PS: IME the most comprehensible French accents are from Africa. Just very well enunciated and seemingly devoid of all the regional slang/colloquialisms Euro/Canucker/etc variants have built up.
I'm thinking because it's usually second language. Kind of like I can understand someone from India speaking English about a million times better than I can understand a Geordie or Cockney accent/dialect.
Meh... language fascinates me and I've been trying to compile a list of languages to learn before I kick it.
1) Well I could probably very easily get my conversational French up to speed and it's really the most immediately useful to me since it's Canada's official second language
2) I'm thinking Spanish because I can kind of already glean quite a bit of it from American TV/cinema and it's kind of similar to French (as far as I can tell but perhaps not as similar as Italian).
3) German. My stepmom's parents were from Germany (and my stepdad from Austria) so I already have a bit of a foundation there. It is supposedly a REALLY difficult language to become fully fluent in but it's also a gateway to other languages and if I can get my head around those other tongues (giggety) then it would be like a step up in linguistics profiency because then I want to....
4) Learn Cantonese and other eastern languages... which, if I managed to learn all that other stuff, would likely take me through to my eventual dirt nap.