To say it’s “because my parents were professionals”?

He was being very rude haranguing you like that. My DH is from north wales - says glass not glarss and bath not barth- but no accent otherwise. He has a good friend from County Durham - no accent whatsoever. It just happens sometimes, and indeed until recently was encouraged.

Say you were brought up properly😎

All regions have a 'posh' and 'not posh' version of their accent. And we all know them, think of the comparison between the Glaswegian accents of Billy Connelly and Armando Iannucci.

People's accents depend on their parents, their school, whether they moved away for University, if they moved again for work, and who they are talking to. But we all have an accent and the most annoying are those who pretend they don't have one, you do, you're just mixing with people with a slightly less posh version of your shared accent. I have lived everywhere from the north of Scotland (for my childhood) to the south west of England (as a young adult) and depending who I'm talking to my accent has been considered everything from 'posh' to 'thick'. It changes (becomes stronger) when I'm home in Scotland but that's when it's most likely to be called posh.

How about, because I come from the educated middle classes, who speak the Queen's English?

Sounds like you also didn't get your accent from your parents then, just as I said - which is how OP seems to think it works. Maybe you watched a lot of BBC4 documentaries growing up 😂

I wouldn’t have kept talking to him but that irreverent.

What you said mad it sound like you thought only the uneducated working class have regional accents and from the sounds of this man he may have been in that category, I personally think he deserved an answer like that for being so pushy with a complete stranger and a woman at that

I grew up in the north, but I’ve never had a northern accent for as long as I can remember. Even as a kid, I’d always get asked where am I from, people would assume I’m a relative from a different area visiting. I’d always get asked why I don’t have a northern accent

it’s funny bc my siblings have a northern accent especially my brothers, his is very strong, i used to struggle understanding him due to the strong accent.

I wouldn’t necessarily agree with you. I was a few months old when we moved to the north east and my younger brother was born there. We all went to the local comprehensive and are professionals but do not have regional accents. That wasn’t by conscious decision.
I live outside the area and often used to have people asking why I didn’t have a geordie accent. Apart from pointing out that I don’t come from Tyneside it’s a difficult question to answer.

wish there was still the laugh emoji

I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I'm sarf Landun born and bred, but am 'posh.' Mum is a strongly accented Yorkshire woman, and dad was foreign. I don't speak like either of them or my sibling who is very sarf Landun. We went to local comprehensive schools too where almost everyone was from sarf Landun. Who knows?!

I wouldnt have carried in engaging with him if he kept pressing for me to justify myself.
He was basically calling you a liar and not believing you.

I don’t think it’s about jobs, just whether an accent is encouraged/allowed.

My mum doesn’t have much of a Geordie accent. She isn’t a professional - she left school in year nine. Because her parents (a miner and a barmaid - no professionals in sight) wanted her to sound ‘posh’ and so sent her to elocution lessons as a child.

OP I’m going to be that bitch that says that if you want to be lah di dah, you need to know it’s ‘cue’ not ‘queue’ in this context.

I'm glad someone else was thinking this 😂

But you might choose to simply speak with less or more of your accent. You might choose to adopt a fake accent. The most oft heard here - one hour out of London - is what DC calls 'man dem' and most often heard spoken by teenagers.

Well if someone kept going on about it in the end I'd just laugh and say "it's because I'm a bit posh" and take the lah-di-dah teasing in good spirit.

To me class is a thing that just is (and requires no mention unless under interrogation) whereas a professional career is more about being clever or high achieving, so it does feel a bit patronising to give as the reason for your accent.

OP I’m going to be that bitch that says that if you want to be lah di dah, you need to know it’s ‘cue’ not ‘queue’ in this context.

I know people born in the north east and Yorkshire who speak with Received Pronunciation.

Doesn’t apply in all cases! We live where neither of us (DH and I) grew up. My DC have a local accent despite my best efforts !

Or it could be "my parents weren't snobby but discouraged me from speaking with a local accent".

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Never been asked. And I have no regional accent (from the Midlands.)

People don't care, they really don't..... Who on earth are these people asking where your regional accent is?

I am from a town in the NE with a strong regional accent, I do sound like I’m from here but i enunciate very well and I’m often called posh. It comes from living abroad for the best part of a decade and getting sick of people not understanding a word I said, so I had to change or spend half my time repeating myself. I have just carried on with that now I’m back home. I did pick up an accent from where I was but that has fallen away now unless I say certain words which are more common there than here. I quite like my accent now, nothing wrong with being Northern.

I come from an area with a strong regional accent, I assume I had it. When I went to uni people struggled to understand me, I didn't try to lose my accent I just tried to speak in a way that was understood and took on board the spoken and unspoken feedback.

I'm autistic, I'm used to modelling behaviour. It was no different.

I never went home after graduating, worked in several areas and never thought about it. Now I have a neutral accent. Dh says I occasionally get an accent when speaking to my parents but otherwise there's nothing, it's not conscious.

Anyway, saying your parents were professionals is a bit odd, you could just say it's how you've always spoken. He was rude though.

I don't think you were accurate saying "my parents were professionals". Lots of professionals aren't (and weren't) funny about local accents and did not go out of their way to lose/not acquire one. It's not about them being "professional", it's about them being snobby.

"My parents were snobby and discouraged me from speaking with a local accent" is more accurate.

That’s not really the reason though. The reason is because your (professional) parents thought regional accents were less than so trained it out of you.

I’m a professional and work with many people with strong regional accents. In some geographies it actually makes you more appealing to clients to have a regional accent, and I’m known to lean into mine more in some meetings.

And people don’t tend to pick up accents from their parents unless their parents don’t accept an accent. My cousin is American born to two British parents with British accents - but has a strong American accent. She does say Tom-ah-to not Tom-ay-to though as her parents would correct her on this so it was trained out of her. Any professional or non professional parent could do this though.

That's the explanation for me, I'm a Geordie with no accent and I think I confuse both Northern and Southerners. DH even more so, he's Scottish but also no accent, boarding school.