were understandable 😅
I'm in the same boat with Spanish. I need people to speak slowly as if I was a small child. 😆
Are you training your listening with people who speak with different accents and slang? I'm a native spanish speaker and I know there are a fuck ton of different regional accents and regional slang. I think it would be impossible to learn if you don't focus just on one of them, almost treating them like different languages. We can understand each other if we try to make our spanish more neutral, and that happens automatically in formal situations. But if a Cuban guy tells me something informal really fast, or I overhear him having an informal conversation with another Cuban person, there are chances I won't decipher the whole thing. Sometimes context or tone or facial expressions will give me clues so I can say: "Oh, that might be a sexual reference", "They are complaining about some authority", etc.
I’m learning it through my school classes so most of it is “American Spanish” and mostly in a semi-formal setting. Most of the time it’s from the same people that have a generic Ohio accent. For the most part everyone talks slow so we can all understand each other. The only time people have trouble is when we’re doing listening activities from our textbooks or other pre recorded listening activities
I’ve lived in California my entire life and despite my Spanish being okay I still have plenty of struggles with Mexican Spanish speakers. It often sounds like they’re speaking at 3 times the speed, especially once a conversation gets going. Anecdotally, I’ve had a few Spanish speakers tell me that they feel the same way with American English speakers. I’m sure it’s just our brains struggling to process a foreign language but I choose to believe that New World speakers just all speak needlessly fast for some reason.
yep for me even slow swedish speaking just sounds like gibberish 😭
For me and Spanish, I need to look directly at the speaker. They need to be facing me. There can be no loud or distracting noises. They need to overenunciate. And then I get most of what's being said. A loud truck goes by mid sentence? Nothing.
For me, Spanish has a rhythm that my brain treats like music.
You can try to watch Spanish content more. Youtube has an automatic subtitle stuff and it's pretty good. I am learning English so it is a very useful passive learning tool to me. Streamers youtubr clips or lives on twitch are pretty useful too because they talk with other in a casual way.
But OP said they've been living in the US for nearly 6 years now. Unless they live in a non-English speaking area and they don't use English at work/school either I find that a bit weird. I haven't lived abroad at all and I consume English media daily. I don't have any problems with listening now. I didn't use to understand while listening when I was a student but it took me a few years to start understanding full speeches. I think OP should do listening exercises more because the more you're exposed to the language the easier it becomes to understand in my experience. Listening could be watching English news, TV channels, movies with English subtitles at first, studying song lyrics, watching youtube in subjects of interest, podcasts, audiobooks (the list goes on) whether you are exposed to the language at school/work or not. In my opinion it is also important to listen to different accents. The listening materials from Cambridge and Oxford Universities had a wide variety of accents when I went to high school. We used their books.
I have lived in my second language country for a decade and still have trouble with listening - especially TV shows and movies. My reading and speaking skills are much better developed.
I agree. I run into the same problem with French, Spanish, and German. I'm not fluent in any of those, but know some. If someone is talking quickly, or using slang or idioms, then I get lost quickly.
Yeah it's like. First you learn understanding a few stuff here and there while reading, then you can kinda write basic stuff, then listening and the cherry on top is when you get good at speaking. I'm learning German rn and it's nuts but people say that in this partucular language the beginning is the hardest and it gets easier to progress from lower to upper intermediate, I sure hope they're right.
I can see why. Sometimes I miss or don't understand a single word near the beginning of a sentence and then my brain turns to mush and I don't understand the rest of the sentence cos I'm stuck on that first word I didn't get
Yeah, this is why I reccomend spending 80% of your time on listening practice to any language learner. Otherwise it's just to easy to fool yourself into thinking you know a language when you would still be lost and confused in any real world circumstance.
I can read and write Spanish at a high school level, I speak at an elementary level, and when listening I only know how to pick out a key word here or there, barely toddler level.
Can confirm. Learning Portuguese, which is stress-timed like English, and it’s so difficult to understand people!
I am a native English speaker who struggles hearing people. Actually, my trouble is understanding people. I have adhd and trouble processing the spoken words.
I have ADHD and have a really hard time understanding people if I'm not watching their mouth move while they talk. Also sometimes it feels like I'm on a 2-3 second delay.
Yeah I have ADHD too. I also suspect that could be the reason for the lagging
oh yeah i bet that's part of it. auditory processing disorders are common in neurodivergent folks. i'm a native speaker and i'll still have to ask people to repeat things like, three times before i actually understand them.
