Judging People by How They Speak…?

Like Joseanne, I am easily capable of modifying my accent to suit the people around me.

I taught in a reasonably posh private school and my accent matched.
When I'm in the local market, I'm broad Yorkshire.

I seem to be able to do it almost unconsciously, which is a bit of a problem when I'm with my Scottish sister-in-law, because after a while I start sounding faintly Scottish. I only hope she doesn't think I'm mocking her.

I have read - somewhere - that it's a mechanism for social acceptance, which it probably is.

Cars are not such a thing here, more practicality than looks. I have a very old car which fits like an old shoe and I don’t want to change it. I don’t care that it is old . I could certainly afford a new one but can’t be stuffed. I guess the suburb you live in and the school you went to are the ‘class’ symbols here. There are a lot of private schools and they definitely have a pecking order or status order and everyone knows it. Bizarre.

I love accents / dialects!
I find them musical & magical. :-)
Wouldn't it be boring if we all spoke exactly the same way?

I come from Liverpool and since I left (45 years ago) my accent has mellowed -not on purpose as I like the Liverpool accent but I have lived in many places which has changed my accent somewhat. However, I am still judged by other people. When I go home my family says I am now 'posh' and when I am away the first thing people say is 'are you from Liverpool, you accent is strong' Most of the time the people who say this have never been to Liverpool and therefore haven't got a clue.

Accents are interesting things! Having grown up in Essex all my brothers have Essex/London accents but I moved away from home at 18 and don't. Mum grew up in Durham and consciously set about losing her Geordie accent when she came south and was teased.

People are judged on 3 things, the way they speak ie., their accents, the house they live in and the car they drive.

If you have a Northern accent, you are perceived by some as being a bit thick or not intelligent.

DD told me when she was in London for her internship, the Londoners made fun of her when she used a Midland slang like cob instead of bread roll.

Her public relations boss was like the boss in 'The Devil wears Prada’. When someone came to the office, her boss hugged the person and called that person Darling. DD overhead her boss saying to this person that DD was as thick as 2 short planks which is not a nice thing to say!

DH moved up from London thirty years ago but still speaks with a strong London accent whilst I speak with a foreign accent.

My father was very snobby about accents. He thought that if someone spoke with a strong regional accent it showed that were not very bright - because if they were, they’d have got rid of it. He also thought that it was acceptable for someone like a cleaner or garage hand to have a local accent, but not for a teacher or doctor.

A university tutor told me to lose my accent - bet that wouldn’t happen today. It made me very self conscious and I did lose my accent because of it.

I’m from South Wales and I lived in London in my early 20’s
Most people couldn’t understand me so I had to tone down my accent and speak more slowly than I normally would.
I got so used to speaking like this that when I’d go home for holidays and breaks my friends and family used to rib me for “ talking posh”.
I didn’t think I was talking any different but they detected the slight accent which even though I’ve been home now for 30+ years I still revert to when on the phone.

It makes me laugh when English friends imitate and make fun of my Scottish accent. They are especially amused by the unvoiced Scottish wh sound as in whales. One daughter in law has whale watching trips to Scotland and called whales "Wales".

…I don’t judge anyones accent critically, it’s just flippin frustrating when it’s your phone call medical appointment or anything important for that matter, and you can’t decipher the words ( & especially with masks on at a specialist appointment I had ?)!!
Embarassing

Well said

But also, if folk were understanding and especially on the phone, you are ‘talked at’ not talked to, and at speed as no doubt they have targets, But saying ‘can you repeat that’ regularly defeats the object. They don’t talk to you as if the person is in there in front of you
Rude really, do they talk like that at home or out with friends ??
Newsreaders, royalty. phil & Holly get it right & polite. Why cant they be example, No fun for hard of healing or borderline autistic to keep explaining disability

I was born and grew up in Wiltshire, and despite not having lived there since I was 18, still get asked where I'm from. (People usually think it's Somerset). Have lived in Hertfordshire, London, Singapore, Northampton, Cyprus and Australia, and still have that trace of Wiltshire. I find that if I go back toy home town, I will revert to broad Wiltshire!

My family are all born in Scotland - with slightly different accents - as some of our children were born in Edinburgh and some in Dundee. We have an English son in law, and an Irish one; and our younger son is dating a girl from Wales - and we all manage to talk to one another. We take the mickey out of each other on occasion, but still manage to get along. I enjoy the mix of accents.

And size, this happened to me recently, I felg unfairly judged, this person knew nothing about me but thought it ok to pass a comment,
We all make judgements about others on all sorts of things. It’s sort of natural but it’s when these judgements are acted upon is when people get hurt, physically and emotionally.

BlueBelle

But they are all judged Imaround especially colour and religion

And gender as well.

I've certainly been judged for my accent, in fact it happens rather a lot as I don't live where i was born

That too, Joseanne. We need something to wash down the clotted cream. ?

BlueBelle

But they are all judged Imaround especially colour and religion

Sadly, yes they are. But it us wrong.

But they are all judged Imaround especially colour and religion

Judging people because they are different is wrong. Having a different accent is no different than having a different language, skin color, religion, or nationality. No one is better than the other, they are just different.

henetha

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 thought it was the cider that caused the drawn out slurring of the vowels. ?

Recently I was reading with my DGD. I'm from the South, DGD is from NE Midlands.

DGD is learning to read using phonics. How do schools teach phonics when there are local accents? I had the expected a dilemma with 'baath' and 'bath' but DGD wanted to know how to write 'rucksack' using phonics.
How are teachers taught to use phonics with a regional accent and do they take account of children moving from another area? Have I misunderstood the way phonics are used in schools?

I also wonder how children can learn to read and write using phonics when they only hear language rich in glottal stops, dropped endings and the 'noo' way of sayin thinks.

Please don't think I am 'anti-phonics', I am genuinely puzzled

I enjoy our rich accents and dialects (most of them - but dislike the sound of my Essex vowels when I hear my recorded voice) - I just wonder how accents are catered for when children learn to read and write.

No one’s mention Suffolk I went as a day pupil to a boarding school so there were children from all over, consequently I have no accent at all but Suffolk always gets it in the neck for sounding backward and unintelligent It is a fairly slow accent but real Suffolk is so rich in words and some of the expressions are very funny There are so many people from other counties that you don’t hear so many strong Suffolk accents in the towns now but in the countryside you still do
I had a Suffolk granny and grandad and a Leicestershire Nan and grandad so I went from ‘me ducks’ to ‘ole gal’

Some people seem to think there is such a thing as incorrect grammar. Different dialects can have differences in grammar. So standard English will have its grammar and different regional dialects will have their grammars. One is not correct and the other incorrect. They are just different. Both are equally grammatical, that is, they have consistent pattern. If they were not, they could not operate as language at all.

People may have been taught at school that variations from standard English grammar are “incorrect” so it is understandable that they believe and repeat this but it is a misleading way to look at language.

It would be better to say, “I don’t mind people speaking in regional accents a long as they use standard English grammar” than “I don’t mind as long as they use correct grammar”.

Every aspect of any dialect of English is as valid as that of any other dialect from a scientific view.