Accents are easier on the brain if you can identify them

I was born and raised in Rome, so Italian is my native language. Now I live in the US, and I’m basically bilingual. Yet, when I hear other people speak English with an accent, sometimes I have a hard time understanding what they’re saying. In movies with a character who’s a non-native English speaker — or even has an accent I’m unused to, like an Irish one — I sometimes struggle; if I don’t turn on the subtitles, I’ll miss half of what they’r