Accents

People grow up speaking RP in the same ways that those in Yorkshire grow up speaking whatever their local accent is.

I speak RP because that is what my parents and relations spoke, although my grandfather, never quite lost his irish brogue, t''s were always pronounced more like 'th'.

JohnD, When I first moved to Norfolk I got into conversation with my neighbours father.
I did the same. Lots of smiling and nodding.
Hoped I wasn’t committing myself to anything!
I’ve got my ear in now.

Terribull I love some French accents too.
I could listen to Michel Barnier for hours even without listening to what he is actually saying!

Paddyann - I'm from the north of Scotland and we were always told in school we had the purest accent. I have been mistaken for being Irish especially when abroad. I think it is because it is a "soft" accent.

I love all accents. It makes us individuals and more interesting but I have tremendous problems understanding Glaswegian and Geordie. More than that really - I don’t understand above one word in ten!

I, of course, have no accent - as long as I stay in Norfolk!

I don’t mind any accent and I’m not to bad understanding them . I’ve from the Wirral across the Mersey from Liverpool . People say I have a scouse accent , I say well if you heard actual scouser you’d realise the difference . Mines probably more Birkenhead aka Paul O’Grady . We moved to Yorkshire when our eldest was small the last 3 out of 5 being born at Airedale Hospital and raised first in Ilkley then Keighley . They had very broad accents and when we moved back after 10 years there they used to get teased a lot . They lost their accents within a year . My family are a mix of Merseyside , Welsh , Scouse , Yorkshire and Slovakian .

Broad glaswegian and liverpool accent grates on my nerves, especially when the scouse jump around when speaking

People often ask me where I come from, as there is still a slight Yorkshire accent in my speech in some isolated words but on the one visit I made to the UK, I was taken for an Australian!

Quite often, if an audio book or film is set in NZ, the company will employ and Aussie actor although the two accents are totally different.

There used to be a series of books by Lillian Beckwith who wrote about her life on the island of Soay in the Hebrides. The read of those audio books sounded lovely, although I was not sure if she was a genuine Hebridean.

I quite like all the different regional accents there are in the UK. I particularly like the Geordie accent and the Welsh accent. When I was a good deal younger I shared a flat with three Welsh girls from the Aberfan area. They all swore like troopers but it sounded so sing songy that they got away with it. As a proper cockney myself (within the sound of Bow Bells an all that) I have always got very cross that people assume that you're thick and uneducated. I am an educated and independent woman who had a very successful career and have a keen interest in art. It never ceases to amaze me that some people are surprised by this. Has anyone else been "judged" because of their accent? I bet they have!

Surely different accents are just part of the rich and immensely interesting tapestry of life. How we speak is an integral part of our own personal history and ancestry. Not understanding someone's accent is quite a different matter to marking accents as lovely or ugly, superior or inferior.

Some years ago while breakfasting at a BnB in Scotland a pompous old man condescendingly boomed across the dining room "Do I detect a colonial accent?" I firmly replied "An Australian accent, yes, but not a colonial accent."

My favourite accent is the Yorkshire twang. I love it a lot.

The only accent I don’t like is the very posh plumb in the mouth accent, where some words are almost indecipherable as they are just trying too hard to be posh!

This is partly about accents ... my daughter and I were in fits of giggles yesterday, we were having tea in a cafe and a woman with a very plummy accent was complaining about her coffee not being quite right. My daughter commented on how funny she was, in being oh so polite but really cross! all at the same time. Think staccato delivery and high pitch! (the barista wasn't having it). It really was very funny.

It's helpful to think of what we often call different ' accents 'as different languages.

There is no real difference between dialects and languages. In times past people in the British Isles really did speak what we would now call separate languages. Then the native dialects were diluted as communications and snobbery intensified.

For instance, England being more powerful than Scotland for a time, parents who then could afford to do so sent their sons to London to get the Eng,ish accent upon them.

The difficulty is that, in England anyway, accent is very much tied up with social class. I don’t know if this is the case in other countries. As a result there is an inevitable tendency to put people in certain brackets based on the way they sound. Think of My Fair Lady. It is still largely true.

