Originally Posted by
Lake1952
Look, lots of Americans have trouble understanding a native English speaker in the UK, especially Scotland.
A little over 30 years ago, I went to Derby, England to take an RB211 maintenance course. The course was 2 weeks long and about half the class was made up of Derby locals, so they got together and set up a 'Pub Crawl' for the class.
Several Pub's into the Crawl, I was approached by an older Brit, who started speaking to me in such a thick accent that all I could make out was he knew I was an American and American's were "Okay". In frustration, I asked some of the local classmates for help in figuring out what the guy was saying. They laughed and said they couldn't understand him either
. I finally decided he wanted me to buy him a beer and I figured what the heck - but when I got out some money it became apparent that he wanted to buy
me a beer - because I was an 'American and Okay'
.
I politely declined his offer (I was on an expense account anyway at the time), but I can only assume based on his age and the few words I could make out that he was trying to thank me (and Americans in general) for helping the British against the Nazi's in WWII.