To think that many Mumsnetters despise regional accents and dialects?

I think there is a prejudice / veiled contempt for foreign accents. I've had to intervene on work calls with Indian and Italian colleagues due to the way they were being spoken to.

I don't see the same happen for colleagues with Scottish/Irish/Northern accents for example.

I understand our brains can find it harder to decode foreign accents but it doesn't excuse rudeness.

Listening to someone speaking with a foreign accent makes human brains work harder which can lead to unintentional discrimination against people communicating in languages other than their own, new research suggests.

Why do people discriminate against speakers with foreign accents? | Horizon Magazine

@Missxxxyou assaulted someone because they made fun of your accent?

I’m going to gently suggest you curb your enthusiasm for punching folk.

I grew up in the west of Scotland but I just didn't pick up a strong local accent for whatever reason - I have a complete inability to mimic accents, so how I speak is just how I speak. Many people think I'm Irish. Imo good on people who don't feel the need to adopt any particular accent to fit in.

And he definitely doesn't speak with a Welsh accent 😂

When I was at university I met quite a few guys who said they were Scottish but spoke like the Prince of Wales.

But why? I mean, nowhere doesn’t have its population of ‘posh people’, who are less likely to speak in a regional accent.

Got to be honest, that is quite weird. So if someone hasn’t acquired the local accent, you plan to punch them?

I grew up in Brighton but never acquired the Brighton accent (there is one - you hear it on the outskirts but not really in the centre near the train station). My parents were Geordies and my Dad worked at the university (so their friends were from lots of places, not just the town in lived in). It often made school quite uncomfortable - people assumed I was rich (a couple of teachers kept asking if I was going on the ski trip because it was oversubscribed - no, it was £500 and I didn’t want to ask my Mum) or just “other”.

Not exactly on topic, but I personally can't stand people who say they're from a northern area and still live there - say Newcastle or Liverpool (I'm from Wearside), have never lived or worked elsewhere, but still don't speak in the local accent and instead use a neutral/BBC one instead. I went to uni in Manchester and came across this a lot- I'd be really taken aback when I'd ask them where they were from and they reply "oh just outside Oldham" or something like that 😠 (one silly cow with one of these accents- think she was a student- was taking the piss out my accent on the 86 bus- I gave her a punch she'll never forget! (This wss before Bee Network and no cameras). I live in Liverpool now- if anyone with a posh accent says they're from Liverpool I'm going to punch them!

What I find strange about the MN resistance to regionalisms is.... aren't regionalisms great? Isn't it amazing that after centuries of attempts to standardise the English language, whether by force, "education" or shame, people cross these islands have nevertheless managed to hang onto their accents and dialects and even languages? Isn't it cool to be able to experience such variety in a relatively small area? Why would anyone want everyone to be exactly the same? If I travel somewhere, I want it to feel different. I want there to be different cultures, customs and languages. I want it to have a sense of place and for the people to have a sense of local identity.

Lots of info here:
www.thejournal.ie/readme/feck-meaning-origin-stan-carey-622374-Oct2012/

Why?
It’s commonplace where I live (Ireland). It has multiple meanings. It’s used as a minced oath instead of fuck, but is much, much milder. Maybe because there are no associated sexual connotations…it doesn’t have that meaning of fuck. No such thing as a motherfecker!

It can also mean to steal or to throw casually.
He fecked it over the wall means he threw it over the wall. He fecked it off the counter means he took/stole it.

"Feck" is extremely annoying and childish.

Yes to this. I asked my English XMiL where her sister stayed. She looked at me very puzzled then said, "Do you mean where does she stay on holiday?"

And there's clap for pat, as in a dog. I once asked a wee girl if she wanted to clap my dog. She then proceeded to clap her hands in front of him.

In Scotland we use "stay" to mean live. I stay in Glasgow. She has stayed in Edinburgh for 3 years.

DH who is not Scottish thinks this is very odd.

It would out me.

We'd have lots of 'I don't have an accent's in various strong accents.

Sometimes I think a sound function would be handy on MN.

I find it really interesting too @Wiseplumant. I’m Irish not Scottish but the languages are related. There is no letter j in Irish either, but some dialects do have a j sound, so in Donegal for example the word Dia sounds like Jee-ah. I wonder does that happen in Scottish Gaelic at all? It sounds like it mightn’t?

I also have trouble with my th’s @RaraRachael. There are no th sounds (as pronounced in English) in modern Irish, though there were in Old Irish I believe, so I think when my ancestors were picking up English a few generations ago they approximated with a t or d sound. That pronunciation stuck around. My children are better than me at saying the English th though, probably because of cbeebies and youtube, which is a pity in a way.
The th letter combination does occur in the Irish language btw, but it’s pronounced differently than it is in English.

@Wiseplumant That's very interesting about the absence of letter J in Gaelic. I've heard people from the islands saying things like chust/just and thought it was just down to their accent.
I had an uncle from Caithness who pronounced TH as D so he'd say dat for that or dis for this.

@Jellyandpeaches , I've only seen ones on here.
I don't find Forvo reliable. That might be because of the words I was looking up.

Maybe I wasn’t as bothered about pronunciation when I was younger
You probably didn't get laughed at if you got it wrong.

You don't come across as patronizing. It seems that the person making that accusation has a chip on their shoulder, when they take exception to someone with specialist knowledge trying to educate them. I expect I come across as patronizing too!

I came from South of England to live on the West coast of Scotland when I was a child, 50 years ago. Most of the middle aged and old folk spoke Gaelic as their first language before learning English at school. I remember noticing that because there is no letter 'J' in the Gaelic alphabet when speaking English they pronounced words beginning with 'J' , such as 'Just' as 'Chust' making the 'J' into a 'ch,' sound as in 'church' . When saying the alphabet at school the kids would pronounce 'J' as ''gy' as it sounds in the beginning of the word 'gypsy,'instead of how I an incomer pronounced it as 'Jay'. Also plurals ending in 'S' for example 'Scissors' would be pronounced 'Scissorsush'. Sometimes plurals such as 'trousers' would be spoken of as 'a trouser' .Sadly these quirks of English spoken by native Gaelic speakers are dying out now, and the gen Z's and Alphas , even ones born and brought up here speak with an almost American twang, maybe picked up from TV, online etc. However there is a lot of investment in retaining/ regaining the Gaelic language and culture which means that more younger people are using Gaelic language, music etc, but a whole generation missed out in learning Gaelic ( my generation) because their parents were discouraged/ punished for speaking it outside the home. By the time I was in Highschool in 70's and 80's the revival had started, but there was still an attitude that Gaelic wasn't worth learning, because French and German would be more useful. It would be nothing short of a tradegy if Gaelic died out. It shows how quickly a language can come close to being lost in one or two generations.

Okay, I think you may have missed some of the pp’s earlier posts. ETA I just looked back and you can’t have missed them because you were asking her questions etc. I don’t know why you thought the problem wasn’t the r then 🤷‍♀️

I use Forvo.com or the pronunciation link that you find in some dictionaries when I’m unsure of the pronunciation of a rare word (but I really would like to get more familiar with IPA too).
These are more recent tools I know. Maybe I wasn’t as bothered about pronunciation when I was younger 🤔

Spelling and grammar are the same in different accents aren’t they? You might have a point about dialect though.

Same as @AlcoholicAntibiotic . I got the impression that she was insisting that the ford part was fɔɹd.

@Jellyandpeaches , how else would one learn new words?
Some words rarely get said in normal speech but appear regularly in print.
If I asked what a word meant I'd be told to look in a dictionary.