Judging People by How They Speak…?

I overheard myself on radio and boy did I sound posh. I'm originally from the Vale of Glamorgan and that is known as posh Welsh then I moved to North Somerset and it seems that there two accents merge to something like RP.

I am a Geordie born and bred and have the accent to go with it.
My grandmother was also a Geordie, but her father came from Holy Island were the locals speak what is called broad Northumbrian which is different altogether.My grandma, having grown up hearing her father speak, could instantly revert to Northumbrian accent when amongst his relatives ie during her many visits to Holy Island. When she came home she could just as quickly go back to Geordie.
My oldest DGD is presently living in New York, after being in Hong Kong for a few years.and previously London. She has what some people call a ''high flying'' job, so when at work looses her Geordie accent and speaks RP so she can be understood, but when I speak to her on the phone now I can her developing an American accent. She speaks Geordie when she is visiting us.
I am not ashamed of my Geordie accent but sometimes it sounds terrible when heard on the television by local celebrities who tend to rub it in. I am thinking of one in particular who makes me cringe when I hear her and think''Do I sound like that?''

When my mother was training to be a teacher back in the late 1940s the principal of her college tried to suggest she lose her Lancashire accent. My mother told her that as she intended to teach in Lancashire she thought it made sense to retain the accent to be more easily accepted and understood. Back then everyone on TV spoke without regional accents but that changed a couple of decades later.
Personally I think regional accents give character, but it can be tricky when they are so strong that they are difficult to understand. I went to Uni with a Geordie whose accent was so broad that no-one understood him. That was very isolating I imagine.
Despite living in the South of England since leaving for university I can still be recognised as a Northerner, though people often place me on the wrong side of the Pennines as my accent has mellowed somewhat.

Love all of your accents. The accents in America are not, in my opinion, as distinguishable or different from the others as yours. Here in Kansas, we have a bit of a flat accent; but, generally, this part of the country has the least distinct accent of all.

When my DGD was 7 and living in Australia, speaking to her mother she had my Thames accent although her mother (DD1) grew up in France. Speaking to her friends she had an Australian accent and when she read out loud she spoke with an American one because her teacher was from the states.
She adapted without thinking, so that she could be understood by the person she was speaking to.

The Scottish owners of bed and breakfast house I was staying in could speak how I could understand them whereas when speaking between themselves I couldn’t. They chose to adapt.

When I first went to the NE with MrA to meet his family I couldn't understand a word the family said when they were all together. Individually they seemed to slow down a bit and I could understand most of what was said when they spoke to me. But when they all got together talking to each other it was just a noise. Especially on a night out. It took a few visits for me to tune in - BiL told a joke one night and I laughed. Later he told MrA it made a change to hear me laugh, normally I was very quiet. MrA laughed and said 'Two weeks ago she wouldn't have known you were telling a joke. Soon you'll have no secrets'.

As other poster pointed out, it is all about enunciation. Doesn’t matter the s cent provided you speak so people can understand you. Lazy speech though is very annoying “innit”?

I am from Manchester and lost out on a voiceover job because I was told my accent was "chavvy". There are some accents that are grating like cockney, brummie or scouse but some accents are lovely like Irish, Scottish and Geordie.

... I'm only mildly interested in accents, though I particularly like those that are from the Irish Republic, Yorkshire and Lancashire. Anyone remember Fred Dibnah? I used to watch him because my partner is a mechanical engineer - and he, Fred, was very knowledgeable on the history of ME... I just loved listening to him talk.

The only thing that irritates is when people talk too quickly - especially on the 'phone and when they're giving you lots of information to absorb - including telephone numbers and similar data. Fortunately, I can use my knowledge of shorthand to write down the info they're giving me almost as quickly as they are talking - I just wish they wouldn't do it. Any accent is understandable if the individual simply speaks clearly and doesn't - as my Swedish partner declares - 'babble on'. He speaks English fluently but it's not his native language and he sometimes has to ask callers (especially from Amazon) to speak a little less quickly.

I'm glad people no longer talk like Miles Cholmondley-Warner though!

The one thing that annoys me (Brummie born and Solihull bred) and many other Brummies, is people who, when told that you're from Birmingham, put on a fake Black Country (Dudley, Wolverhampton etc) accent and think they're getting it right.

Not only do they make a right pig's ear of the accent they're attempting but a Black Country accent is TOTALLY DIFFERENT to a Birmingham accent, and I for one (especially as my 'natural' accent is more Solihull), am offended that they think I should sound like that!

I've been mocked for saying bath with a long rather than short a and accused of being posh.
Shakespeare is thought to have had a Brummie accent.

FannyCornforth

I’ve actually had people take the mickey out of my accent to my face, ie speaking to me in a comedy Black Country accent.

And Lenny Henry, with his ‘Dud-laaay has much to answer for!

I have had numerous people taking the Mickey out of me - mimicking a ' posh Southern accent' which is just as rude. ( married to a Yorkshire man). Because I have a Southern accent they take it I am well off and live in a posh area. I can't help being born in the south any more than others can't help being born in other parts of the UK.
In fact I have a very non-posh Kent accent!

