To hate southerners accents?

[mrshess]

Alright i know i am a teeny bit but i cant bear the accent from down south.
I hate all that cockney geezer talk and yet they mock northern accents

You're welcome - I'm educated 'Essex' as well (until I get cross and go all Dagenham accordingly to DH, a Glaswegian ).

Housewife2010 - there isn't one Essex accent as it's a big county . If you have to make a sweeping generalisation please make an informed one fgs!!

I'm married to a Mockney. Everyone called him barrowboy at work and couldn't believe his grandparents were Sir & Lady. Twat.

I'm from North London and I always get asked when I moved to London from Bristol!

This silly, bigoted thread reminds me of the prejudice I was on the receiving end of when I lived in the North for a few years. As soon as I opened my mouth to reveal my Southern accent, I could tell the hackles were rising.

According to many Northerners I met, there are two types of Southerner - toff or cockney and nothing else.

Go to Scotland and you get the same crap for having an English accent (no North/South discrimination there).

You took the words right out of my mouth Fran! What most people think of as an Essex accent is actually a working class North or East London accent - or Cockney. A true Essex accent is nothing like that at all.

I'd say for the vast majority of us it would be quite hard to distinguish us from any other home counties accent. The accents don't change so abruptly over small areas in the south or home counties as they do in other parts of the country. It varies mostly according class rather than region. I'd say my accent is pretty neutral. I don't think anyone exept a trained linguist could pin me down at all, except to say 'south east'.

South of me they speak French!!

Ooo arrr me luvver! :D

donkeyderby speaks strong truth. It's a howling wasteland of intolerance, ignorance, prejudice, ghouls, zombies and people from Stoke up there.

(Up there = north of Oxford. Except for some of Edinburgh, which is genetically Home Counties)

I have been contemplating this. I have had on going and nearly VIOLENT confrontrations with a certain broadband provider thieving bastards which prides itself on being "northern". When I call them, the staff (based in Sheff... up north) are SUPER rude and chippy with me. I fink it's cos I now have a Londoner accent, inni'. Even though I'm actually a forriner

Donkey - too right. I have just spent the weekend with a (very nice) bunch of northerners, some of whom displayed to most outrageous, bigotted, inverted snobbery towards one of their own who has dared to step out of her northern working class box. Her crime? To hook up with a very well educated southerner, in a very good profession, and from a 'posh' family. She's betrayed them all, apparently, and they have arrived at the conclusion that she is a shallow snob who is ashamed of her own family. How do they know this? Because she now drinks gin and tonic and goes 'out for dinner'. To see the look of hatred and disgust on their faces when they gave me their 'evidence', anyone would think she was Vanessa George or Karen Matthews.

Eastenders is horrible because they are all so horrible to each other. I live in the East End and it says nothing to me about my life.

I realise we have totally risen to the bait of Matthew Wright researcher the OP. Am longing to know the they of whom she speaks

I talk like Ferne Cotton and Holly Willoughby, i grew up in Sussex but also have a quirky little Kiwi twang picked up from my Mum now and then... i never knew my accent was unplesant.

I have been told i speak posh like the Queen.

Holly Willoughby has a lovely voice, IMO, and is very sexy. Fearne Cotton is annoying, IMO, because she is annoying

I've lived North and South (and Wales!) and have never, ever had any bad feeling towards me because of my accent (Glasweigan). Perhaps those who think others have a genuine issue (rather than harmless fun) issue with them should consider that it may not be the accent but the attitude?

OH is Essex(I moved from Cambs)and he is from Epping.From what I've seen Epping is quite well spoken but not at all 'posh'.
I now live near Chigwell-people are lovely once you get to know them but IMO I always found them very 'hard' to begin with.
Whereas up North I've found(in general)people to be warm and friendly(even too friendly).This is just my opinion btw.

One persons voice i cannot stand and i dont know if its becuase she has an accent or something else but Stacey Solomon makes me want to rip my ear drums out everytime she opens her mouth...

Oh Megatron you're a Celt. Of course the Welsh like you! Doh

Well she's a good example - she's touted as being typically Essex but she's from Dagenham and almost everyone from Dagenham hails from the East End - her accent is definitely London.

It made me laugh when they had her on the X Factor final positioned in the 'Matt Cardle' corner, in Colchester, as the resident Essex girl. She and Matt could not live at more extreme ends (in every respect) of the county if they tried! Dagenham is greater London and Matt's village is practically Suffolk!

We cant understand your accents up here, you speak too fast.

I was born in Essex but since moving to Hampshire have lost the cockney quite a bit.

However, we do speak proper English in the south! so NUR NUR.

What you might call the Queens English, note she doesn't have an accent from up north.

I'm from the East - the village I grew up in is considered Southern (isn't there an imaginary line drawn from somewhere - can't remember where though - from Norfolk through Birmingham or something?) yet 6 miles up the road is considered 'North'.

I don't sound like Bernard Matthews though (how we laugh!).

I also lived in Sheffield for a while and became the 'office entertainment' for a while - with 'requests' - "Go on, say 'bath', say 'plaster cast'". Hilarious.

I never witnessed this kind of treatment of colleagues from 'the North' when they worked in offices in 'the South' though.

yabu

It depends on the individual accent rather than on the huge generality of a region's accent.

I have an RP accent; occasionally and inexplicably I acquire a Bristoluan twang, despite the fact that neither I nor my parents have ever lived in Bristol .

I hate common accents. Only I get to decide what is common (clings to gavel), but the Norfaaampton accent definitely counts.

I think you've hit the nail on the head missmiss. Never mind north or south - if you sound common you sound crap.

Yep - nothing to do with accent, really, more to do with sounding 'educated'. I don't quite know what 'educated' sounds like, but I know it when I hear it.

triumphant gavel