Understanding accents

I do exactly the same, I only have to observe and listen for a short period and I can then mimic most accents. It can easily get me into trouble. I have a friend who has an absolute dislike for one of his customers, I often walk in to my friends workshop and speak in the other person’s voice from behind my friend, he turns around every time and for some reason then swears at me!

Thank you all for your replies.

I'm glad I'm not alone in this.

I am having the exact problem at work. I am managing a team of which I am the only native English person. I struggle to understand them, especially one lady whose English is quite poor and she speaks very fast. Sometimes I don’t hear what they say either. I feel very embarrassed 

I have the oppostie and find myself so absorbed in the accent or dialect I start copying it and people think I'm trying to be funny, I'm not. Accents and dialects fascinate me, when you look back at the old Anglo-Saxon kingdoms the area of accents and dialect seem to match the old kingdoms which makes me wonder if these are normal words in those languages and if that was their accents.

Thank you so much for bringing this up as it's something I really struggle with too.

I agree with CM, I suspect it's due to auditory processing issues which are connected to my autism. But it's really inconvenient. It's particularly a problem for me with lectures and talks, I find it difficult to manage them anyway, but when they have an accent it's still harder, and it exhausts me more. 

thats awsome

I think it’s more of an auditory processing thing, but then auditory processing challenges are common comorbidities with autism. I definitely notice a bit of a ‘lag’ in my brain when speaking to someone with an accent. Do you know any languages aside from English? I’ve been learning Arabic to try and strengthen my brain (challenging the brain can help improve brain fog and protect against dementia!), and also have a bit of basic French and Spanish, and find myself struggling less to understand accents (especially from the same language family). Even if it’s accents in English you’re struggling with, practicing other languages will help strengthen a similar region in your brain.

The embarrassment for me is when I can't fully understand what a person has said because they're either speaking too fast, or it's too noisy, or whatever it is, and I want to ask them to repeat themselves (politely) but I'm both embarrassed and I don't want to humiliate them.

I do get that a lot. Less to do with accents and more to do with me simply not speaking clearly enough.

I had a friend from Northern Ireland and we never had any accent problems. I'm from Birmingham though my accent is very broad, and any time she asked me to repeat myself was when I was basically mumbling.

I know I am digressing a little, but I sometimes find myself mumbling because I feel like the other person doesn't care about what I have to say.