this is also true of us here in Canada. although our spelling adheres more to traditional english than does american english, still it differs from the brits quite a bit.

i would hazard a guess (only a guess) that we and the Australians would be easier understood in the UK than would the americans. i would rate it a 9.

for americans i would rate it maybe a 7.
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This depends strongly on any accent that the speaker has.

It is also worth noting that the UK gets a lot of their entertainment programming from the US... and vice versa, though to a lesser extent. People in the UK hear generic, "TV" American English all the time.

I'm from the northeast (Southern NH, specifically). I don't have a "Boston" accent, though. My speech follows a few regional quirks, and some people have thought on occasion that I am Canadian based on my speech.

I'd say "9-10". I could go anywhere in the UK, and be understood as well as people here understand me, minus the occasional trip-up from more local slang terms. The Boston area accent is probably closest to most of what people in the UK speak, being largely non-rhotic (Though this trait didn't seem to come from the Irish!)

People with a deep southern accent, or BEV, or the Swedish influenced Northern accents would have a harder time being understood, but that's frankly not saying much. For them it could be a 7 or 8. Oh my!

The UK itself has a surprisingly large variance in the way people talk - the differences between people in different regions of the UK are just as large as the differences in the way we speak in the US.
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I think it would be harder to understand a British accent in American than an American accent in Britain.

Here in Australia we have an accent that is very... well... very Australian. lol. It's a mixture between the two I would say. Maybe as an Australian I can't really say. We do pronounce most words like the British do but we still have an American influence. Personally, I find it harder to understand British than American. Maybe because most of our films and television is Americanised.

To answer your question directly, I think American would be understood at around 9-10. I mean, english is english, right? (from an English-speaking country). It all depends on your first language, which might determine how heavy or strong the accent is.
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I speak American - but even that has several different dialects. In my experience, the differences between American and English are relatively minor, not much greater than the differences between, say, a New Yorker and Georgia resident. The toughest hurdle to comprehension is the accent, especially some of the harsher accents in each country - say, Cockney in Britain, or deep Southern in the U.S.

For a typical American in a typical English city, or vice versa, I'd say the difficulty would be no higher than about 8. You might miss some words, but you could get your point across.
Source(s):
Military experience in several different parts if the U.S., as well as working with British troops in a NATO assignment, which also required the use of British spelling. Also, a lot of hours spent watching BBC comedies.

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Well, hello there! I may not be so qualified to join to this query, as my mother tounge is Spanish, but I'm so into learning English (I've been doin' it since I was 9 and now I'm 29) that I'm soooo into learning about accents as you do.
First of all, I'm obviously more used to American accent as I'm from Uruguay, in South America. The same thing that happens to you with English, happens to us with Spanish. But talking about the English accent, and most of all, the Welsh accent, oh, man, it's like hearing a German speaking person.
Maybe that's because Ancient English and German are closely related. I've watched the film "Acid House" and "Trainspotting", "The Benny Hill Show" (with a not so thick to understand accent) and several Discovery Channel documentaries about different non-American-English speaking countries, like New Zealand, and I can tell you there's a way to finally understand them, and it's to get used to the accent by listening to it over and over again, but it's hard. It's like hearing a Spanish speaking person trying to speak in English, wich I don't get.
And finally, I was wondering if it's so hard to me because English is not my mother tounge, or if this happens to all of you English speakers too.
Source(s):
Watching American and British TV Series and movies, speaking live to English speaking persons, as well in person as over the phone, learning methods like videotapes and magazines, like Speak up magazine, etc.

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