To find this incredibly irritating and rude?

@Gwenhwyfar, I'm a Welsh speaker (mother tongue), but from nearer the borders. People are usually surprised that I speak Welsh. My accent isn't particularly Welsh.

The accent varies a lot within Wales. I say the odd word or phrase in a Welsh way.

I'm itching to correct 'dyn hen' above.

Not another one 😀

There must be some gene/DNA mixing thing at play.
I would prefer almost any other accent.

(And I'm sure loads of men have looked at me, then I opened my mouth and they were like "uuuugh, Northern Irish/Irish".
Especially because many English people seem to perceive us as peasants).

When I'm away, normally in the USA, when someone says that, I reply with "I don't have one, you do" 😁

@Gonners, xenophobic and rude.
(literally they are stranger-hating and shameless but in this context they are as above. Extroverted is allblyg.)

Online translation apps generally can't cope with Welsh.

Ok, I was just talking about North Wales in particular as that’s where I’ve grown up and therefore my experience. Didn’t mean any offence.

What a horrible man! It’s a lovely accent, very friendly.

I always do a Welsh accent for Fox when I read The Gruffalo to DS

As I said I didn't read previous comments. Yes people might not be able to tell the difference. Sounds like you have extra time in your hands to write this reply to me. Bravo.

I've got an unusual accent too and I hate when people imitate it. I've always found that as rude as you do. They think it's a great laugh and ever so cute of them, but if I was to turn the tables I know they'd be mortally offended. So it's not really a bit of fun, is it? It's a joke at my expense. It's a bit mean, and frankly rude.

I also hate the way some people feel entitled to demand your life story, the minute they detect an accent. I'm just trying to exist in the world and go about my day. I don't feel like sharing my life history with some total stranger! It never occurs to them that I don't owe them a conversation, just because they're curious.

Scottish and I started getting bored of it about 20 years ago, now I really dislike it. I can’t ever recall a woman doing it though. Only men older than me…. 🤔

I've experienced this with my RP accent, most often when I lived in the North. I suspect not as often as you're experiencing it though.

It's the sort of thing which might be banter between close friends or family if they know it won't offend, but which is otherwise incredibly rude.

I'm not counting those who unconsciously imitate an accent, but it's usually pretty clear who's who!

Many years ago I had a friend and her friend come to stay with us for a few weeks whilst they were job hunting. They had just been on holiday to Dublin and thought it was hilarious to keep saying things in a fake Irish accent. My Northern Irish husband hinted very politely it wasn't very funny. They kept at it. I wasn't very well at the time, had tricky family stuff going on, my husband had just been promoted to a new stressful role and the constant tee hee hee we are so funny just drove us demented. They were really offended when they wanted to extend the stay and we said no. I did actually lose her as a friend. I am sure she saw it as my siding with a boy (we were not married at that point) and therefore being a terrible friend. But please mocking someone's accent can be just rude and that with other stuff just tipped us over the edge.

FFS 🙄 People really are twats.

"Nac ydw, dyn hen, fel arfer dw i'n siarad yn fy iaith gyntaf," (or anything else in Welsh) smile and walk away. Would have driven him mad trying to work out what you said.
But serious, why a) mock someone speaking with a welsh accent in wales and b) mock someone who has just done you a favour?! weirdo

Same. I have an American friend who says I sound like the late Queen Elizabeth 2. I get called posh. I'm lower middle class, barely.

Yeah a school run dad is Irish. I go weak. Irish accents have always done it for me though. School run dad is also extremely grey haired and distinguished and also a very kind man. He once helped me up after my arthritic and 10 years older than him knee gave way with such kindness. (So literally weak at the knees!!)

Agreed OP. It’s not banter, it’s just plain rude. My husband has been teasing me about my Scandinavian accent occasionally for years and now the kids think this is acceptable - we mock mum for how she speaks. Ridiculous and I’ve had a serious word with ALL of them. I wouldn’t dream of mocking their attempts at speaking my native tongue, but of course it’s nowhere near as good as my English. I wouldn’t dream of commenting - it would put them off ever speaking it again!

that's still rude, but the key difference here is that they were mocking OP's Welsh accent while themselves living (and/or working) in Wales

Which just makes it bizarre, surely they are surrounded daily by Welsh accents, why would it even register?

My accent is mocked pretty much every day by my own family and strangers… I’m so self conscious about it..I feel so dumb, I have been 25 years in England and you would think I’m fresh arrived :(

It’s not clear that he was English though.
OP just said English speaking

It's not just monolingual people or English speakers. The parisians who study aerospace engineering in Toulouse give the locals a hard time for their accents.
People in the north of Spain will tell you they don't have an accent, because they see their Spanish as natural, correct Spanish and other native speakers' Spanish as strange and wrong.

I am in the same position as @SpanThatWorld's mother. - I have lost all trace of my accent. I moved from Ireland to England when I was 18 and very quickly got fed up people asking me to say things and saying 'your accent is so cute'... I also witnessed the bullying of one of my classmates because he said certain words in a strong Irish accent and I cringe at how I failed to protect my best friend from being bullied by a group of friends we went on holiday with - they spent the whole week saying 'potatoes'. I definitely think there is an element of perceived social status about this type of bullying and I see similarities in the history of the suppression of the Welsh and Irish languages and culture. The English that is spoken in Ireland, is not the same as the English that is spoken in England.

Saying that - I moved from one part of Ireland to another when I was 16 and hated the accent in the new place, so much so, that I obliterated my own accent and held on to a 'neutral' Irish accent. When I moved to England, it was relatively easy for me to morph into a convincing, fairly relaxed, southern English accent. I do however, pick up and mimic accents, wherever I am and find the conversation flows more freely when I do so. I used to speak in an American accent when on conference calls with US colleagues, it resulted in fewer clarifying questions and more open responses from them. Now I live in France, I do still get the 'you have a cute accent' comments, so can't quite pull it off in French sadly! I have discovered that the Swiss have quite a unique accent when they speak in French, if I mimic that instead - it seems better somehow..

YANBU

It's been said many times so obviously not very interesting any more. Also, do you really think OP can't tell the difference between this and being mocked?

Hi op, didn't read comments so might have been said already, but there's a well documented unconscious trait called chameleon affect, or sympathetic accent syndrome. I know cos I do it (grew up with lots of languages around). Here if you'd like yo read : https://medium.com/the-shadow/unconscious-accent-mimicry-390f619ace35

It's the opposite of mocking you, people do it with empathy so mostly very empathetic people do it. It's really interesting.

Don't you think there's a difference between banter between friends and colleagues and being mocked by a stranger?