text: why don't the british speak (better: pronounce) proper english? when i travelled around the world i could talk to almost everybody in english (with a dutch accent obviously). however only the british (and to a lesser degree the aussies and kiwi's, but not the americans) were so hard to understand. and i was not the only one who experienced that. how come? ignore the insulting answers. the reason you have difficulty with english is because in england we have very strong regional accents and even english people have difficulty understanding each other sometimes. the strongest accents are those in london (cockney), birmingham (black country). north east (geordie). devon and cornwall (west country), liverpool (scouse) and north (lancashire and yorkshire). for example in london the word 'face' might sound like 'fice', in birmingham 'time' will sound like 'toime' and 'tea' will sound like 'toy'. in liverpool 'work' will sound like 'werk'. in the north east 'go down there' will come out as 'gan dan yan'. in the west country 'i like that' would sound like 'oi loike tha'. in lancashire and yorkshire the accent is very flat and letters left out so 'where are you going?' would come out as 'wer yer goin?'. also lots of people now don't pronounce their words correctly, the most irritating example being the dropping of the letter 't' from words such as 'party' which sounds like 'par'y'. also in some parts of the country they speak so that when they finish their sentences they use an upward inflection, like the aussies, so that the sentence sounds almost like a question.  by the way i've visited holland and it's a beautiful place. i enjoyed my stay there immensely and amsterdam is a great city. the people there seemed to speak english better than most english people.