Judging People by How They Speak…?

I moved from India to Bootle to Scotland to Birmingham to Manchester to Sussex. I continually felt pressure to “adapt”. My voice bears traces of all these places. Simplistic judgement based on voices is sad, yes, I like the music of some more than others but fight the class prejudice that it often embedded. Some voices are prettier to me than others, some clearer, but I feel for anyone who senses they are being judged

Witzend I do agree - I mostly need subtitles on for TV programmes because of mumbling, but the evening news is no problem at all - the readers speak clearly and face the camera. Evidently the BBC are renowned for having poor quality sound on their productions but they do nothing about it. Flat screen TVs are another factor it seems - unless you have separate speakers, there isn't enough room in the slim casing for a decent speaker. As for accents - I love 'em!

Katie59

There are many accents the problems are caused by not being understood, I work with a Glaswegian colleague, she speaks so fast I just have to say slow down, every time, if she only thought first it would be fine.

Perhaps if you listened, it would be fine.

I'm Devonshire with a Devonshire accent. I think the general opinion is that we are all as thick as clotted cream.
But we are not! Not all of us, anyway.

I love all accents but hate bad grammar.

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.

I love all regional accents but what really irritates me is lazy pronunciation and bad spelling! Many years ago, I discovered my young neighbour and her parents and siblings were from Belfast originally, but they all had the most cultured, posh “Queens English” type voices, not a hint of any accent whatsoever!

Just re-read the thread.
Yammy - perhaps you could teach Brenda Blethyn to pick up Geordie as her accent makes us up here cringe! ?.
I’m Durham born and bred, but hope I’m nowhere near as thick as the Durham girls on Gogglebox - the mind boggles!

I've lived in Hampshire for 51 years and absolutely love to hear a brummy accent and certainly don't think that people with one are less intelligent. I may be very slightly biased, however, as I was born in Birmingham and lived there for 20 years.

I love accents, especially Scottish (thinking of Sean Connery here) but not to be confused with bad grammar which I hate. Bad grammar I associate with poor education.

who judges us by our accent? ourselves of course.I could go on a rant about the 'establishment' i've noticed the media even bbc has more regional accents these days,there has been a good book review on radio 4 this week in this vein,' the distance between them and us'. how about celebrating our differences?

Annewilko

Katie59

There are many accents the problems are caused by not being understood, I work with a Glaswegian colleague, she speaks so fast I just have to say slow down, every time, if she only thought first it would be fine.

Perhaps if you listened, it would be fine.

That is unnecessarily rude, Annewilko.

I have/had friends from Glasgow and can understand them perfectly because they speak clearly and distinctly and in fact even I, not being Scottish, have realised there is not just one Glasgow accent.

When on holiday in Eastern Europe years ago, a distraught woman grabbed my arm and gabbled at me because her husand had got into a fight. I didnt understand her and said I did not speak her language, thinking she was a local. She then spoke more slowly and it turned out they were from Glasgow but she had such a strong accent and she spoke so very fast I didn't realise.

My youngest grandchildren tease me about my southern accent ‘Barth, parth’ etc. I just continue to point out there are many different accents and regional speech and it doesn’t matter how people speak as long as they can understand each other. After all, isn’t that what speech is for?

I have a northern accent with very flat vowels, and I wouldn't have it any other way. My husband is Welsh and I've always loved his accent. Accents make people interesting. And bollocks to anybody who is stupid enough to equate them with intelligence, luv.

Well. I’m from south London and my husband is Irish. We are 60 ish now but both made efforts to ‘lose’ our accents back in 70s and 80s. I wouldn’t do that now but back then it was better not to be regional. So sad. I even had a teacher at school say to me “ you’re a pretty girl but when you open your mouth you let yourself down” horrific right? But really affected me.

Personally love regional accents. Just imagine having the misfortune to sound like R-Mogg. He's thick as a plank, but some people think he's intelligent because of his accent. Heaven help us.

I’m a Geordie and proud. I work with people who try to talk posh and they sound stupid. Half Geordie half posh! Very out on. I think I sound like Robson green but properly don’t!?

