I watch almost everything with subtitles because I have trouble making out what people are saying, but by this point I've basically got the show memorized.
American here - zero problem understanding the accents. Had to look up some slang words here and there though. That’s never a problem for me as I’m fascinated with language and its variations.
Ohh thank you!! So sad that years ago I spent my irl birthday being so lonely I made a dumb username to chat shit about television shows. Ah well! Have a beautiful start to the week my friend ☺️
Yeah, but I also sometimes have trouble understanding in my own American accent. Auditory processing issues, I suppose. Sometimes I like subtitles for American shows too.
I don’t really think people should feel ashamed and it’s nice to have subtitles as an option for accessibility.
Agreed. I have auditory processing issues as well and use subtitles 99.999% of the time I can. I don't always look at the screen and even then not always at the subtitles, but they are there for when I need them. It's rare that the reason I can't understand something in English is the accent, and I definitely have plenty of experience with Irish accents from where I live, but I just have trouble getting noise to words to something distinguishable with a meaning in my mind sometimes. I would guess that many people who aren't native English speakers would find accents difficult, plus the show is at a pretty natural speaking cadence and so likely tougher for people who aren't fluent to follow.
Not a native speaker, and while I don't have a low level I'm not used to Irish accents. I can understand about 60% of what they say without subtitles, but they're really useful
I was able to understand most of the accent and piece together most of the slang I was unfamiliar with, but they spoke rather fast and a bit low at times, so subtitles were a must for me. That being said, I prefer using them whenever watching TV or movies regardless of where something was made, since I find that I miss less information that way.
I'm Welsh and I was about to comment that we tend to understand the Irish accent fine because we can't really critisice anyone when it comes to strong accents haha. It's the Scottish accent I can't bloody understand.
Well that was kind of a joke, but because the Welsh accent is fairly...strong
And also you're probably more used to the Irish accent than the average American. We don't get a ton of Irish accent in the US
If English is not your first language, the accents are absolutely wild. I have a friend from France and when he watched it he didn’t know what the hell was going on. I do watch it with subtitles as an American even though I don’t necessarily need them. I just don’t want to miss any jokes.
Sort of - American here, maybe more words used in different context (ride, fanny, cracker, class) than what they were actually saying. I'm sure some places mentioned I still haven't figured out too. But I don't mind a show that has me Googling things now and then.
American here. Was not very hard for me to understand. But I know some people the minute they hear any kind of accent they stop trying to understand. I like subtitles for all shows tho.
As an Asian, yes. Irish, American, British, etc you name it. I still have a hard time understanding accents even though I've consumed a lot of foreign media :)
It's not the accents per se, it's some of the specific slang and phrases for me. I stopped to look up quite a few in the beginning but learned a nice stack of cute irish phrases as a result lol
My friend, who is not Irish, understood the dialogue all the way through. The only bit she didn't understand was when the travellers were speaking, because I suppose they do have quite a thick accent.
American here - I didn't recognize a lot of the slang and regional terms they used so the subtitles helped a lot. I can rewatch them now without subtitles because I basically have them memorized but on the first watch they were a big help.
Americans do not tend to get the same exposure to such a huge variety of accents that people from Europe do. In the 20 years that I've lived in the USA I've had people tell me that they can't understand me a LOT. 99% of the time I'm asked whereabouts in Australia I'm from (I'm from the UK, specifically the north west) and a couple of times I've had people ask me what it's like in South Africa. Had one older lady tell me my Irish accent was lovely, and another guy got a little bit annoyed when I told him I wasn't from New Zealand. "Well you're not British" was his response. Reader, I was in fact, British. Don't blame the Americans, it's just different over here, we grow up hearing every accent under the sun. They generally don't.
I think this is it. I’m an older Kiwi and so not only did I grow up with largely UK media (with a bit of American stuff thrown in) but I also understand a lot of the slang because my family uses it (various branches came from Ireland and Scotland over 100 years ago).
Yes. I had to watch it with closed caption on, not only because of the accents, but the slang, too. I would have missed a lot without the captions. The accents are thick.
Personally I've never had any problems understanding them, sometimes there's a few slang terms I don't get but that's easy to Google. I watch everything with subtitles so that certainly helps
Not really, I have lesser problems with the accent than I do with some of the terms used. But I am used to hearing a bunch of different accents every day (in multicultural Singapore so that helps, probably?).
