[DanBC]

I have trouble when I'm in American and I order water. I need to soften the t to a d, and drawl the word.

I almost always understand Americans, apart from a few movies where they speak rapidly with background noise.

Here's an example of what it's like: (http://youtu.be/q-cAnFbEXY0) - it's almost recognisable, but not quite.

So, mashing together sounds to create fake words can create something tantalisingly close to what I'm expecting to hear. Mashing a bunch of random words together usually doesn't work, but putting a Markov chain in the again creates something that gives the initial feeling of "this is not nonsense".

And for most songs you probably could sting random words together without so many people noticing; random sentences would probably be fine.

[RegEx]

Here's another (extremely catchy) "What American English sounds like to non-English speakers" attempt.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BZXcRqFmFa8

[dpark]

> I have trouble when I'm in American and I order water. I need to soften the t to a d, and drawl the word.

Where are you from? (i.e. What kind of accent do you have?) I find it strange that you'd have to enunciate less to be understood ordering water. If you pronounce "water" with a British accent (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/water#English), Americans should generally not have trouble understanding you.

[DanBC]

I'm English, with a reasonable English accent.

I'm not kidding, "water" is never understood, across a lot of California.

[dpark]

Interesting. I've never seen that before, but I can't imagine why you'd make something like that up, so this must just be a gap in my experience.