I like accents. Although I must admit that sometimes peoples voices regardless of accent irritate me and I try to avoid listening to them on TV, but that's the same with American accents too. I don't judge peoples intelligence by their accent but sometimes more by what they are actually saying. I really don't like the modern language where every other word is a cuss.

Music girl you hit the nail on the head. I love to hear regional accents, any of them, but I'm not fond of sloppy grammar.
I wish I had a regional accent but my native dialect is RP.

I don’t treat ppl by accents but by how treat me. Having spent many years as military wife meet many ppl with different accents. My really good friend was a brigadier wife couldn’t have spoken any posher than she does and I’m a mackam, if we had gone by accents would never have being friends. Like they say don’t judge a book by its cover until you read the book lol

It is silly to judge people's intelligence by their accents and it is more important to actually listen to what they say before making these sort of statements. I find a soft Birmingham accent warm and pleasant. I do have a problem though with dropped 't's and 'g's which seem to me to be an affectation.

I grew up in a Norfolk village but my parents were from Cumberland (my dad) and Staffordshire (my mum). They said they had no problems with us speaking with the local accent but we had to speak grammatically correctly. I think this is the key. In common with so many others here, I love hearing regional accents - l prefer some to others - but speech is surely about communication and if a dialect is incomprehensible to others that is where the problem lies and not with the accent itself. In broad Norfolk, “he goo’a Naaaaridge” is not as easily understandable as the more standard “he goes to Norwich.” When l started school, by the way, I switched from having a Mommy (Midlands dialect) and needing pumps for P.E to having plimsolls in order to fit in with my friends. I am al known to slip into the very Norfolk “I’m just now coming,” too. With many members of my wider family living in the West Midlands and having been a regular visitor there all my life, I have a soft spot for the accents there.

My eldest son went to Durban Uni (to learn Japanese ) decades back, and w went to a local restaurant after his graduation… I couldn’t understand a word the waitress was saying.
I was born in Gloucester ( hints of Bristol in that accent) but my mother sent myself and my sister to elocution lessons… I speak with RP but my sister still has her Gloucester accent, as she stayed there and married a local farmer.
I went onto gain a degree and educated myself.
I went into a lot of amateur dramatics and being able to manipulate your accent I found useful. I moved to S Wales and as an earlier poster said there are a lot of regional accents, some are nice , the north wales one guttural and to me distasteful. But as with anything that is a generalisation. I like to be understood and with a lot of accents you can’t understand what people are saying… I use sub-titles on TV all the time as often accents make the speech indecipherable - particularly some US ones.
Because I was ‘ elocuted’ at an early age that stuck with me and here in Wales I am often considered ‘posh’ which is very far from the truth, tho nowadays after50 plus years here my speech has probably taken on a slight Welsh lilt! But I occasionally suffer reverse discrimination because of being so English.
I love a mild Scottish and Irish accent and of course French and Italian, but ‘severe’ accents leave me cold.
As regards considering people I’ll educated because of their accents … I think that is an ‘age’ thing, the older you are the more likely you are ( if subliminally) to consider people with thick accents a ‘bit thick’ due to the way the world thought then - as one gransnetter said the BBC , Radio etc all promoted that….?

Why do those from the north think that their accent/dialect makes people disrespect them? It’s the same wherever you live in the UK. West country, Dorset, Midlands, to name just a few - people from here are often derided for the way they speak, so please you ‘ Northerners’ don’t think it’s only you who are ‘picked on’.’

Regional dialects are sometimes associated with stupidity and worse. Unfortunately it's impossible for schools to teach the plethora of regional dialects and schools have to conduct most lessons in standard English. This is why there is snobbishness about regional dialects as standard English is associated with being educated and intelligent.

Fortunately comedians and the performing arts generally are changing perspectives on regional dialects, and are allowing people to become more familiar with different dialects.

I do prefer THINK to FINK and BUCKINGHAM to BUKINAM Palace, though!

Jackiest

No you should not judge people by their accents just as you should not judge people by their race, gender or colour. They are all things that they had no choice over and quite irrelevent to what they are like as a person.

Well said! If there's one thing I learned in almost 50 years in a job which involved talking to people from all areas and social classes, it was not to be judgemental. Never judge a book by its cover (or how it speaks!) To do so says far more about the person doing the judging, as far as I am concerned.

I’m a brummie born and bred but no hint of an accent. I’m quite sad about it. I was educated in the RC system though and we had to speak the queens English (80/90’s education) or the nuns whacked your hand with a ruler.
Education does play its part. My mother and father both have accents but my siblings and I don’t. I moved away for university and for a decade post education, but I’m back. My children don’t have the accent either.

Mum and I came down south from the north-east in 1964 when I was aged 9 and although I found the local accent stange I didn't have any trouble in understanding what was said to me. My own Darlington accent was constantly made fun of and my Mum even sent me to elocution lessons to make me lose my accent and thus become more socially acceptable to Southampton folk. I'm now an OAP. still living down south but I'm proud to say I still have a distinct north-country twang to my speech which I hope I'll never lose .

Back in the 1960's from my experience, regional accents such as mine were very much looked down on but that's not the case noiw, thank goodness. I have to admit to a fondness for accents from Yorkshire up to Newcastle, which is where my family are from !

Wot?