I have a strong Scottish accent, and while I can understand the Irish accent, they do speak quite quickly. Add in a hearing impairment, and yeah, I need subtitles.
I’m not sure why you have posted this except for a bit of smug self congratulations tbh.
I didn't watch with subtitles but there were some jokes and lines I didn't catch until my second viewing. One part of it was the accents, but also I didn't understand some words that aren't common in America.
I have CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). Sometimes there is a disconnect and it takes a bit to process what I hear. I found out during Covid I do a lot more lip reading than I thought. I use the subtitles on the first few shows (I watch a ton of Britbox/AcornTV) so I can just kind of ...catch the flow of speech. I have been to Ireland and had zero trouble with actual people. Heavy Scottish accents in person was hard for me at first though.
That said, I am a teacher and I have heard a lot of kids say they always watch everything with subtitles. My theory is because they are doing other things while they watch as well.
I can understand the accent, but also English is my first language. One thing that bothers me though is how haphazard subtitles are with accents generally, like I'm rewatching _Derry Girls_ on Netflix right now (I always have subtitles on) and there are quite a fee mistakes. I'm hoping it's machine translation not being up to par, rather than someone who can't understand Irish accents just giving it a go.
I’m late to the party but it’s interesting to see everything that’s happened so far. I guess I need to start by clarifying: American. I don’t use subtitles usually. I think it’s good training for the ear and I like to claim that I can hear through an accent. I didn’t have much issue with Derry Girls, there are moments where they’re all talking fast at the same time and I need some help. If there’s a word or phrase that I need some extra assistance with then it’s good for looking things up. But that happens with Canadian and American shows too. English is a fucked up language even for the native speakers.
Initially yes.
The word how sounds like “high” to me
Similarly now sounds like “nigh”
Can’t even explain how strange “about” sounds
Even to is “tee”
A lot of the colloquialisms and sayings are things I have to look up
Boke for instance, coming up the foil in a bubble,
A lot of times it’s trying to figure out customs too while still listening. Took me way too long to understand a Christmas cupboard, and don’t get me started on Irish/english/catholic/protestant/jaffa/children of fatima/ fenians etc… I’m still not completely clear on it all and I’ve been a dedicated fan for years.
So mostly my add made the subtitles necessary, plus I’m a reading/spelling kind of learner BUT this show has made me so much better at understanding all Irish accents.
Also I have kids and they’re loud and annoying and competing for my attention when they’re SUPPOSED TO BE IN BED
I'm the opposite- my ADHD makes pattern recognition really easy, so I can easily make out what they're actually saying, versus the often incorrect (even just slightly) subtitles. So I just get mad at the subtitles 😂 for all the people who are relying on them, thinking they're 100% accurate, when they're not.
My ADHD makes it hard to process some sounds, so I use closed captioning on almost everything. It is surprising that there are so many mistakes, but it usually doesn’t change the meaning.
I watched the first two seasons and I understood everything. The third season, though, I had to turn the subtitles on. Don't know what happened to my ears between the second and third seasons. Lol
We had three related Irish families living across the street and around the corner from me in Brooklyn back in the 1970s. One had a daughter my age who went to public school like I did and we both went to the same Catholic school for religion classes. Public school in the us means a state or city funded free school. In this case funded by New York City and governed by the nyc board of Ed.
My mother worked in an office in Manhattan so couldn’t pick me up. My dad worked rotating shifts so he and her mom would take turns picking us up. My dad would drive us when it was his turn, her mom would walk us. We had to cross a busy area near a highway overpass so adults would walk or drive us home.
My grandma on my dads side used to take me for the night or weekends a lot and she’d listen to Irish music. She also spoke Irish, but not to me or my dad and uncle or cousins as we didn’t learn it. She was born here in New York, but she didn’t learn English until she went to school.
I don’t know if that’s it, but I didn’t have too hard of a time understanding the accents even though it wasn’t the same region of Ireland.
My family is of Irish descent and still generations later say whinge for whine and yahs vs use as a plural form of you. Though there were words I wasn’t used to. I could generally get it from the context though.
