Your accent

[CarrieW24]

I never knew I had an accent until I went overseas. I think that's most people...

I don't want to say where I'm from but I love my accent. It's one area in my life that's never given me a low self esteem.

...tooting my own horn... *toot! *toot!... Sorry

 

[bunnyboo]

I haaaate my accent. South Dublin, enough said.

 

[Callmemaybe]

I'm from Yorkshire and I've always thought we dont have an accent if that makes sense lol it just seems very plain. Does everyone this that about their own?

 

[Spicy_bananas]

I'm French -Canadian and moving soon to France. They loooove my accent over there. They say it sounds like I'm signing

 

[Ya-Mar]

I’m from the North East and have a very strong accent. I never try to hide it my customers at work absolutely love it, I also almost got kidnapped off some Canadians in Mexico as they were huge Geordie Shore fans and were amazed

 

[Misbehaving]

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.

Sorry to re quote myself!!! As you see from my post i had (still have a bit but i'm wirking on it ) massive chip on my shoulder about my accent.I let go of a bit of rage couldn't help it and then i came across this article in the gaurdian about students being bullied about their accents and bingo it hit that nerve right on the head because yes thats exactly how i felt as well.Except i maybe was not as articulate as nina in explaining this.
I'm glad that people are finally speaking out on this issue as its a long time coming in my opinion.Well done nina (i'm from close by) in saying what needed saying its elitist bullying nothing more nothing less and it should be taken seriously.Thanks for that and i wish her well why should this be the accepted face of ridicule with all the class bias and misogyny that entails?

 

[Pinkblush]

Love the cockney and scouse accents.

Ti

Sorry to re quote myself!!! As you see from my post i had (still have a bit but i'm wirking on it ) massive chip on my shoulder about my accent.I let go of a bit of rage couldn't help it and then i came across this article in the gaurdian about students being bullied about their accents and bingo it hit that nerve right on the head because yes thats exactly how i felt as well.Except i maybe was not as articulate as nina in explaining this.
I'm glad that people are finally speaking out on this issue as its a long time coming in my opinion.Well done nina (i'm from close by) in saying what needed saying its elitist bullying nothing more nothing less and it should be taken seriously.Thanks for that and i wish her well why should this be the accepted face of ridicule with all the class bias and misogyny that entails?

The bullying is not exclusive to one area tho. I had awful things said to me when I worked in scotland because I was from down south. Also had a boss from wakefield who used to bad mouth my accent and say things like ' you've got a daft accent and i don't want to lose the business, let me ring him'. Its widespread.

 

[Causewaygal]

My accent isn’t particularly strong as we moved around a lot and I have made a conscious effort over the years to not sound like my family (Yorkshire). If I’m in the North of England people think I’m from the South. I live in Northern Ireland now and I’m just discovering all the variations in accents here. I’m up on the north coast which I find sounds like a mix between Irish and Scottish accents. I have a tendency to pick up accents so who knows what I’ll sound like in a few years

 

[petitspois]

I’m from Wales and have what I’d like to think is a mild accent. It gets proper Welsh when I’m talking to someone from the Valleys though.

 

[Penelope Strawberry]

I grew up in Liverpool, and have spent most of my adult life on the Wirral.
I like to think that my scouse accent is quite soft, but I am probably kidding myself. Whenever I travel out of the north west, it often creates amusement. Taxi drivers and bar staff, will frequently repeat what I have just said - in a comical, over the top scouse accent. Perhaps that is how I actually sound?
It must be bad, as I once asked a local for directions, as I left London Bridge Tube Station. He replied “I’m sorry love, I don’t speak German”

Absolutely love a scouse accent! Sounds so friendly and warm to me.

I've lived in the UK for almost a decade now, but think that I still have a very strong South African accent, although I often am mistaken for being from Australia or NZ. Funnily enough, when I do go back to SA on holiday, everyone thinks I'm a tourist.

 

[Freebies_come2me]

Absolutely love a scouse accent! Sounds so friendly and warm to me.

