what he is saying.

My best friend of thirty years was a Croat and her accent was really strong, like this guy, so I have no problem with it. Actually, I have little trouble with most accents, probably because I grew up around a variety of languages, they all sound familiar somehow. I have been called a natural code switcher because after a minute or two among speakers with heavy accents or regional features, I'll be using it as well without realizing it. I can adapt to foreign languages quickly in a total immersion setting. But I get that some have more difficulty understanding heavy accents.

The CC feature isn't much help either, it misses at least a third of the actual words he's saying.

and struggled taking foreign languages in school. My high school French teacher threatened to quit after hearing my attempts to speak it.

I had the great advantage of being around many languages from an early age, started learning French before I started grade school and then it was taught from 2nd grade on and my grandparents spoke two other languages besides English in their house. I've had a lifetime of exposure.

You know, at least you try, that counts for something!

Mostly from Middle and Eastern Europe. Everybody had some kind of an accent, mostly some variety of Slavic. I still have traces of Hungarian.
Like you, I have a tendency to pick up whatever accent is being used around me. My wife's sweet little grandmother from County Cork went to her grave thinking that I was Irish, since I automatically echoed her dialect every time I was in her company.

I hope to get home soon to start posting threads again on my desktop computer.

At least for a spell!

I appreciate most* of the videos and articles you post, I can show it by helping when you could use it. Just get better and come back!

*There's no way I can watch and read them all!

Take care so you can come back and be here more!

It's the little white box on Youtube's lower black bar that says "CC".

When you click on that box you get subtitles in English that are pretty close to what the guy really says. Since I'm hard of hearing I usually have the subtitles on as a default, but many other viewers never use them. So it's easy to forget that they're there.

I'm a slow reader and the CC doesn't get close enough for to not be distracted. I'm sure they're helpful for some.

i appreciate the struggle to understand him, i love different languages but i'm not that
fluent in any. but go ukraine! and i admire all reporting on the war fronts~