I love most regional accents, and even some international ones, Australian being a favourite…I even have my Siri set to the lovely Australian voice! Living in Northern Ireland, there are some of the accents here that I don’t like, but it should never be a judgement of the speaker.
What does influence my opinion of someone though, is incorrect grammar. I recently heard someone highly qualified in the legal profession using the terms ‘I seen’, and ‘I done’, and I was always bemused by the fact that some of my kids’ school teachers did the same. I’m afraid it irritates me that supposedly educated people in professional careers, don’t know what correct grammar is.

I think that we do this all the time. We always make some sort of judgement by how people look, what they are wearing etc. I think that we, generally speaking, endow someone with a public school accent with more intelligence than they may have. You don't have to look far to see examples. I remember when the presenter of Gardner's world had a London accent there were some here who found it irritating. I guess that Monty Don's dulcet upper class tones had the reverse effect.

If you put my sibling and I in the same room you would not know we grew up in the same council house on the same street in the same area. We had the same standard education at the same school.
They now have a well enunciated accent that could be from anywhere in the home counties.
Where as I still speak as I have always done. A bit rough round the edges.
I have never had anyone say they don't understand me though.
The only accent I find very hard to follow, purely for the speed in which they speak, is Belfast.
I did find it strange that when visiting England (I no longer live there) that Rab C Nesbitt was very helpfully subtitled by the BBC for the English!!

Georgesgran

Just re-read the thread.
Yammy - perhaps you could teach Brenda Blethyn to pick up Geordie as her accent makes us up here cringe! ?.
I’m Durham born and bred, but hope I’m nowhere near as thick as the Durham girls on Gogglebox - the mind boggles!

I worked in Scotswood and Benwell so had plenty of teachers. Me ma and me da were used all the time, I lost my low flat accent and got the Geordie lilt. I must admit the first time I was called hinny I thought they were saying, Ginny. They joke and laugh and it is heard in their accents.
Perhaps a little rude but my friend was from Durham and when picked up on her pronunciation when she said she was going to have a bath instead of baath she turned around and said "Yes and I say grass, not graass and ass not arse". She stunned them and walked off. It's a lovely accent and one I don't think will ever die out.
Brenda Blethyn makes me cringe as well, I find Mat baker on Country file alright.
They haven't got an actor that can do my accent the only time we hear it is on the News.

A few years ago on holiday in Ibiza, my West of Scotland husband found himself interpreting the conversation between a Geordie and a Cockney. They couldn't understand each other ! It always amuses me that Scots are expected to 'slow down' or speak more clearly. Not all, but lots of folk from South of the border make no effort to change the way they speak so we can understand them. I agree regional accents are no measure of intelligence at all .

Poppsbaggie

Personally love regional accents. Just imagine having the misfortune to sound like R-Mogg. He's thick as a plank, but some people think he's intelligent because of his accent. Heaven help us.

You may not agree with his politics or views (I don't either) but to describe him as thick as a plank is untrue.

He had the advantage of an expensive education but then so have others who barely managed to scrape 'A' levels.

I was born in Liverpool, lived in London, Bury, Romiley (near Stockport), Sutton Coldfield, back to Liverpool, Derby, Cardiff, St Helens, Morpeth, Whaley Bridge (again near Stockport) and back to Morpeth. If I don't have a defined regional accent, it's hardly surprising, but I'm definitely northern. If we came home from our London school saying things like, "I'm goin' dan v parf an sit on v grarse." My mother would correct us, " It's p-ath and gr-ass!" My dad would insist on goING and all other dropped -ings. Of course, in Liverpool we pronounced our -ings properly and could be recognised for it in other regions of the country.
Now that I've lived in the North East for so many years, you can hear my glottal stop in amongst the handy regional phrases!

Mum never let us watch Coronation Street because of the ‘poor speech’
I went to work ‘downSouth’ in London in late 1960’s. Most if the group I was in were from Public/Boarding schools and spoke with RP accent.
I returned home for a visit a few months later and mum observed I was’talking posh’ The girls ‘down South’ still thought I spoke with my strong regional accent.
By the end of 2 years, having been immersed in a, mostly RP speaking enviroment (a London teaching hospital) I only ‘lapsed’ into flat vowels when either excited or back ‘up North’
I think being young and moving away from home, made me, unconciously, want to fit in.
Visited a friend in Canada who emigrated from Yorkshire and she speaks full on ‘Canadian’ … until we get together, reminisce, few glasses of wine… and the Yorkshire in us returns.
Interestingly her mother still sounds Yorkshire.