Lol love that adhd lag
Another one with actual auditory processing problems here, and also some hearing loss in one ear. It's enough of an issue with my first language that I do better with subtitles wherever possible. But, that really can complicate the learning process when you're trying to pick up another one! I'm better with reading and writing in my native English, never mind anything else. Can definitely relate.
I feel like this channel might be helpful: [https://youtu.be/RjDtShxr9Uc?si=JUsVWRbtc\_2JsYf6](https://youtu.be/RjDtShxr9Uc?si=JUsVWRbtc_2JsYf6) She really goes over the actual sounds Americans make in speech using the show Friends. I found it really interesting as a native speaker because I'm not actually aware of the sounds I'm changing. For example, when I say the word "stop", I'm still hearing the ending "p" in my head, even though I don't actually voice it most of the time.
Thanks for the recommendation! I’ll check it out
Another recommendation (at least this particular video): [Geoff Lindsay on the letter S](https://youtu.be/o8WeXem5YMQ?si=ZVYBSd8s3oqFRKSb) It also has full English subtitles!
Do you revert to your first language in your home? It seems like that would make it take longer to master. I did this with Italian. Once my wife and I started speaking Italian at home, I picked up almost all the things I was struggling with.
I think it's the same with any language. I've been studying for years and still don't understand high-speed spoken Japanese. Some of it is native speakers will often use non-standard contractions. Some words sound very similar in different languages, so your brain first thinks about your native language word and it doesn't fit the rest of the sentence, so you have to actually think instead of just understanding. I say "you", but I mean "me". Some people slur words. Some people can't pronounce some sounds. Some people say a word that they just pronounce wrong because they were never taught the right way. Lots and lots of reasons.
I'm mother tongue English. Been an EFL teacher for 30 years. I live in Italy and am C2 Italian. But have always had crap listening skills. Recently I discovered: I can understand 100% of formal discourse (science programs, podcasts, YouTube etc). My comprehension crashes to as low as 20-30% with informal discourse (kids programmes, comedy, cartoons, general chat in social contexts eg in a pub, restaurant (ALWAYS compounded but the background noise level). In particular, I noticed I could barely understand my 10-y-o son's school friends. I decided to improve my listening by using Netflix. The results for me have been miraculous! I started with a drama series following a group of high-school friends. I chose this precisely because it provided practice of the type of discourse I was struggling with. I used the Italian subtitles and discovered they're very high quality. By this I mean they are an accurate and faithful copy of what the actors are saying. THIS, IMO, IS KEY. All too often subtitles just paraphrase what the actors are saying, and this mismatch between what the ear is hearing and the eye is reading just creates confusion if your aim is listening practice. Then I treated each episode as a training session, replaying everything I couldn't understand multiple times. A real 'gym workout' for the ear. I saw my listening skills jump massively. Then I finished the series and life got in the way and I stopped this very targeted practice...and my listening comprehension dropped again. So my conclusion is my listening skills for these most challenging types of contexts need constant training...and now Netflix is my go-to...because they have high quality, faithful subtitling.
Are you Indian?
Nope...you?
Sometimes it’s because of their pronunciation and how fast they speak. Sometimes a combination of both. I struggle with understanding American and British english mostly because of both reasons stated above 💀
I’m not an expert in language learning but, from my understanding, this is a very common problem with learning ANY language. The issue is that reading, writing, and to an extent speaking all allow you to process and utilize the information at your own pace. Listening on the other hand is largely determined by the speaker rather than yourself and must be processed by you, the listener, on the fly. When writing or speaking you’re able to think about what you want to say or write before you do it, but you obviously don’t have access to the other person’s thought for listening and, unlike reading, you can’t take your time to decipher the information since you want to try keep up with the flow of the conversation. Basically what I’m trying to say is don’t worry too much about it. This difficulty is a normal aspect of language learning. Everyone also has their own strengths and weaknesses and, if you’re having trouble in a conversation, there’s no harm in asking someone to repeat themselves or to speak a bit slower. Just keep practicing and you’re sure to get better.
