Originally Posted by forty2j
Also bear in mind that between english-speaking peoples, there is a lot of disconnect in common phrases and such. As an American, it took quite some time before I could easily parse the meaning of my colleagues from the sub-continent. Even common words like "doubt" get used in very different ways..
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Lol, I know that feeling. It can be difficult to understand dialects that are spoken some parts of one's country let along other countries. I was born and raised in Montana then spent eight years in Utah. My accent is fairly generic due to the Pacific Northwest/Utah linguistic melting pot. However some of my relatives are from Appalachia (North Carolina panhandle) and I don't have much of a hope in trying to understand their dialect. Same thing with many English speakers from the Indian subcontinent. I get along better with Irish, Scottish and Australian English speakers than I do with Appalachian or Indian/Pakistani/Bangladeshi English. In my experience in dealing with English speakers from around the world, accent can play a big role in understanding your speaker in addition to the dialect. Understand the dialect is one thing, however if there is a pronounced (to the listener's ear) accent, then that accent just compounds the difficulty in trying parse the speaker's language.