I've lived in the UK for almost a decade now, but think that I still have a very strong South African accent, although I often am mistaken for being from Australia or NZ. Funnily enough, when I do go back to SA on holiday, everyone thinks I'm a tourist.

I love a SA accent!! I often mistaken it for Kiwi

 

[Penelope Strawberry]

I love a SA accent!! I often mistaken it for Kiwi

Haha! I'm always surprised when someone actually likes my accent, but I think most people feel that way!

 

[AnonymousMoustache]

I'm in Yorkshire and I get asked if i'm Australian fairly often. Mine is a mixture of Leeds and North Yorkshire. It's a bit of a common to slightly posh vibe. I do still have the infamous Leeds 'Neeeerrhhh' though - Which I am mocked for, frequently.

 

[Mulholland Drive]

Absolutely love a scouse accent! Sounds so friendly and warm to me.

I've lived in the UK for almost a decade now, but think that I still have a very strong South African accent, although I often am mistaken for being from Australia or NZ. Funnily enough, when I do go back to SA on holiday, everyone thinks I'm a tourist.

I'm from Bloemfontein, and have been living in England on and off for the last 10 years or so, and people here still can't understand my (much softened) Afrikaans accent. And yet when I head back to SA friends and family think I've become a tourist too with my funny "English" accent

 

[Penelope Strawberry]

I'm from Bloemfontein, and have been living in England on and off for the last 10 years or so, and people here still can't understand my (much softened) Afrikaans accent. And yet when I head back to SA friends and family think I've become a tourist too with my funny "English" accent

My husband is also South African (we're both from PE) but has been in the UK for 16 years and has pretty much lost his SA accent. Someone once asked us why my husband doesn't have an accent, but I sound so "severe".

 

[Readread]

Central Scotland (Edinburgh) but very very neutral as I've not lived in Scotland in over 9 years, mixed with a tiny wee bit of Cork Irish (from husband).

 

[Hodgies]

Posh Glaswegian and wouldn't change it. Spent several years living in Hampshire and I got irritated by people questioning that I was from Glasgow, presumably because I didn't sound as rough as expected? or pretending they couldn't understand what I said....usually as a means of being patronising. People also always wanted to discuss the weather with me!

Had an issue on the phone the other day with a call centre "generic English accent" guy who did the can't understand you routine which I thought was ridiculous. If you choose to work somewhere that you're going to have to speak to people from all over the country you need to get better at working out what they say without acting as if it's a massive inconvenience for you.

 

[Pixipoppy]

I don’t have an accent actually the only time anyone has told me I have an accent was in the US. It’s just generic English - could be from anywhere. I’ve lived in wales for a long time so go a bit Welsh especially when I’m talking to people at work, the Welsh have a lovely singsong way of talking to each other that just sounds so natural... my accent is so awkward and stilted in comparison.

 

[under the ivy]

Sorry to re quote myself!!! As you see from my post i had (still have a bit but i'm wirking on it ) massive chip on my shoulder about my accent.I let go of a bit of rage couldn't help it and then i came across this article in the gaurdian about students being bullied about their accents and bingo it hit that nerve right on the head because yes thats exactly how i felt as well.Except i maybe was not as articulate as nina in explaining this.
I'm glad that people are finally speaking out on this issue as its a long time coming in my opinion.Well done nina (i'm from close by) in saying what needed saying its elitist bullying nothing more nothing less and it should be taken seriously.Thanks for that and i wish her well why should this be the accepted face of ridicule with all the class bias and misogyny that entails?

I went to uni in my hometown and I toned down my strong Yorkshire/Leeds accent because other students would say they don’t understand me It gave me a bit of a complex and I still tone down my accent today when I’m around people I don’t know.

 

[taperjeangirl42]

West of Scotland/Glasgow accent. Don’t think about it much until I’m speaking to someone with a different accent then I start to hate it :-( feel like I sound so harsh and common compared with other accents lol