>>>Putting the 'a' in front of words like water - or as I've heard more commonly up North; breakfast/lunch/dinner- is regional. Particularly in the Northern Plains states you'll hear things like "Are you taking a lunch?" or "You need a breakfast first".
>>
>>Well we cannot be bothered learning all those colonial dialects...
>
>Former colonies ;-)

...which never bothered to change the names of their dialects :).

Speaking of various kinds of english one can hear, I found that I generally have no problems understanding most of the Brits (the Scots being the easiest, because they pronounce their r properly :); the Irish and the Ozzies take a couple of minutes to get used to; Canadians no problem at all; people from India mostly no problem, provided their vocabulary and grammar are sufficiently correct; most Europeans who learned some english at school, easy (with special kudos to the Dutch and Scandinavians, who seem to pick enough of it in a single semester or three); the few Koreans, Japanese and Vietnamese I met were probably second generation locals, so no problem there either (but for newcomers I can't say we spoke at all)... and then there's the special case of the US.

I had about zero problems understanding the northerners, west coast people, new Mexicans (ahem, whichever way you call and spell them), north part of the east coast (including NYC and a few places in the Appalachians) and even some Texans. It's very easy to get to a southern accent as well, provided it's spoken clearly. It's the people who eat up their consonants, like many in Florida, and in my then neighborhood (mostly the black people, but not limited to) and a few Thai (who knows why), who are near incomprehensible to me. In some cases, they'd just feign the first consonant or two, and completely omit the rest. Can't distinguish lye from light... and then the guy at Home Depot, where I tried to buy lye (and mentioned its chemical name, rightly assuming he doesn't understand me) assumed I was talking like him, and sent me to aisle 17... lightbulbs, them halogen things that run on some chemistry.