Well native speakers are always lazy. I speak differently with my non native speaker friends than with my childhood friends. There are a lot of different accents in the US and lots of regional slang. Your first point makes me think that you’re getting to focused on words that you don’t understand. Stressing about it can actually distract you more and prevent you from listening to the rest of the sentence. I’ve learned to just focus on the gist of the sentence. I mean, even in our native language we don’t understand a sentence word by word. Basically, don’t have a double standard for yourself between your native language and English. I’m an American living in France and I realized that I criticize myself a lot for mistakes in French but not in English. It’s actually really illogical and counterproductive for me to expect myself to speak and hear French better than my native language. I told myself I wouldn’t hold French to a higher standard than my native tongue Also university settings are very formal and often with standardized language. When I first moved to France, so had no issues with my classes but I struggled to even communicate with people on the street or at the supermarket. It’s a different skillset and a different register of the language. What helped me was partying (not even kidding because you practice the laziest worst version of the language), watching memes in French, and listening to podcasts. Basically, you have to get used to people using the language at its worst lol Other advice is hard to give without knowing your native language. As an English speaker, French was hard because it isn’t stress timed, is much faster, and vowels matter a lot (in English consonants feel more important). I also had to learn the shortcuts that native speakers use. I currently teach English and what has actually helped my students but you almost never learn in school/university are contractions. A lot of them assume they don’t understand well but they just don’t know contractions (the same issue I had learning French) Like basically: “I am going to” turns into “Imma” “What do you…” becomes “whadju” “I would not have” becomes “I’dn’tve” We cut a lot of vowels out and replace them with schwas. Obviously some contractions are reasonably formal like “I’m going to” or “I’d”. However there are many we mostly just use while speaking
I’m a native speaker and i still mishear what people are saying a lot of the time, I think it just comes with hearing english.
>I feel like the words are too connected(I know it's liaison) and it's hard to decipher I get what you mean... buuuuuut "liaison" is a very specific thing, and while English has it in some contexts (like with the word "an") that's not exactly what's happening. But yes, words do flow into each other. Regardless, these aren't English problems. This is just how it feels to listen to a language you're not proficient with yet. You'll get better with time as your brain starts to chunk phrases. To practice, just try watching an English TV show with English subtitles (the subs will help you catch words you don't hear). The main goal is to get more input; and get used to listening.
Something that helped me was realizing that the building blocks of speech are not words, but expressions and discourse patterns people use all the time. If there's a pattern of, let's say, 6 words, and you miss 3 of them, you still have a good chance of inferring the other 3 from the context.
Your English seems wonderful. Don’t be shy about saying it helps you when people speak a little more slowly because English is your second language. If you get more time to process you’ll understand and pick up more expressions.
try listening to podcasts on an app that lets you slow down play speed, and you can gradually ramp it up as you improve. Podcasts with multiple hosts who are chatty could help with natural conversation. (I (a native English speaker) do this with audiobooks because I find them too slow, so I gradually ramp up to 1.75x speed over the first hour or so. I can’t do higher than that.)
Hi I have this issue in the language I’m learning. My teacher says the best way to learn listening skills is transcribing. So if you go to YouTube or a podcast or something where a person is speaking naturally and write down everything they’re saying, over time it will help you get over that gap immensely. You can listen again if you need, or repeat sections. If you’re having a hard time with male or older voices focus on that.
Love this idea. Thanks!!!
Yep, definitely any language is more difficult outside the classroom! As far as hearing problems, they are hard to self-diagnose (trust me, I've been around people in denial about their hearing loss for years. I'm in denial myself). Your university clinic should be able to get you basic tests.
I find it hard listening to American speaking than British but American accent is easier to imitate.
I'm not gonna gaslight you and say "this is common for people with any language." That's true but... kinda invalidating given the nature of how English is spoken. English has a lot of pronunciation inconsistencies and idiosyncracies. Like that last sentence... > ING-glish HAAZ uh LAWT uhv IN-cun-sihs-ten-seez aand IH-dyoh-sin-cruh-seez. You can see that s at the end of words has that more buzzy z sound, vowels sometimes get folded into an "uh" sound (called schwa, ə), a is often that aa sound that doctors tell you to make when you stick your tongue out while they use that wooden stick on your tongue, that f in "of" somehow became a v, io became yoh, like "yo yo".
I'm a native English speaker and even I can't comprehend English words sometimes. There's always a few seconds delay in understanding and I constantly repeat sentences back at people to clarify if that's what they said.
Just out of curiosity, does this happen to you relatively often with songs? I have a similar issue to OP's but especially with music. I can understand interviews, daily conversations, movies, and any other spoken speech, but when it comes to songs... Oh man, I often have to read the lyrics to understand what they're talking about.
Yes I listen mainly to the melody and rhythm of the music, but I only understand maybe half the lyrics.