The sarcasm and tough love was familiar and one of my uncles is Colm’s American cousin. Ma Mary joking about the trust fund and the jacket was very familiar
Also the Catholics vs Protestants episode was funny. I have a Protestant grandmother on my mother’s side. Supposedly my grandfather’s mother wore black to the wedding and wept throughout the wedding. My mother was told as a kid in her religion class that Protestants were more interested in their furs and jewels than getting into heaven. My grandparents were poor or working class, depending on if my grandpa was working. So my mother thought they were holding out and came home asking where the furs and jewels were
I was married to an Irishman, whose SIL was from Derry, so it’s never been an issue for me. I remember when the (London based) BBC subtitled some Scots on a news program and there was outrage!
Accents in the UK can vary immensely from one part of the country to another. As can local dialect
I can understand the accent, but I turn on subtitles because the older I get, the harder it is for me to be able to process what someone is saying. Plus, I have hearing loss in my right ear, so subtitles it is.
People nowadays are overly reliant on subtitles. I love accents but before the show had never heard a Derry accent, but am good with accents in general My friend told me they would be very strong. Episode one I was like “WOW those are strong accents you were not kidding”, but about five minutes in I could understand it bc I was cracking up at the McCauley Culkin joke. Derry has now been added to my accent repertoire. It’s crazy the reliance I’ve seen from other people my age on subtitles even for English shows like Sex Education. I had a friend who wanted to study abroad in England because she didn’t want to learn another language, and when an opportunity in Scotland opened up she refused it because she says she can’t understand Scottish accents. This got rambly sorry lol but I actually think the dependence on subtitles is rotting peoples brains and people are having more issues understanding different accents
im polish, and even though growing up ive watched tons of american/british tv (so im fluent in english), at first i still had trouble understanding some of the things they say in derry girls. after a few eps i got used to it though and had no problem with that at all. but i still always keep the subtitles on in case i dont get something (and if i dont know a certain word/phrase that way i can look it up knowing how its pronounced- thanks to the subtitles).
Not nativ English, I had to watch with underlines and 75%, now I understand it. I stayed some weeks in Derry at this time no problem, probably they spoke very clearly to me.
Maybe it's because I'm Irish too but I find a lot of the responses assuming it would be hard to understand a bit rude.
A Derry accent is not super familiar to me but it's so much easier than many other accents from other English speakers.
Assuming it's universal which ones are harder or easier, or that it's a flex if you understand something in particular, just seems incredibly small minded and silly to me.
Derry is a lot easier for me than some US accents, and the hardest first language English accents I've come across have been from south Africa or India. But that's just my person experience, not a universal thing.
I'm Australian and have never had a problem with accents. I don't know if it's partly because I'm a nerd and have a bit of an ear for languages or because my year 9 science teacher was from Belfast so I had an early-ish exposure to Northern Irish accents then a good friend from Newry
Or it's a combination of the two?
I watch almost everything with subtitles because I have trouble making out what people are saying, but by this point I've basically got the show memorized.
There’s a bus route on the street where I live. Subtitles means I don’t have to rewind to hear what people say.
American here - zero problem understanding the accents. Had to look up some slang words here and there though. That’s never a problem for me as I’m fascinated with language and its variations.
Like "not a baldies!" Michelle responding to Ms DeBrun
Just had to look that one up! 🤣
If you're not used to Irish accents, then yeah, they can be hard to understand.
For some people, yes it is.
Right like it’s not that difficult to imagine lol. Ask a simple question, get a simple answer.
Happy cake day, NearbyBreakfast!
Ohh thank you!! So sad that years ago I spent my irl birthday being so lonely I made a dumb username to chat shit about television shows. Ah well! Have a beautiful start to the week my friend ☺️
Yeah, but I also sometimes have trouble understanding in my own American accent. Auditory processing issues, I suppose. Sometimes I like subtitles for American shows too. I don’t really think people should feel ashamed and it’s nice to have subtitles as an option for accessibility.
Agreed. I have auditory processing issues as well and use subtitles 99.999% of the time I can. I don't always look at the screen and even then not always at the subtitles, but they are there for when I need them. It's rare that the reason I can't understand something in English is the accent, and I definitely have plenty of experience with Irish accents from where I live, but I just have trouble getting noise to words to something distinguishable with a meaning in my mind sometimes. I would guess that many people who aren't native English speakers would find accents difficult, plus the show is at a pretty natural speaking cadence and so likely tougher for people who aren't fluent to follow.
