[Boaz]

Kiwi, I don't know about Belgium, if the spoken French, Dutch, and German differ widely from place to place, but in the USA English can vary significantly, to our ears anyway.

I always considered JRR Tolkien the supreme master of the English language, of story telling, of world building, and crafting new languages. With the release of the LOTR movies, I saw a couple minute interview with the man himself... and I was flabbergasted that I could not understand him. Either he did that interview shot up on novacaine or his accent was practically barbarous. If it were not for the incontrobertible evidence that JRRT was an Oxford Don and that he wrote LOTR, it would be inconceivable that he and I share English as our native tongue.

Yes, the northerners and southerners, Andals and Dornishmen, Targaryens and bastards seem to all understand each other quite well.