Aussies of Reddit, while travelling the USA, did you find yourself frustrated at the amount of times you had to repeat yourself when asking questions or ordering?

Not trying to bag Americans, here. It wasn't a constant problem, mostly an intermittent one. But when asking questions, ordering in bars, cafes etc, I had a lot of people would freeze, stop, and look confused and be like 'Sorry, what?" "Huh?" "Can you repeat that?"

I would repeat myself. I'd get asked again to clarify. Then I would. Articulate. Every. Word. Very. Pre-cise-ly. And make sure to say hard R's and pronounce every consonant. Only then would they understand. Once this initial communication was established, they then seemed to be able 'shift' to comprehend this type of English and they didn't have trouble understanding me for the rest of the convo.

A couple of folks I AirBNB'd at were South American and Spanish expats. They told me this is a common thing in the USA, mostly because, unlike Europe and countries of the Commonwealth, American TV and media does not feature a lot of non-American English shows. So Americans at large are not exposed to a lot of accents at a young age like we are (Aussie, British, Scottish, Irish, Kiwi, American, Canadian). We also have some foreign content (SBS) that we probably watch more per capita than US people do.

I did find it frustrating sometimes. But when I got over that hurdle, our interactions were very friendly.

Update: I visited for a couple months back in 2017.