Judging People by How They Speak…?

It's deeply annoying. I was born and brought up in Yorkshire but spent my university years and much of my adulthood in and around the London area so I have a fairly neutral accent usually; definitely not posh though! However, now I'm "back home", many neighbours and new friends with broad Yorkshire accents remark that I, "don't sound very Yorkshire" in an almost accusing way whilst some of my southern friends will take the rise out of me for the gradual flattening of vowel sounds by quoting "eee bah gum" when they detect them. I can't win!

I have a Northern Ireland accent and when I lived in England I was constantly asked to slow down when I was speaking. When I went 'home' for visits I got into the swing of it again and then when I returned back to England my friends there always had to tell me slow down again. It's great for unwanted calls though, I can go a mile an hour and they end up so confused ?.
Where I live we get tour buses arriving all the time and I love to hear all the accents and languages from all the visitors, it's wonderful.
Nobody should ever be judged by the way they speak.

No, I do not judge anyone by their accent. I actually love to hear all the different ones, nor do I judge anyone that does not pronounce words correctly! My favourite accent by far is the brummie one, I could listen to it 24/7! It’s what’s in the heart that matters not how someone speaks .

Love to hear different accents. I was born in Birmingham and went to school there, have lived in Glasgow, Sheffield and South Wales, and now in the south-east. I think my accent is now pretty neutral but I absorb accents easily and can quickly lapse into any one of them. A couple of years ago we had an electrician working in the house and he said to me "you come from Birmingham don't you?" He had detected a hint of the accent which surprised me - it's nearly sixty years since I lived in Brum.

I grew up in an area whose accent was considered the joke of my country - very offensive

That is what I like from the US - nobody pays attention to accents, we just communicate

There are so many Intelligence modalities, there can’t be any judgements on dialect it’s a nonsense
Musical-rhythmic and harmonic.
Visual-spatial.
Linguistic-verbal.
Logical-mathematical.
Bodily-kinesthetic.
Interpersonal.
Intrapersonal.
Naturalistic.

Wot?

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 !

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.

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

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.

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’.’

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….?

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.

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 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

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 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.

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'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.

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'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!

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.

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”?