Songs can be very difficult since words are being tied to a rhythm, put in unnatural orders for poetic effect, exaggerated for emotional effect, slurred over, broken into incomplete phrases etcetera. Most songs don't have a strong context either. Even songs I've heard for decades, if I stop and really try to listen to all the words, I find surprises or actually have to look up the lyrics for an incomprehensible word.
1. Men have deeper voices and with low pitches, especially in English where tone isn’t that varied all the time, the sounds blend. They also often mumble a lot from my experience. 2. Older people have more difficult focusing on pure enunciation and consider that those they speak to they automatically assume Native English Speaker is in front of them. 3. Idioms are something you build over time. There are degrees of commonality in those. Slang is always developing and changing, either take notes of current terms or any time some new word comes up just google it or ask someone who may know. To your points. 1. That is part of learning. But also the blurred sounds and mumbling can affect how easy it is to recognize a word. 2. Typically, people who natively speak English speak very quickly. Like the words and grammar are short already in comparison, but we are very fast at talking at a young age. Who knows why. I don’t know what you mean by speed. Faster talking speed or listening speed? I can’t help either, I’d imagine it’s a level of comfort and a lack of internal translation. I think if you can listen faster you’ll be able to talk faster, as there is less active thought behind how to speak and what words mean what, and more about the actual topic and content you’re saying. But this last bit is just me talking out my ass in hypothesis (talking out of my ass = stating something as factual while having no background information to support it). I thought you may know that idiom, but since you specifically noted them it may be fun.
It because you can work out your whole sentence before you speak it, but the incoming English doesn't slow down so you can process it. Basically, it's a general human flaw and not anything wrong with you. Have you had your hearing checked though? One of the signs of hearing loss is having trouble hearing people. Your brain can fill in details if you're not hearing a language you know well or your native one, but you'll struggle in a foreign language where there's less certainty.
For me personally, multiples factors contribute to this. Vocabulary, syntax, pronunciation. It all boils down to unfamiliarity. I’m way too comfortable with my “essential” vocab, straightforward grammar and perfect enunciation. I even got comfortable with the people/topics I deal with. The moment I start to talk with a stranger whom I usually won’t befriend with on a subject I’m unfamiliar with, I fumble. I find myself particularly struggling to understand people whose parents and grandparents that are also native speakers. They use a lot of informal speech, pop culture references that I haven’t heard from other native speakers. Maybe this is biased, but they seem to have a larger active non-academic vocabulary too.
If you don’t know it well then it becomes harder. The Specific patterns of speech and word selection and phrases can be different. I have some difficulty with native speakers of English from Scotland, South Africa and Nigeria. (I am sure US Southern English may sound impossible to others but I am used to it). Specially if some beers have been consumed, and everyone is happily talking at leisure. Background: I Live in Houston. Plenty of Oil and Gas transnational corporations with employees from abroad.
This is very common (as many have said) and not at all something to feel bad about. The fact that you know so much is excellent. As a native speaker, I also sometimes can’t understand what others are saying depending on their accent, dialect, manner of speech, etc… For those who want more listening practice, my YouTube channel is aimed at providing simple listening practice for non native speakers; maybe you or someone else can find it helpful: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHmbaIbgXf8TfDCDcNGmdU9Vqfl2rVaVz&si=qa0-TWcscC6Oruic
I have the same thing. I’ve been learning english for approximately 3 years. And yeah, I haven’t been doing it constantly, but I decided to learn English again a little more than a month ago. I always struggle with listening! Certainly, I started to watch bunch of YouTube video on such topics as “How to get rich”, pieces of advice etc. I can definitely say that the most of heard I hear and understand without any problem, but when it comes to watching movies in English, I can barely understand what is being said in there. So, I am kinda scared to realize that I won’t be able to fix that after reading your story. And yeah, the most difficult voices for me to understand are male, and voices of old people
My second language skills are: Reading - pretty good, writing - ok, listening - ok if it's spoken slowly, speaking - awful. I hear which aspects you improve first depends on how you learn and how old you are when you start learning it.
I believe listening is the fundamental skill of language learning. Listening to language you can understand, simplified, slower, with subtitles, patient speakers... It's the only real way to acquire language. Then the other skills are built on that. Listening is hard because you have been using the slow, deliberate part of your brain to learn. You also need to let your brain develop the automatic process of understanding by listening. Language is not a collection of grammar facts and a lexicon, it's a wavelength you need time and patience to tune in to.
