<story><title>Ghoti</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>petercooper</author><text>I worked in California for a while and something that kept throwing people off was that I pronounce my &amp;quot;t&amp;quot;s in the English way rather than drop them to &amp;quot;d&amp;quot;s. So it&amp;#x27;s buTTer and not &amp;#x27;budder&amp;#x27;, thirTy not &amp;#x27;thirdy&amp;#x27;, etc. Once I started dropping them to &amp;quot;d&amp;quot;s too, things improved significantly, and I can see why a lot of British YouTubers and geeks develop this &amp;#x27;trans-Atlantic&amp;#x27; affectation.&lt;p&gt;Another funny one I ran into a few times was how for a time like 8:30, we&amp;#x27;d say &amp;quot;half eight&amp;quot; in the UK, but when I would casually say this in the US people would be like &amp;quot;half eight? you mean four?&amp;quot; It had never occurred to me this common British parlance would be unintelligible elsewhere. Of course, there are just as many things the other way around, although watching a lot of US TV will take care of that.</text></item><item><author>egypturnash</author><text>American English speakers can have trouble understanding British English speakers too, fwiw. Mostly due to some dramatically different slang and pronunciation rather than use of more obscure words though.</text></item><item><author>dakiol</author><text>As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans&amp;#x2F;British.&lt;p&gt;I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the moment our British colleagues join the conversation, then our understanding decreases to around 70%: either because of the usage of &amp;quot;fancy&amp;quot; words or because of pronunciation.&lt;p&gt;Besides, since we all make the same mistakes when speaking English, we understand each other without asking &amp;quot;sorry, what do you mean?&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>Kim_Bruning</author><text>Oh wow, it actually &lt;i&gt;is&lt;/i&gt; 8:30 in English. How interesting!&lt;p&gt;In dutch, half eight is 7:30 too.&lt;p&gt;7:40 is weird: &amp;quot;ten over half eight&amp;quot;</text></comment>
<story><title>Ghoti</title><url>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghoti</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>petercooper</author><text>I worked in California for a while and something that kept throwing people off was that I pronounce my &amp;quot;t&amp;quot;s in the English way rather than drop them to &amp;quot;d&amp;quot;s. So it&amp;#x27;s buTTer and not &amp;#x27;budder&amp;#x27;, thirTy not &amp;#x27;thirdy&amp;#x27;, etc. Once I started dropping them to &amp;quot;d&amp;quot;s too, things improved significantly, and I can see why a lot of British YouTubers and geeks develop this &amp;#x27;trans-Atlantic&amp;#x27; affectation.&lt;p&gt;Another funny one I ran into a few times was how for a time like 8:30, we&amp;#x27;d say &amp;quot;half eight&amp;quot; in the UK, but when I would casually say this in the US people would be like &amp;quot;half eight? you mean four?&amp;quot; It had never occurred to me this common British parlance would be unintelligible elsewhere. Of course, there are just as many things the other way around, although watching a lot of US TV will take care of that.</text></item><item><author>egypturnash</author><text>American English speakers can have trouble understanding British English speakers too, fwiw. Mostly due to some dramatically different slang and pronunciation rather than use of more obscure words though.</text></item><item><author>dakiol</author><text>As a non-English speaker, I find the English spoken by non-native speakers far easier to understand and deal with than the English spoken by Americans&amp;#x2F;British.&lt;p&gt;I work with Germans, Italians, Spaniards, French, Dutch and I understand them 99% of the time. We use &amp;quot;normal&amp;quot; words (we are not fancy regarding vocabulary) and pronounce them in a non-native way (the way all Europeans that speak English understand)... But the moment our British colleagues join the conversation, then our understanding decreases to around 70%: either because of the usage of &amp;quot;fancy&amp;quot; words or because of pronunciation.&lt;p&gt;Besides, since we all make the same mistakes when speaking English, we understand each other without asking &amp;quot;sorry, what do you mean?&amp;quot;</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>biztos</author><text>I’m from California and I had an Irish colleague there who, despite otherwise being amazingly well integrated, stuck to a hard “t” for certain cases of “th.”&lt;p&gt;So for instance if I might say “These three things,” he would say “these tree things.”&lt;p&gt;He was clearly able to make the sounds but in some cases he couldn’t. I never felt comfortable asking about it because I thought it might be a class thing.</text></comment>