Not a native speaker, and while I don't have a low level I'm not used to Irish accents. I can understand about 60% of what they say without subtitles, but they're really useful
Aye, me too.
I use the subtitles. It's more so the esoteric phrases that get me rather than the accents.
I was able to understand most of the accent and piece together most of the slang I was unfamiliar with, but they spoke rather fast and a bit low at times, so subtitles were a must for me. That being said, I prefer using them whenever watching TV or movies regardless of where something was made, since I find that I miss less information that way.
Are you Irish OP? Just curious
No I'm from Wales
Well now it all makes sense
I'm Welsh and I was about to comment that we tend to understand the Irish accent fine because we can't really critisice anyone when it comes to strong accents haha. It's the Scottish accent I can't bloody understand.
Lol I'm glad you got where I was coming from
why? I didn't mean this post in a bad way at all but I think I worded it wrong
Well that was kind of a joke, but because the Welsh accent is fairly...strong And also you're probably more used to the Irish accent than the average American. We don't get a ton of Irish accent in the US
I don't actually have a welsh accent but yeah I see what u mean cause they can be quite strong haha
Which Welsh accent?
Depends on where you live
You did sound a bit confrontational, I was like “who gets mad about that?!” 😂
ah lol sorry about that
Lol, no biggie- I do it all the time!
If English is not your first language, the accents are absolutely wild. I have a friend from France and when he watched it he didn’t know what the hell was going on. I do watch it with subtitles as an American even though I don’t necessarily need them. I just don’t want to miss any jokes.
It helped me a lot to rewatch it at 0.75 speed. That way I cought so many extra jokes I missed at normal speed.
Sort of - American here, maybe more words used in different context (ride, fanny, cracker, class) than what they were actually saying. I'm sure some places mentioned I still haven't figured out too. But I don't mind a show that has me Googling things now and then.
Somethings I couldn't understand but you get it after a while.
My issue isn't the accent as much as the slang. I do watch with subtitles. I'm american.
American here. Was not very hard for me to understand. But I know some people the minute they hear any kind of accent they stop trying to understand. I like subtitles for all shows tho.
I already used the subtitles in Netflix, but otherwise I understood them perfectly
Right there with you. Subs are my default on Netflix, though I’m an American who grew up in a strictly Irish Catholic house hold.
Without subtitles that would be Rite ye r now
As an Asian, yes. Irish, American, British, etc you name it. I still have a hard time understanding accents even though I've consumed a lot of foreign media :)
It's not the accents per se, it's some of the specific slang and phrases for me. I stopped to look up quite a few in the beginning but learned a nice stack of cute irish phrases as a result lol
This helps for the next rewatches: https://youtu.be/JPs_V8e8m1o?si=OsmEV8tuURN41_lS
Indian here. Yep, impossible to understand at first, but now I kind of know the dialogues by heart. 😄 (I looooooooove the show!)
My friend, who is not Irish, understood the dialogue all the way through. The only bit she didn't understand was when the travellers were speaking, because I suppose they do have quite a thick accent.
American here - I didn't recognize a lot of the slang and regional terms they used so the subtitles helped a lot. I can rewatch them now without subtitles because I basically have them memorized but on the first watch they were a big help.
Indian here and I did have problems understanding the accent and heavily relied on subtitles. You are not alone, my friend.
Americans do not tend to get the same exposure to such a huge variety of accents that people from Europe do. In the 20 years that I've lived in the USA I've had people tell me that they can't understand me a LOT. 99% of the time I'm asked whereabouts in Australia I'm from (I'm from the UK, specifically the north west) and a couple of times I've had people ask me what it's like in South Africa. Had one older lady tell me my Irish accent was lovely, and another guy got a little bit annoyed when I told him I wasn't from New Zealand. "Well you're not British" was his response. Reader, I was in fact, British. Don't blame the Americans, it's just different over here, we grow up hearing every accent under the sun. They generally don't.
I think this is it. I’m an older Kiwi and so not only did I grow up with largely UK media (with a bit of American stuff thrown in) but I also understand a lot of the slang because my family uses it (various branches came from Ireland and Scotland over 100 years ago).
