Mark suggested: > As a foreigner, talk to an American or a Britisher from a > small town, say, in New England or the Deep South or > Texas or the Scottish Highlands? Heck. I'm no foreigner to the English language and I can understand most non-native speakers that I encounter, but give me someone with one of the more impenetrable British Isles accents and I am likely to say 'hunh?' a lot. Then again, I suppose some of those people are Gaelic speakers first and English second.