To think that many Mumsnetters despise regional accents and dialects?

The origins of Halloween stem from Irish and Scottish immigrants bringing their traditions to America in the 19th Century.

Bonfire night may have gone down in your area but in others it has not. I’m in Oxfordshire and both are celebrated.

Does it ever occur to actually look at the history before going American = Bad?

Many of the American traditions posters choose to moan about are stemmed from the UK and/or Europe.

When I was young, over 40 years ago, I was sent on a residential training course for work. The other people on the course came from all over England. I was teased for my accent and I remember everyone being very amused when I naively said “but I don’t have an accent”!

As far as I was concerned, I spoke standard English, so accents were things other people had if they didn’t sound like me. That included my father and his parents and siblings (who all had Lancashire accents), various school friends with Somerset accents (which is where I was born and brought up) and university friends with accents from a variety of places including Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Teesside and Birmingham.

I don’t despise any accents, though I definitely prefer some to others. The one I like least is a Northern Irish accent, which I blame on having being brought up in the 1970s when the only NI accents I ever heard were on the news, spoken by Ian Paisley and the actor speaking the words of Gerry Adams, and usually accompanying stories on the news about bombings or other traumatic events.

More recently, ‘Derry Girls’ has helped to give me happier associations with the accent!

@MasterBeth , it's not nonsense. It's like saying river or ruler is two syllables.

This is absolute nonsense. You should not always hear the -er. It depends on their accent. Who made you the authority on how to say drawer?

@Elsvieta , I don't have an accent. I have a mishmash of several.

@Daygloboo , @Waitingfordoggo posted " South Wales accents are my favourite. "

And..?

I went ‘trick or treating’ in NI 50 years ago (I’m 58.) It just wasn’t called that. Let’s face it, in reality there are rarely any tricks, just treats. We went around the doors with our smelly turnip lanterns, wore masks and sang or recited something, and were rewarded with sweets and sometimes a couple of pence to buy more sweets. Very similar to trick or treating. Not American. Not that it matters. Blame us instead😅

I wouldnt call welsh a regional accent. Wales is a country.

I love accented English but bad grammar and spelling actually is not paying attention in school and not reading. “Down the pub” fine, “I was sat in my car” not fine.

It's just as tedious to hear Scottish people "teasing" Londoners for their accent as the opposite.

It's not "strange" for a Londoner not to vocalise the h in whisper, and it's not strange for a Scottish to do so.

I'm from the west country and our accent is dying, despite the rise of Steven Merchant and Josie.... before them you never heard our accent even on local TV or radio.

I love the way I speak. In fact I've consciously gone more west country as I've got older using I instead of me, only wearing daps and not trainers and including cassent, dursent and hassent on regular basis.

But if I wrote the way I speaks den de wouldn't proper understand I.

I get this sometimes because my prefix is Dr and that has certain connotations- high intellect so must be high middle class, RP accent etc. When I open my mouth and there’s a thick Yorkshire accent people sometimes seem a bit taken aback. It’s worse still if it’s summer and my tattoos are exposed. Hey ho. People have their biases, I think it’s structural and unlikely to alter any time soon.

Halloween is Celtic not American and we go guising not trick or treating and have always done so.

That comes from the fact that we get a lot of American TV and online content and when I was a kid 50+ years ago no one went trick or treating... now it's bloody mandatory to have sweets on hand. But November 5th Bonfire night had withered in the same time frame...so there has been a genuine concern about the Americanisation of "holidays". Which in itself is an American phrase.

I am Scottish but live in London. I think gentle teasing of the way I/they say things is just part of our family banter. Btw my London relatives can't pronounce the "wh" sound. They can only say "w", so "whisper" is "wisper". It's not just me who speaks strangely!! And of course the standing joke in our house is that Alexa doesn't understand a word I say!

Ahhhh, today’s ‘I’m Irish and here’s another way of saying just how awful English people are while pretending it’s just a casual observation’

Yawn

True. Although it's always good for a laugh when they claim they "don't have an accent". Or don't understand the difference between accent and dialect.

People with rhotic accents (Somerset, Norfolk, Americans) would pronounce the R.

@hyggetyggedotorg , draw is drɔː, drawer is drɔːr.

Everyone has a regional accent.

Right.

The hate of ‘American’ words 🙄. Where do they think they got the pronunciations from in the first place? The indigenous population sure weren’t speaking English before the co..settlers came.

All the British and Irish pronunciations I’ve heard mentioned in MN, I have heard the same pronunciations in the States depending on the region just like in the UK.

For those who can't take a joke, the 😄 represents humour, and that the post is not to be taken too seriously.

(It's still true, though.)

YANBU
I am English but north-Midlander (vomit emoji /sarcasm) and was brought up in another country within UK (aarrgghhh).

A lot of people assume anyone with a regional accent is thick or pretentious. Scousers and Brummies get a lot of stick here.

My own DH often makes claims about pronunciation and accents that just aren't true and no amount of pointing out will correct his prejudices!
(Things like 'No one says Mom in UK, it's an awful Americanisation' - no it's not, both my parents say that as they're northern/midlanders)

For those people saying they’ve never seen criticism of a southern English accent, here’s a case in point!