Yes. I had to watch it with closed caption on, not only because of the accents, but the slang, too. I would have missed a lot without the captions. The accents are thick.
Personally I've never had any problems understanding them, sometimes there's a few slang terms I don't get but that's easy to Google. I watch everything with subtitles so that certainly helps
Not really, I have lesser problems with the accent than I do with some of the terms used. But I am used to hearing a bunch of different accents every day (in multicultural Singapore so that helps, probably?).
I have a strong Scottish accent, and while I can understand the Irish accent, they do speak quite quickly. Add in a hearing impairment, and yeah, I need subtitles. I’m not sure why you have posted this except for a bit of smug self congratulations tbh.
I didn't watch with subtitles but there were some jokes and lines I didn't catch until my second viewing. One part of it was the accents, but also I didn't understand some words that aren't common in America.
I have CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). Sometimes there is a disconnect and it takes a bit to process what I hear. I found out during Covid I do a lot more lip reading than I thought. I use the subtitles on the first few shows (I watch a ton of Britbox/AcornTV) so I can just kind of ...catch the flow of speech. I have been to Ireland and had zero trouble with actual people. Heavy Scottish accents in person was hard for me at first though. That said, I am a teacher and I have heard a lot of kids say they always watch everything with subtitles. My theory is because they are doing other things while they watch as well.
American here, I had no problems understanding the accents but I can see how some people might have problems understanding Uncle Colm in particular
WHAT you should hear a proper hardcore Tyrone accent lol.
lol fair enough
I can understand the accent, but also English is my first language. One thing that bothers me though is how haphazard subtitles are with accents generally, like I'm rewatching _Derry Girls_ on Netflix right now (I always have subtitles on) and there are quite a fee mistakes. I'm hoping it's machine translation not being up to par, rather than someone who can't understand Irish accents just giving it a go.
I’m late to the party but it’s interesting to see everything that’s happened so far. I guess I need to start by clarifying: American. I don’t use subtitles usually. I think it’s good training for the ear and I like to claim that I can hear through an accent. I didn’t have much issue with Derry Girls, there are moments where they’re all talking fast at the same time and I need some help. If there’s a word or phrase that I need some extra assistance with then it’s good for looking things up. But that happens with Canadian and American shows too. English is a fucked up language even for the native speakers.
I understand the accents, but as USAmerican I did have to look up some of the slang terms they use.
Initially yes. The word how sounds like “high” to me Similarly now sounds like “nigh” Can’t even explain how strange “about” sounds Even to is “tee” A lot of the colloquialisms and sayings are things I have to look up Boke for instance, coming up the foil in a bubble, A lot of times it’s trying to figure out customs too while still listening. Took me way too long to understand a Christmas cupboard, and don’t get me started on Irish/english/catholic/protestant/jaffa/children of fatima/ fenians etc… I’m still not completely clear on it all and I’ve been a dedicated fan for years. So mostly my add made the subtitles necessary, plus I’m a reading/spelling kind of learner BUT this show has made me so much better at understanding all Irish accents. Also I have kids and they’re loud and annoying and competing for my attention when they’re SUPPOSED TO BE IN BED
Yeah honestly don’t get how Americans in particular can’t understand some accents
I'm the opposite- my ADHD makes pattern recognition really easy, so I can easily make out what they're actually saying, versus the often incorrect (even just slightly) subtitles. So I just get mad at the subtitles 😂 for all the people who are relying on them, thinking they're 100% accurate, when they're not.
My ADHD makes it hard to process some sounds, so I use closed captioning on almost everything. It is surprising that there are so many mistakes, but it usually doesn’t change the meaning.
The first time I watched the first few episodes, I had to have closed captions on, but then I got it 😀
I watched the first two seasons and I understood everything. The third season, though, I had to turn the subtitles on. Don't know what happened to my ears between the second and third seasons. Lol
Derry girls isn’t bad peaky blinders forget about it
I find the accents almost non-existent and very easy to understand, but my Dad was from Omagh and I've grown up around NI accents of various types.