Grandma70s, I think that is still very true. One of the aspects that I have found very interesting over many wonderful trips to the UK is that some (but definitely not all) English people just don't quite know where to place Aussies in the social hierarchy and their puzzlement really is a delight to behold.

In addition to the example cited above at the BnB in Scotland I have sat at high table in an Oxbridge College and listened to a diatribe from a senior academic about all Australians basically being offspring of worthless convicts. This was in the 1990s not the 1890s! Nowadays having convict origins is a point of pride in the strength and fortitude of our ancestors.

I am a geordie however i dont like the accent. The reason why is because there is dialect and accent and sheer bastardisation of the words. I hate the rough slang used by some people supposedly a geordie accent. However i love the gentle northumbrian dialect of northeast northumberland. I find that local towns sound different but it still makes a difference when people slur their words and use made up versions of the dialect.
I love cockney. The broad summerset accent and pretty much all others including scottish. I do find glasweigans use words much like the geordie with made up slang. I detest slang in any form

Apricity I have met some proud descendants of convicts and others vying about whether their ancestors came out on the First Fleet or the Second!
Yet others who tell me that their ancestors were pioneers who have places or streets named after them.

I have noticed that, wherever they live, Scots rarely lose their accents.

Grandma70s 'The difficulty is that, in England anyway, accent is very much tied up with social class. I don’t know if this is the case in other countries. As a result there is an inevitable tendency to put people in certain brackets based on the way they sound. Think of My Fair Lady. It is still largely true.'

of course the same in France and all over. My parents had no accent at all, always spoke confidently and never swore - so as a kid I learnt to adjust and speak with a broad local accent and swear just enough to get by ... I still change accents and vocab/structures in both French and English depending on audience. Don't make an effort to do so, it just happens.

She was stood standing there........?????

jura and, of course, if we learn a foreign language we have no idea what accent we may pick up from our teacher.

I was born in Norh Devon and therefore learned to talk surrounded by that very unique local accent before my family moved to Bristol when I was approximately three and a half years old. Bristol also has its own unique accent, and therefore throughout my life I have always possessed a very pronounced West Country Drawl.

I have never found the above to be any disadvantage as almost all the people I meet seem to find it a very friendly accent, and it can become a topic of conversation when meeting someone for the first time.

I was an HGV driver in my younger years where I was always meeting new people while carrying out deliveries. That was the first time I felt my strong West Country drawl to be a great help in dealing with persons. Later in the role of an industrial safety officer, I felt it was an advantage while training distribution Centre shop floor manual workers who because of my accent seemed not to view me as "one of the suits" from Head Office who they so often despised.

In 2003 when my wife and I opened our current business in the same industry, three of our major customers were all based in the City of London. That brought me into contact with many who were from high education backgrounds, but once again, I believe my accent was (and has been since) an asset to my involvement with those people. Undoubtedly I come across as someone who has shop floor experience in my background and often that is what is required with Industrial Safety.

Again undoubtedly, there are times when I first engage in conversation with someone they think to themselves "carrot cruncher", but often that impression is dispelled I believe after a few more minutes of conversation.

So, having a thick local accent has never been a drawback but certainly an asset to me I feel. I could not hide my own even if I tried, and I love to hear local accents in others.

We were taught at school that we had to learn two languages - Norfik and English. The teacher sited double negatives although in Norfolk we have triple negatives which should make it alright!

We were often told how accents have a way of not being grammatically correct so a problem in exams, ‘furriners’ wouldn’t understand us, and we would be judged as being stupid yokels. I find my accent moderates itself depending on who I’m talking with.

There are obviously accents in other languages as I remember when DD took A level German, after her oral exam the examiner commented to the teacher that " one of your students speaks with a Hamburg accent ". My sister and BIL live there so I suppose it is not surprising.

NfkDumpling, I was glad to read yours about the "two languages". I agree completely with your teacher and I hope all teachers today are so well informed.

I think my favourite accent of all is our sat nav lady

It is lovely - she speaks properly, received pronunciation I believe it is called which means it is so clear despite any external noises going on - road works etc.

It is not overly 'posh' (although I do hate that term, I couldn't think of an alternative) just English spoken clearly and properly. Bless her!