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FILE - Tourists are led on tours through the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol Building on Sept.

6, 2022 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images) While English is the most commonly used language in the United States, anyone who’s spent time in different parts of the country knows that not all Americans sound the same.

Accents vary across regions, with some being quite subtle and constantly changing, and others being hard to understand to an outside ear. The wide variety of accents can also apparently pose a challenge for Americans traveling abroad, and particularly for those from a few regions.Family Destinations Guide, a website with travel reviews of hotels, destinations and attractions for families, recently surveyed 3,000 U.S. adults to gauge how difficult it is to communicate effectively when traveling overseas.

The participants rated their difficulty on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 indicating the most difficulty. As it turns out, the least understood American travelers are from Rhode Island, followed by Maine, according to the survey. People from both of these states commonly have what’s called "the New England accent," or the "Yankee accent." Other states with this same regional dialect can include Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Those from Rhode Island can have an accent that’s "a hybrid of Northern and Southern New England English, a Boston-meets-Brooklyn sound with a dash of Italian and Portuguese slang mixed in," according to the New England Historical Society. FILE - A "Welcome to Rhode Island" sign.