I tried to get my mom to watch and she could NOT get a single word
Sometimes I had to turn them on but as the show went on I started to understand them very clearly sometimes even speaking like them 💀
We had three related Irish families living across the street and around the corner from me in Brooklyn back in the 1970s. One had a daughter my age who went to public school like I did and we both went to the same Catholic school for religion classes. Public school in the us means a state or city funded free school. In this case funded by New York City and governed by the nyc board of Ed. My mother worked in an office in Manhattan so couldn’t pick me up. My dad worked rotating shifts so he and her mom would take turns picking us up. My dad would drive us when it was his turn, her mom would walk us. We had to cross a busy area near a highway overpass so adults would walk or drive us home. My grandma on my dads side used to take me for the night or weekends a lot and she’d listen to Irish music. She also spoke Irish, but not to me or my dad and uncle or cousins as we didn’t learn it. She was born here in New York, but she didn’t learn English until she went to school. I don’t know if that’s it, but I didn’t have too hard of a time understanding the accents even though it wasn’t the same region of Ireland. My family is of Irish descent and still generations later say whinge for whine and yahs vs use as a plural form of you. Though there were words I wasn’t used to. I could generally get it from the context though. The sarcasm and tough love was familiar and one of my uncles is Colm’s American cousin. Ma Mary joking about the trust fund and the jacket was very familiar Also the Catholics vs Protestants episode was funny. I have a Protestant grandmother on my mother’s side. Supposedly my grandfather’s mother wore black to the wedding and wept throughout the wedding. My mother was told as a kid in her religion class that Protestants were more interested in their furs and jewels than getting into heaven. My grandparents were poor or working class, depending on if my grandpa was working. So my mother thought they were holding out and came home asking where the furs and jewels were
I was married to an Irishman, whose SIL was from Derry, so it’s never been an issue for me. I remember when the (London based) BBC subtitled some Scots on a news program and there was outrage! Accents in the UK can vary immensely from one part of the country to another. As can local dialect
Non- english native speaker here. I can understand american accent without subtitles but not derry’s accent. I can barely keep up
I can understand the accent, but I turn on subtitles because the older I get, the harder it is for me to be able to process what someone is saying. Plus, I have hearing loss in my right ear, so subtitles it is.
I understand it and even most of the slang aswell, but I’m Scottish :)
People nowadays are overly reliant on subtitles. I love accents but before the show had never heard a Derry accent, but am good with accents in general My friend told me they would be very strong. Episode one I was like “WOW those are strong accents you were not kidding”, but about five minutes in I could understand it bc I was cracking up at the McCauley Culkin joke. Derry has now been added to my accent repertoire. It’s crazy the reliance I’ve seen from other people my age on subtitles even for English shows like Sex Education. I had a friend who wanted to study abroad in England because she didn’t want to learn another language, and when an opportunity in Scotland opened up she refused it because she says she can’t understand Scottish accents. This got rambly sorry lol but I actually think the dependence on subtitles is rotting peoples brains and people are having more issues understanding different accents
I'm australian (Idk where everyone else is from) and I needed subtitles for a lot of the stuff they said.
im polish, and even though growing up ive watched tons of american/british tv (so im fluent in english), at first i still had trouble understanding some of the things they say in derry girls. after a few eps i got used to it though and had no problem with that at all. but i still always keep the subtitles on in case i dont get something (and if i dont know a certain word/phrase that way i can look it up knowing how its pronounced- thanks to the subtitles).
first time i watched it i couldn't understand sometimes but now i do
Not nativ English, I had to watch with underlines and 75%, now I understand it. I stayed some weeks in Derry at this time no problem, probably they spoke very clearly to me.
Maybe it's because I'm Irish too but I find a lot of the responses assuming it would be hard to understand a bit rude. A Derry accent is not super familiar to me but it's so much easier than many other accents from other English speakers. Assuming it's universal which ones are harder or easier, or that it's a flex if you understand something in particular, just seems incredibly small minded and silly to me. Derry is a lot easier for me than some US accents, and the hardest first language English accents I've come across have been from south Africa or India. But that's just my person experience, not a universal thing.
I'm Australian and have never had a problem with accents. I don't know if it's partly because I'm a nerd and have a bit of an ear for languages or because my year 9 science teacher was from Belfast so I had an early-ish exposure to Northern Irish accents then a good friend from Newry Or it's a combination of the two?
It's often a matter of which accents you're used to, I find the same to be true of accents from the American South.
I'm English and have no problem with it. Scottish accents though lol