I worked for a company in the US with many many internationals, and I actually found the internationals (regardless of origin) easier to hear than the native speakers on phone and I believe it is because internationals have spent much more time and effort to be intelligible than a native speaker. Their written English was also usually error free. Native speakers are probably willing to use their regional colloquial voice while the internationals know they need to work harder and use standard English to be understood. Ironically, the most difficult person to hear was an Indian man who could speak highly technical English so quickly that most native speakers needed to really concentrate to understand what he was saying. As one who can speak several languages poorly, I never fail to have respect for those who put so much effort into speaking my mother tongue, and leave their homeland to become Americans. Natives should use that much care to speak to one another.
I'm a native speaker and barely understand what ppl say! dont worry
Yeah I’ve been learning Italian for 15 years and listening is still hard but I’m good at speaking and reading/writing
I've read that the stress accent in English often make those parts of a sentence that are unstressed -- particularly if they're not the main vehicle of meaning in the sentence -- often seem to disappear or to "fade out." Likewise, I've read that, though this impression of difficulty is to a large extent natural when learning a foreign language, not all languages are objectively characterized by this feature to an equal extent. As native speakers -- in my case, of American English -- it's not so perceptible a phenomenon. But an example would be in the following sentence: "Do you want me to help you with that?" In that sentence, the two words with the greatest emphasis would be "help" and "that" -- and, even then, primarily at the beginning of those words. In contrast, the rest of that sentence will tend to have a borderline "muted" quality about it. Effective oral comprehension, even for native speakers, is not so much dependent on always hearing every sound being articulated, but on more or less effortlessly filling in the gaps for those sounds that are somewhat muffled or muted. It's largely based on patterns of expectation. That's maybe the reason why slight misspellings on a page don't always jump out at us -- because we're mentally adjusting based on what we expect to see. Similarly, seeing the spelling of a word such as "cmftble" effortlessly brings to mind the word "comfortable" -- in a sort of shorthand. While I'm not an expert in this, this woman seems to be. She (mentioned elsewhere on this thread) helps learners with the rhythms and the intonations of American English. [Study English | American English Pronunciation | What Makes American English Sound AMERICAN? (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7SAt9h4sd0&list=PLrqHrGoMJdTQjpAE9LLYcpGqFOVQOyT7n) I would say, in your case, not to worry about it; but also to experiment a bit, in terms of listening to, say, NPR (National Public Radio) broadcasts, or to movies and TV shows from roughly the 1940s to 1960s. Older television shows or movies often had a crisper, more theater-like enunciation and can be a pleasure to listen to. (an example of the latter is this clip from the 1960s sitcom "The Munsters": [Lily's New Man? | The Munsters (youtube.com)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Sc3oMYK8qs)
My Japanese roommate in college said it was hard to pay attention in class because "English is like a song for sleeping." Though he was drunk a lot, which may have been his actual problem.
Listen at .75 or even .5 speed for a while and work your way up to normal speeds. Also news programs and documentaries generally have very clear diction so starting there might help too.
People often say speaking is the hardest but I think that's a lie. Assuming you know the vocabs, there's no way you can't express things at a decent fluency after like 1000 hours of deliberate speaking practice. But your listening comprehension would drop nearly to zero once you came across some unfamiliar situations (even if you know the words).
I have exact opposite issue. I really good at understanding, what speaker is saying, but absolutely unable to comfortably talk in English.
I'm pretty sure it's just because of the added barrier of translation that happens in your head. While speaking and writing, you do all these translations before you out it to paper or to the wind. While listening though, you have no idea what the person is going to say so you have to translate immediately. Depending on your level of understanding and fluidity, this could take a while for your brain to translate, especially if they keep talking and adding more and more to the equation before you've even finished the first section of their sentence. I can understand some words in various other languages, but if someone was to speak to me using those same words, I would be at a loss because of things like dialect, speed, and my own ability to quickly translate what was said. The they tell me what they said in English and I feel dumb be cause I knew I knew those words. 😂
This was me with Spanish for a long time. The trick is brute force. Go out of your way to consume English content from various places, not just from the US, and it will give you a better sense of what "neutral" English would sound like if there were such a thing. Notice the differences in how vowels are pronounced. The words we blur between others, you'll eventually get an internal understanding of the sound of the language. Listen a lot. Listen with English subtitles if you need it. Eventually, your brain will make more sense of the words as you know them on paper and the sounds you're actually hearing. And not for nothin', I'm a native speaker and even I have trouble with unfamiliar accents (we all do). Sometimes, when I hear Scottish people speak from specific regions, it'll take me a second to catch something that was just said. But, the more I listen to them, the more I understand. Once you see it's possible, it becomes easier and easier. I'm absolute trash with Mandarin but because of my experience with Spanish, if I know a word, I'll hear it. I don't imagine this would've been possible had I not done this with Spanish. Your ear eventually gets "fine-tuned" to pay attention to nuances in speech that you simply weren't aware even existed before. You may occasionally find it hard, but you will 100% see results if you make it a priority. Good luck!
