Accents - a privilege to hear them

I just love all of our different accent and dialects, also the use of different regional words and expressions. We have apparently over 300 words for fool, one for almost every day of the year!

In the West Midlands they usually use ‘mither’ to describe someone worrying

My late (and ex) husband was a Fifer, from a mining family. When I first met him my FIL spoke with a deeply incomprehensible Fife accent. He had great fun deliberately exaggerating that accent to the point where I could barely understand a word he said, despite the fact that I’d lived in Fife for several years by then. He frequently forced me into baffled silence, but perhaps that was his purpose. I remember him with great fondness.

I’m from south wales originally although have lived in Surrey for 10 years . Other people often ask if I am Welsh but I think I have only a slight accent, until I go back to visit and then am much broader . I’m very proud to be Welsh and love a regional accent especially scouse or geordie

I love regional accents, and am in danger of slipping into them in regional company, which can be misconstrued.

I find Somerset and Herefordshire accents very similar. Much more similar than Herefordshire compared to neighbouring Worcester, which is more "Black Country" to my ears.

They're both very rural, cider-making counties although don't think Somerset had hops.

I do believe we all have accents we like and ones we dislike and there's nothing wrong with that so long as you don't offend or upset anyone!

It's so difficult when you can't understand someone, but it could be the way they speak rather than their accent. Some people mumble, others speak softly or too quickly, and others down in their throats instead of projecting their voice outwards. Any of those things can make someone hard to understand.

Has anyone noticed the way young women speak now? There's a tendency to 'growl' as if they have a throat infection. The voice is held in the throat instead of speaking out. It's very strange. Keep an ear out for this because I've heard it many times so it's definitely a 'thing' now. I hate it.

We live in Leicestershire and the East Midland's accent is just a lazy way of speaking and can be almost incomprehensible in some cases.

In our family we have a few different accents to contend with. One son in law is from the Black Country and one from Zimbabwe. We have cousins who are south African, some Australian and a couple of Canadians.

Sorry, I had to talk to DD1.

I love all the different accents and relish the fact that we are, therefore, a great mix of people with different experiences to bring to the family.

JaneJudge

In the West Midlands they usually use ‘mither’ to describe someone worrying

My mum said ‘stop mithering’ on a tennis court in Saudi.
A woman rushed up and gave her a hug! She had married an American many years earlier and hadn’t heard the word for years.
I grew up and went to school with many different nationalities and I haven’t got any discernible accent but do have a soft spot for the Lancastrian.
I must admit (I ‘m not being snobbish, just truthful) I could hardly understand my neighbours father when he spoke. Very broad Norfolk, I must have answered yes and no in the right places though. The accent does seem to have watered down now unless I’ve just got used to it.

I LOVE an accent, from all parts of the UK and indeed the world!

Marzipan22 when you say you don't have an accent, do you mean that you speak RP? That is an accent, just not a regional one. It used to be "BBC English" but more recently regional accents are accepted on the BBC, when spoken in a way that can be clearly understood.
It used to be advantage if one's native dialect was RP, but Americans still seem to love it!

I'm another who likes different accents and will switch to Radio Shetland or Orkney just to listen to the voices.

I started off in New Zealand and came to England aged 10. I tried to lose my Kiwi accent as I was mocked at school.

As a teenager we moved from London to Birmingham for a couple of years. It was the height of Beatlemania and to my ear Brummie was the next best accent to Liverpool.
I told some girls at my new school how much I liked their Northern accents and they laughed at me.😂

I still have a trace of my NZ which I can slip back into when I'm there. I have a Kiwi DGS now.

Despite being in Scotland for over 50 years with a Scottish DH and Scots' children I don't think I will ever sound like a Native.

Chestnut I think what you describe is the vocal fry I mentioned earlier. That and the high-pitched soppy little girly voice that so many adopt nowadays are most annoying to my ears!

Grammaretto none of us has a Scottish accent despite three of my dc being born in Scotland. Ds1 who has lived in the US for over twenty years still has a 100% British accent, although he uses Americanisms such as trash for rubbish.

I'm a scouser I don't understand anyone who thinks accents are in need of polishing up. Also discrediting accents from different regions is insulting.

DH was born in Liverpool and I would love it if he had acquired the accent. He was only he when he left so not much chance really.

My family from the North and the East Mids use the word mither and I remember trying to explain it's meaning, on the phone,to some one from the South Coast. I couldn't think of an equivalent word. Of course I could as soon as I put the phone down.

I read somewhere that some accents are "linguistically stable" hence Scots who went to Canada in the 19th century never lost their accents or the Irish in NY and Boston?
Perhaps someone knows more about this?

A family of New Zealanders came to our Scottish town for a year and we made friends with them. Their boys were at primary school with ours and they almost instantly sounded Scottish. I queried this with the parents who both had strong Kiwi accents but they didn't seem surprised.
I had thought that most DC sound like their parents.

Four of my grandchildren speak like their parents Grammaretto but one family (three grandchildren there) have fairly strong local accents. I don't really feel their mother's accent is as strong as the children's even though she was born there and all her relatives and friends seem to be from the same area.

I can only think it must be being reinforced at their school by the voices around them.

A major problem with regional accents, in England anyway, is that they are class-related, so there s some snobbery about them. RP is the same all over the country. At my school, on Merseyside, any hint of a local accent was quickly stamped on - also by my parents.

I think the ability to understand accents diminishes with age. My father in his 70s couldn’t understand scouse speakers at all. When I was a child, my grandfather couldn’t understand our very Scottish doctor. I could.

My French tutor, a former professor from France, told me the native Loire accent is the most desirable.

I love a Geordie accent. I have a very old friend whom I speak to (at some length) on the phone every couple of months. I could cheerfully say nothing and just listen to her talk. It’s a joy!

My DM born 1915, was very aware of class distinction. Grandma70s

She didn't want us to pick up a cockney accent in London or a Brummie one in Birmingham. Her own, which she thought was "proper" actually sounded Anglo-Indian as she was born and brought up in Colonial Burma.
She liked an educated Scottish accent and once accidentally offended DH's aunt by telling her how much she liked her accent.
"But I don't have an accent" retorted the aunt.

As an army child I moved to new places often and was always teased because I didn’t have the local accent or dialect. The worst was Stockport where they apparently spoke a different language.
It’s lovely that every region of our small island speaks English in a unique way but now I’m quite deaf I find some accents hard to understand on the radio.

David, David, David - I take it you were having a laugh, doesn’t sound like you to be judgemental like that !

The A1 before it was improved was a good indicator as to when accents became more noticeable. The husband of a friend of mine said that her accent,normally RP, changed as they drove north to visit her family in Yorkshire as they approached the sign ‘ The North’. She used words from that point onwards such as ‘siling down’ ( meaning raining heavily) that she never used at home.

I spent 4 years at university in Newcastle and still love that accent and have encouraged people I have met from that area to chat away to me.

I love regional and national differences in speech as in other aspects.