Your accent

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I have very conflicted views on my accent my family are all yorkshire born and bred but both my parents have quite soft spoken mild accents then they spilt up and i moved to fairly run down part of teeside and thats the accent i,m stuck with despite only living there about 10 years and then moving to london where i,ve been about 20 years now.
To tell the truth my accent alienated me and made me feel like a bit of an outcast.
Its hard to be so different and i was young and lonely and then a new mother with no family and i became very self conscious almost paranoid.The horrible thing is when you feel like that people pick up on it and it only makes things worse.I felt rejected from the wealthy mothers because i was working class and a bit defensive maybe i looked a bit hard faced and i,d find them being polite but keeping me at a distance the only other mothers were either immigrants or londoners born and bred and the thing that i most noticed was that in london everyone seems to stick to their groups almost tribal but i had no group to belong to!
Its natural isn,t it to want to belong to a community or stay with similar people but i felt out on a limb.
Plus i,m introverted by nature and in the end i just shut down a bit and didn,t really initiate conversation with people for fear that they would already have a prejudice about me and that i,d only confirm it.
Can i just say because its seldom really talked about but women with a working class accent are i feel heavily discriminated against i know the reverse is true as well i find myself either freezing or fawning(and i hate myself for it) when i hear what seems like for a better word a posh accent.
I find britain to be very heavily segregated and riddled not only by class prejudice but by colour gender and economics.
When the chips are down and things are not going well this can be pretty devastating sometimes.Life here is very insular and hermit like being indoors a lot(the weather does not help!) Chances for socialisation are rare unless you go to the pub or are out on the prowl looking for fleeting fun!
The things i enjoyed doing were all things i could do alone (cinema,art galleries,museum) So i did everything myself or with my kids and thats the point i want to make accents show where you are from but they don,t show who you are! Also any accent can be percieved in a negative or positive light but some accents have more clout than others because they convey privilege and a sense of wealth.
Now wealth is not just money but status,health aspirations and to a certain degree confidence. When you feel poor and others reinforce this it can put you on a doward spiral of low self esteem frustration antagonism and even despair.
I strongly believe that no one should be mocked,ridiculed mimicked or talked down to because of the sound of their voice.
duck that its not banter and its passive aggresive and its putting people in what we think are their places (what arrogance is that to presume that you know where someone belongs.So i decided to come out of the woodwork and to stop feeling deprived and that only i would decide if i belonged or was accepted or not.
I cannot be jocular to have irony you need to feel secure and i never did to come from the poorest part of england was hard but its given me an edge i can also empathise with other lost souls who like me never felt as if they belonged anywhere either and i have compassion for the marginalised and the rejected and i know its not fake virtue signalling because i,ve been there too.
So yeah accents are great bullshit detectors because anyone who judges you negatively because of them are showing themselves to be unworthy of your attention and not deserving of your time or energy.
 
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I was born in South Africa, but moved to England in my late teens. And have been hopping between the two ever since.

However I still carry a rather heavy Afrikaans accent mixed with a mild sprinkling of East Anglian English. So whenever I'm in Johannesburg or here in England I have to repeat myself because people find it hard to understand me first time round
 
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Cant remember if I've posted here but I'm welsh and sound nothing like stacey (gavin and stacey) but according to my non welsh friends i do but i can't hear it myself. 😂
 
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Not sure if I agree with him, but a taxi driver in New York back in the early 2000s told me I sounded like Ann Widdecombe (she was being interviewed on the radio during our journey) and that my voice sounded like violins!! 😳😂😳
 
I am French and have been living in Birmingham for the past 5 years. My ex boyfriend was from the Black Country so I have developed an accent that is a mix of French/Brummie/Black Country. it is very confusing for people who meet me 😂
I would love to hear that mixture. 😂

I have an Essex accent, but I do not articulate myself the way you hear them speak on TOWIE. Unfortunately that programme has reinforced the stereotype of Essex people “being stupid” even more so. 🙄

I love our broad range of accents in Britain. I must admit, I am good at mimicking accents and find myself doing it rather a lot, usually when by myself. But I’ve often put on a different accent when visiting a place that I have no intention of returning to, just to see if I can get away with it. 🤣

The thing with accents is that it does not matter what your accent is, it is how you articulate yourself, the speed in which you speak too. I never have a problem understanding accents, but if someone is a fast talker, then that would make it slightly more difficult to understand them.
 
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I'm from Hull and we have our very own unique breed of a Yorkshire accent which is just... something else.
I don't think my accent is very strong, and other people comment that I do have the accent but I don't sound as bad as others.
You really know a Hull accent when they pronounce "Phone" as "Fern" and we are notorious for saying "Nerr" instead of "No"
I got picked on at school for saying Lunch instead of Dinner so people thought I was posh 🙄
My partner is from Kent so his accent sticks out like a sore thumb here, his accent is not dissimilar to Essex, but I think it's a bit more mellow.
On the other end of the scale I had a friend who lived just outside of Hull her whole life, both parents were Scottish but I have no idea what to class her accent as at all. It's slightly posh, but there is no Hull or Scottish twang. I wouldn't even call it a Yorkshire accent. It's baffling.
 
