Quote - Americans (females especially) really dig a British accent...lol.

As for me, I've never had any trouble understanding even the thickest British/Irish/Scottish accent. I spent my whole life watching PBS which was almost all British programming :P. We didn't have cable - what can I say ;). I could understand those thicker accents after watching Red Dwarf...lol. I watched a lot of Fawlty Towers, Allo Allo and Are You Being Served too ;).

Laurie

Ah well there you go.  The accents you heard on there aren't representative of the way most Brits speak.  Craig Charles - Lister in Red Dwarf - has a fairly light Liverpool accent in comparison to the way most of 'em speak there.  By and large, Brit - make that English - tv uses relatively "neutral" accents.  Scotland, Wales, Ireland use regional accents mostly for their local programs and go for lighter versions for stuff that's to be shown across the UK.

At one time, tv over here wouldn't feature regional accents much in their entertainment shows and not at all in newsreaders or links.  Unless you had a middle to upper class "Home Counties" accent, you didn't get on tv.  Even movies play it safe because they'd have to be dubbed or subtitled for international audiences.  It's not just the sounds, either.  We have some unique usages and phrases from region to region.  In some respects, you may find it easier with our Northern accents - once you get used to the sounds - since linguists say most US word usages are by and large, old fashioned compared to their Brit equivalents, except here in the North, where we still have many older words and phrases.  One which springs to mind is "gotten".  It's hardly ever used here and mostly survives in words such as "begotten".  Brits almost exclusively say "got".  I use both, mainly due to being in close contact with many people in the US for years.

It's strange to think your accent(s) have their roots here, mainly from the West Country, Ireland and Scotland, then consider how they sound now.  I wonder what would have happened to both our versions of the language, had there been no communication at all since Mayflower landed. 

Coppula eam se non posit acceptera jocularum.

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