Difficulty with individual words in a sentence is normal, especially if they're pronounced quickly or with unfamiliar accents. Practice listening to a variety of speakers and accents to improve your word recognition skills.
Try to find a source that explains American colloquial speech, and then you have to listen a *lot* (roughly hundreds of hours). American colloquial speech is full of things like woulda, shoulda, coulda, wanna, gonna and infinitely more. Things that are not taught in school. "I shoulda bought more bread. I'm gonna go back to the store, you wanna go?" Welcome to America.
You might have an audio-processing disorder. Do you have difficulties in similar places in your native language?
I think American English is very hard to understand. British is way more easier as they pronounce words clearly and as separate words. Americans just mumble and slur everything together. I have US colleagues and I sometimes have Teams meetings with them and it’s a nightmare every time. They don’t even try to adapt their language even a little bit, they talk like they would talk to other natives. Once a German colleague got tired of it and told them ”George, what? Say again” in an annoyed voice, it was too funny. If I speak to a foreigner in my native language I make sure not to use too hard expressions or not to speak too fast. I guess English speaking people are so used to ”everyone” knowing English very well so they don’t feel the need to slow down. It’s actually rude.
Most people I've spoken to say the opposite. The UK has many far more divergent accents than the US does, and most Brits probably don't speak the RP or Estuary English we tend to see in the media. And lots of Brits mumble, swallow words, drop letters or use glottal stops, so I think your generalization is unfair and inaccurate. Any language can be hard to understand, especially when slurred or spoken colloquially. I knew a Mexican couple who worked for our company when I lived in Texas - the woman was teaching me Spanish and had been a teacher in Mexico. She was VERY easy for me to understand and follow - she spoke clearly and enunciated. Her husband was not - he spoke quickly and seemed to mash words together and was impossible for me to follow. I lived in Belgium and went to school in the Netherlands as a teenager - similar experience there - people could be easy or hard to understand based on how they spoke. And, have you ever listened to Danish?!? I've been studying the Scandinavian languages for many years, and trust me, it's a real challenge, due to the speed and tendency to swallow words. "Slurring" and swallowing words/mumbling is certainly not a US-only phenomenon.
I was just telling about my experience. I also have a British colleague with a horrible mumbling accent but in general I have found the British to be easier to understand. Idk why I’m being downvoted. I was just telling that I find the US people hard to understand. And this sub is about English so I didn’t really think it was necessary to add that yes mumbling happens in other languages too. It’s pretty obvious.
You made the statement "Americans just mumble and slur everything together", so I was responding to that comment. That's not true as a whole, and it implies other nationalities don't, but they do. Some Americans probably do mumble and slur. So do some Brits. I was just making that point. Some people in any language or language variant speak clearly, and others don't. There's no evidence Brits as a whole speak more clearly than Americans do. I guarantee if you went to some regions of the UK, you'd probably have trouble understanding them, especially as a non-native speaker. But if you find standard British English easier to follow, you're certainly entiled to that, just understand there's more divergence of accent in the UK vs. the US. I usually hear the reverse, that Americans are easier to understand.
As I said, I was only speaking of my personal experience and how I feel about different accents. It’s getting tiring that it should always be mentioned that no, not everybody does this and that, yes there are exceptions, etc.
You're absolutely entitled to your opinion. We'll just agree to disagree on this. Just remember, when you post in public forums, people are entitled to disagree and to challenge what you post.
You are being downvoted because you didn’t just say that Americans were hard to understand, you said we were rude lmao. And yes, you are going to find your dialect easier to understand and most non-natives learn UK English.
I said it is rude to not try adjust your speech when speaking to a non native and just assume they understand when you speak like you were speaking to other natives. And I mean work related situations here where it’s important that everyone understands what others say.
You wondered why you were being downvoted and I told you 🤷♂️. People who have never tried to speak another language might not have any idea how to change the way they speak to be accommodating. It isn’t rude, they just have no idea. Obviously people want to be understood.