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Do people find difficult listening this accent?

Cioccu97
Hi there! I’m trying to improve my listening skill, but I find this podcast really difficult to understand. Is it normal? What kind of accent is this? I often watch streamings and videos on youtube and twitch, which I usually understand without effort. https://youtu.be/miBv33a1Lh8?si=nZZHoWImSc8pF4Q4 What should I do? Thanks guys!

14 comments

vandenhof
I don't think the accent is particularly unusual, but I agree with u/Mcby that the person in your example seems to have acquired a habit of not enunciating clearly. This is probably what it giving you the most trouble.
blackcherrytomato
I'm Canadian and could understand them from the short bit I listened to, except the really fast intro. Abroad was difficult to make out and despite listening 3 times life in Japan sounds like loaf in Japan.
OkAsk1472
With Chris, I can tell sometimes he switches from more careful well-pronounced television speech to more informal conversational, which is always a bit more muttery. The latter is always harder to understand at first, so it just takes more time, but it comes with frequent listening
rebekoning
I’m a native speaker from the U.S. I find the accent to be pleasant, but I definitely have to concentrate more to understand it and when I play the video at a faster speed it definitely gets trickier 
SnooDonuts6494
It's much easier for me to understand him than it is for me to understand Americans. That's because I'm English.
nothingbuthobbies
There are definitely some accents in the UK that are occasionally difficult for me, an American, to understand, but these guys don't have them. Both were very clear to me. Just keep exposing yourself to a lot of accents, and use subtitles as much as possible. It'll come eventually.
Evil_Weevill
So those are two different British accents but neither seem that hard to understand for me. I'm American. I do listen to a fair bit of British media, so that might color my perception of this, but I didn't find either speaker to be difficult to understand. If you learned American English as a second language and aren't used to hearing British accents I can see how that might make it a little difficult to understand. If you want to be able to understand British accents, you just need to spend more time listening to various better British accents.
Turfader
If you want some more exposure, if it piques your interest, I’d recommend the Trash Taste podcast. The main hosts speak with British, Welsh, and Australian accents. They’ve had both Pete and Chris as guests several times if you want to use those episodes as a starting point
Inevitable_Ad3495
Switch on closed captions and see if it helps. Also, you can try slowing down the playback speed. Best of luck.
RateHistorical5800
the first one sounds really adenoidal, the second one just speaks fast and has a slightly odd rhythm to his speech. I think YouTube can encourage a lot of people to speak at a speed that's slightly too fast for them - may that's happening here? Otherwise you could easily bump into people in the UK who sound like this.
Mcby
If you mean the first speaker: it sounds like a pretty typical South East England accent to me, perhaps a bit posh and he does tend to mumble his words a bit. I'm a native speaker from this part of the UK and don't find this hard to understand, I can see how the slight mumbling might make it a bit more difficult but I would describe this as a very typical accent for someone from this part of the UK. Is there any particular section you're struggling with?
LotusGrowsFromMud
This guy has a YouTube channel Abroad in Japan. He is definitely easier to understand on that channel and doesn’t talk as quickly as the one you’ve linked to here. Maybe try that one first to tune your ear to his accent.
skizelo
It's 2 different English accents. The main host, Chris Broad is born in Kent, I think it's just a southern English accent. The co-host, Pete Donaldson (moustache and glasses guy) was born in Hartlepool, so more north of England. They're both speaking pretty quickly, they talk over each other, and they change registers quite a lot. Sometimes they speak in an "announcer voice" and then they switch into a more personable muttering.
robopilgrim
This sounds like a southern English accent, which is one of the easier of the British accents to understand, but it might be different if you’re used to non-British accents. Also your title should either be “Do people find understanding this accent difficult?” or “Do people find it difficult to understand this accent?”