what american accent(s) do non-americans have the most difficulty understanding?

I'm pretty damn good at understanding UK regional accents, I've been around (glaswegian is tough though).

haha yeah i was gonna say 'bawmaw'.

I have encountered American border guards at the Windsor/Detroit border and also Vancouver/Seattle(ish) border that were completely incomprehensible to me, and yet have very little problem understanding thick Glaswegian Patter or very coloquial Irish English.

Last night I watched an American documentary about Appalachian folk musicians that was subtitled, for it's American audience.

My Liverpudlian father in law admitted he couldn't understand most of what I said the first time we met, and he also watches Seinfeld DVDs with the subtitles on.

I'd have to say, in my experience, people from the South East of England are the worst I've ever met at understanding other people's accents.

Texans, it really depends which bit of Texas they're from, some are intelligible (I think that's if they're from Dallas or Houston or other big cities) but others? Jeez, might as well be from Mars.

If people would make more of an effort to talk at an understandable speed, I'd make more of an effort to understand them.

Seriously, I have been in parts of Merky that have accused us of having "that Yurpean accent" DESPITE BEING FROM DIFFERENT COUNTRIES.

I got quite good at deciphering the usual Harvard A flattened New England accent, but people from Maine are, like, from another century, pre-Great Vowel Shift.

I think it's similar to Newfies being unintelligible, ever to other Canadians.

I think what someone else said is true, though, that British people can understand American accents pretty easily because we hear them every day through the media, whereas until relatively recently you didn't get many genuine/strong regional Brtish accents in British films or TV programmes. The northern accents in the kitchen sink dramas from the early 60s, or 'Whatever Happened To The Likely Lads' in the 70s, seem to have been watered right down to make sure everyone can understand them, and the Scottish accents used in the film of Trainspotting didn't seem as full on as they should have been (I was expecting something more like this.

I was startled to find out that (some) Okies sound more southern than southerners. I had a long phone conversation with a guy from near Enid and for about a half hour I thought he was making fun of me, but I finally realized that's really how he talked.

30? try 75-80!

oirish, scouse, northern england i can do just fine, but that's because that's where my family lives.

tho, the guy in the gas station on I'm Alan Partridge is totally Mars to me.

Deep South is pretty hard sometimes.

b-b-but they're 3 different accents! you can totally tell north shore from southie and a down east maine accent is a total different beast.

new hampshire accents are good, too

xp i don't think i've ever heard a pittsburgh accent

That's not the clearest post I've ever made. Anyway - some links or sound files to all these Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Maine etc accents would be handy.

Still looking for examples of American ones.

Pittsburgh is definatly on its own shit, iirc.

I grew up all over the states, (7 years midwest/kansas, 5 in south shore massachusetts, 5 in arizona, 7 in chicago, Hawaii for the last six months). People always be asking me crazy shit about my accent... like if I'm from Europe or the South (though that could have something to do with my name).

I got 10/10, but I got pretty lucky guessing one of them was Punjabi.