Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/06/10/americans-put-subtitles-on-to-comprehend-british-television.html
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Whisper it - “so do we”.
(UK midlander - I’d be called a southerner by pretty much everyone north of Milton Keynes 
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I once heard Craig Ferguson say, “Pardon me if I’m meringue, as we say in Glasgow…” There was complete silence in response to that so he added, “Well, apparently there are no Glaswegians here” before going on. 
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I subtitle everything because I have audio processing issues that make it hard to follow without them.
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Honestly, I don’t think I could watch any show set in any part of Scotland, Ireland or Wales without subtitles; it’s not just the accent, they have whole phrases which are totally incomprehensible to me if I can’t read it out.
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Also, because the audio mixes are almost universally crap nowadays & dialog gets drowned out by the background channels - even movies I’ve watched several times before where i know what’s coming & still can’t hear it clearly
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We often use subtitles around here, mainly because the audio balance in shows is just awful
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Same here. A few knocks on the head in my youth and I “hear” just fine but my brain often declines to translate what I hear into language, and accents, slight distortions like you experience on phone lines, or particularly deep voices make it much worse. I discovered during the pandemic that I’d been reading lips without realizing it for most of my life.
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I thought everyone used subtitles all the time now.
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For me it’s linked to my ADHD. I’ll hear something, fail to parse it, say ‘what?’, then my brain catches up and I answer right as the person is about to repeat what they said. It’s very annoying. But when watching stuff, I’ll just fall further and further behind if there’s a lot of dialogue, so having the subtitles keeps me caught up.
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Despite being British, I watch most things with the subs on not just because of the bad audio mix but because my wife frequently asks me what everyone is saying, because she’s Japanese and can’t follow either the English or American slang.
Japanese shows have always had subtitles, but they’re in kanji and hard to read. I honestly don’t know why native Japanese speakers need subtitles for their own language but apparently it’s one of the fastest spoken so maybe it’s that. Or their regional accents.
Subtitles are an absolute boon, though. The great thing about VOD is that there is so much more foreign TV available now. It’s great to be able to watch shows from all over the world.
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I think that my American friends need to experience the full glory of Rab, so here’s a YouTube clip.
Rab on Glasgow council
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If I turn up the TV to hear the dialog clearly, then a few moments later something loud occurs and family members are asking me why I have it up so loud.
If I have the subtitles on when the show sounds a doorbell, then I can still follow the dialog while my dogs go crazy barking. This is true if someone rings my actual doorbell, too.
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Started doing it watching Bake Off because I was mishearing the names of ingredients and pastries. “Cooly? Huh? What’s ‘patty shoe’?”
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See also Trainspotting. I have a vague recollection of Alexie Sayle having subtitles whenever he guested on The Young Ones. 
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Made me think of this scene from Airplane (1980).
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I always have to turn on the subtitles for the first few episodes of a new season of Doctor Who. Then I remember how to listen in British. I watched a movie set in Scotland where most of it was not subtitled, but the filmmakers did put some in during a scene with one of the main character’s extended family.
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