To make English unintelligible to the English, add a Scottish, Geordie or American accent!
Steve.
I have a friend who describes his accent as "Geordie" too. I finally looked it up to see just what you meant.
Newcastle. Well yeah, my friend is originally from there, lived in London when I first met him, married an American friend of my wife's, and they now live in Miami. So I went to YouTube and I hate to tell you this but to most American ears it sounds...just like pretty much every other British accent (with the exception of the strong Cockney accent.)
I imagine to many Brits my Tennessee hillbilly twang sounds much like a Georgia southern accent (it's different, trust me) and probably not nearly as different from a midwestern US as it does to us. Another friend is married to a Russian woman and while visiting Moscow a British couple walked by talking and she said, "oh, Americans." "No," he said, puzzled, "British." "How can you tell?" she asked in all seriousness. He actually can mimic a pretty fair British accent and tried it out on her - she still could barely tell the difference if she paid close attention.
Subtle differences that are obvious to native speakers attuned to them can be lost in the overall onslaught of major differences when heard by outsiders.