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I’m from the East Midlands - born and raised. My accent is very “neutral”. Like a London accent, except I say bath and not barth 😂
 
Northern Ireland accent (not a city specific one, fairly generic) - I don't like it at all. I think our accents tend to be quite harsh sounding. I'd love a slightly more southern Irish sounding one.
My uncle is Northern Irish and his accent is so cool. He does sound angry a lot though, mainly because every other word is a swear word. It's proper ace having a conversation with him.
 
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I'm from Cumbria and definitely have an accent. My husband who is from Eastbourne is a proper southerner and he thinks my accent is hilarious (he's public school and posh - I am secondary modern and common!). When he moved up here, he worked as a researcher and spoke to so many folk over the phone and he found that he couldn't ever tell if a voice was a man or a woman or how old they were.

I love my accent. It's mixed with so much other slang from Geordie, Glasgow, Scouse and Manc. It also gets mixed up with the Redcar area too as they do sound weirdly similar.
 
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Well I’m a full on brummy and hate it! It’s weird u forget you yourself have a accent and it’s not just people in other places 😅 I would rather be Irish or scottish
 
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Accents are so confusing 🥴 my husband is from England and his parents have a very broad accent for their region. Yet he and his sister (who both grew up there) have nowhere near the same. They are both just generic southern England/slightly posh English if anything.

I’m from NI but don’t have a super strong NI accent. My husband says my accent is very soft compared to a lot of people, and my family also differs from much of NI as we say “shower” instead of “shar”. Same with power/towel/owl/flower etc. It comes from my mum, who got it from my granny who is originally a french speaker, so learned to speak “English English” rather than “NI English”.

anyway, for that reason I’ve had people here tell me my accent is posh. its not at all though, and do say “arrr” in stead of “ow-er” for hour, and “flar” for baking type flour!
 
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I was born in South Africa, but moved to England in my late teens. And have been hopping between the two ever since.

However I still carry a rather heavy Afrikaans accent mixed with a mild sprinkling of East Anglian English. So whenever I'm in Johannesburg or here in England I have to repeat myself because people find it hard to understand me first time round
My Grandmother is from South Africa. Lived in London for many many years but still has quite an accent. We always thought it funny to get her to say “Ice cream”
 
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My Grandmother is from South Africa. Lived in London for many many years but still has quite an accent. We always thought it funny to get her to say “Ice cream”
I love my Afrikaans accent, especially when conversing to fellow South Africans; but I sound totally weird when speaking English to my English friends. The really odd thing is that even though I can still speak Afrikaans I have little or no idea how to read/write it - far too difficult.
 
I'm from Scotland, my accents is much lighter than the rest of my family. No one knows why, but it's always been like that. It's somehow 'posher', and my area already have pretty light versions of a Scottish accent

it's been helpful for living in England 😳
 
I have a scouse accent but it’s not a screechy over the top one 😂 only when I’m taking the piss I’ll over exaggerate it.

Its a bit deeper than most scouse girls and half the time I sound pissed off but I genuinely don’t meant it 😂
 
Birmingham born and bred. I dont have a strong accent at all which is weird as my younger siblings have SUCH strong Brummie accents that even I cringe sometimes 🤣. When I was in London for uni, no one could place my accent and one girl actually said she cant be friends with people from Birmingham bc the accent goes straight through her but I passed that test lol. She has pointed out that it comes out when I'm on the phone to my parents or anyone from home!

I spent a lot of my childhood up north as well so feel like that diluted my accent quite a bit. A few people have said I have a telephone voice but not sure what that means as I dont have the standard London accent I associate with telephone voices lol
Personally would love a posh London accent, I feel like I'd pass any telephone interview just because of the accent, never mind the skillset I have. I love the Irish accent and the Aussie accent.
 
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I have a very broad Barnsley accent. I wouldn’t change it for anything. Brummie, Barnsley and Scottish accents are my favourites.
I would hate to have the typical yummy mummy accent - ie MOD. Worst accent going.
Ah i have a definite wakey accent which i didn't even realise I had until i moved to Barnsley a few years ago. I think its crazy how different they are and its only down the road. My next door neighbour is so broad, always says 'tha' and 'oh arr' I find it dead comforting and friendly!
 
I'm from Hull and we have our very own unique breed of a Yorkshire accent which is just... something else.
I don't think my accent is very strong, and other people comment that I do have the accent but I don't sound as bad as others.
You really know a Hull accent when they pronounce "Phone" as "Fern" and we are notorious for saying "Nerr" instead of "No"
I got picked on at school for saying Lunch instead of Dinner so people thought I was posh 🙄
My partner is from Kent so his accent sticks out like a sore thumb here, his accent is not dissimilar to Essex, but I think it's a bit more mellow.
On the other end of the scale I had a friend who lived just outside of Hull her whole life, both parents were Scottish but I have no idea what to class her accent as at all. It's slightly posh, but there is no Hull or Scottish twang. I wouldn't even call it a Yorkshire accent. It's baffling.
My friend is from Hull and I love the way she says ‘a can of kerk’ (coke) her accent is fab!
 
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I'm from the London suburbs (Live in Kent now) and I quite like my accent. It can vary from posh to "street" depending on the company and a few drinks 😂. My family all have strong London accents though espcially my mother in law who is from Stepney. She sounds like she should work behind The Queen Vic.
 
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