Judging People by How They Speak…?

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 accents but hate bad grammar.

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.

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.

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!

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

The concept of a superior mode of speaking is not confined to the UK. My French professeure told me that the best French is spoken by farmers in the Loire valley. I think she meant the sound rather than their grammatical exactitude!

My DH born in Small Heath a real brummie got called posh when he went into hospital in the Black country.

I like the northern accents that are more phonetically correct.

Aa a southerner I can't help thinking about this every time I tell a child, oo as in book is also oo as in choose.. Also anything to do with a

It is very annoying...

in a town near where they live
In the Midlands!

We were given election lessons at Grammar school
So were we, but in our first couple of years at High School. ?

Someone recently started taking the Micky out of what they thought might be my relative's accent when I said I was visiting him in a town near where they live.
(He has no more of an accent than they do)

My previous FIL decided he didn't like me based on how I speak.He thought I was posh! So it can work both ways.

blutz

We have many regional accents in the U.S. I sometimes have a difficult time understanding people from the southern states of the U.S. Somtimes I'm told I have a "Chicago accent." It varies across the U.S. When I'm watching a program where people have southern accents, I sometimes wish there were subtitles. The closed captions bother me.

About 15 years' ago I was in the Whistle Stop Cafe (as in Fried Green Tomatoes) Juliette, Georgia - our waitress had such a strong accent that we could barely understand what she was saying.

The experience was mutual as she got very irritated with me and snarled that she couldn't make out what I was saying!

But we did enjoy our fried green tomatoes, deep-fried okra and iced tea in a chipped jam jar!

We were given election lessons at Grammar school before we went on interview for further education.
Love it Yammy, what an enterprising school! Were pupils judged by their party colours? Sorry!

I can do a lot of accents and sometimes I do a posh British accent just for fun. People here laugh at that one, it’s associated with snobby twits. Funny because they love my Yorkshire one .

I love the way Alexander Armstrong speaks. It's just so rich and melodious. I'm also incredibly fond of the American accent, especially the way the people from the South speak. Not so keen on British accents, but I would never judge someone's intelligence based on their accent.

RichmondPark

*I think you have to learn to moderate the accent for the occasion and prove that you are not unintelligent an uphill struggle all your life.*

That's interesting. I've never felt the need to moderate my accent and am sure I couldn't do so convincingly. People not in the know don't care and people in the know would see through it.

A certain sort of person might judge or joke about accents, but in my professional life I was never made to feel that my intelligence was linked to my accent and never saw any evidence of that.

Maybe your accent is not as strong as some of us have you are very lucky. If I chose not to change it I often would not be understood.
It's not just the way I say them the words are completely different. When shopping with a friend from the same area but in a different part of the country we were asked on two occasions if we were" Scandi" a derogatory term in it's self.
The Birmingham accent is difficult to loose and the Geordie easy to pick up. My children born in the North East called me mammy ,they also called each other man. Within a month of moving and being laughed at they had changed to mummy and using each others names.
We were given election lessons at Grammar school before we went on interview for further education. The list is endless ,sniggers for the A's at A level which were heard as three E's. Never volunteering to answer a question in lectures sitting in the middle to be anonymous.
Some would say we have a chip on our shoulders and if we have it is because like Fanny says we are made to feel like that

Grandma70s

The problem is that in England speech is associated with social status and education, like it or not. RP (Received Pronunciation, standard English) is the same all over the country.

I am trying to think of examples…..Alexander Armstrong, for instance, comes from the north east. Not a hint of that in his speech. I’m sure there are many others.

When I was young, if you had a local accent you tried to alter it, to speak with an RP accent. Now, people don’t do that so much. I think the change came, like so many other social changes, in the 1960s. The Beatles were partly responsible. They kept their Scouse accents and were not ashamed of them. Their accents are quite mild - I have encountered incomprehensible scouse accents. It’s really embarrassing when you can’t understand peoples speech.

Communication is a two-way process. It consists of a receiver as well as a broadcaster. If the receiver puts up barriers from the outset ("Oh no - a Glaswegian accent! I'll never be able to understand this!"), the process is hindered. If you are open-minded enough to listen properly, you will understand.
BTW, RP is not the same as Standard English. The first is an accent, the second a dialect. Also Scots RP differs from English RP, although for both accents, Standard English is broadly the same (with a few minor exceptions). Standard Scots is another story altogether!

People always want to fit in and will adapt their speech to do so. I have two grandchildren, one who went to Oxbridge and now only speaks RP, his brother is still speaks broad Lancs. I am sure everyone assumes the Oxbridge one is more intelligent but that is not the case.

I think you have to learn to moderate the accent for the occasion and prove that you are not unintelligent an uphill struggle all your life.

That's interesting. I've never felt the need to moderate my accent and am sure I couldn't do so convincingly. People not in the know don't care and people in the know would see through it.

A certain sort of person might judge or joke about accents, but in my professional life I was never made to feel that my intelligence was linked to my accent and never saw any evidence of that.

Excellent post Yammy. I'm a London girl, not quite cockney or gangster speak, but not far off.
The trick is to adapt your accent for the occasion, so I can be a teacher at a posh independent school at the same time as shopping down Walthamstow Market. I love different accents and often imitate them, although not in a mocking way. (Maybe being bilingual from birth started me off).
Far more important is what people say than how they say it, so no I don't judge people by how they speak.

I can never hear the words 'West Bromwich' without thinking of Barry's building society and when I hear Bomber's, 'Alright my dear' gently rolling around like Bristol hills I am instantly transported home.

If living in England you have regional accents, if living in Wales
you have a Welsh accent, so wrong, we have regional accents in
Wales.

Septimia

I think regional accents make English more interesting.

However, I also think it is courteous to moderate an accent (and dialect) when speaking to someone who isn’t accustomed to it. You want them to understand what you’re saying after all. I don’t mean that everyone should use RP - heaven forefend!

I would strongly agree with Septimia and Fanny who knows how I feel, good for you for bringing it up..
You do have to moderate your accent for people to understand you, in certain situations, it can appear that you are unintelligent because you are quickly changing pronunciation and words in your head before you answer.
We joke and say we are trilingual, we can speak the Queens English "When one wants or has to", we speak to our neighbours using a mild local accent and at home, we are just our normal selves.
Having moved around the country a lot with DH's job and being a teacher I have had to learn to speak so that people understood me.
It can hold you back I knew someone when I was young who would not take the Oxbridge exams and even someone who is not applying now because they think their accent will be against them even with three A's .
I like accents and am interested in them, I think we should all preserve them they are our cultural history, though I still would not go into a shop in London and speak in my own "Broad accent"i.e. Who do marra?
Quite a few well-known public figures went to public school in my county though you would never guess.
I think you have to learn to moderate the accent for the occasion and prove that you are not unintelligent an uphill struggle all your life.

I don’t think it’s just accents, even in the same area you’ll have people who talk ‘posh’, and those who do not. I think this is where a person is judged more than the regional accent, think Mrs Bucket’s telephone voice! I like when people ask foreign sounding individuals where are they from and get “London” or whatever. On the other hand there are all sorts of accents now on tv and radio, not just (thankfully) RP!