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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

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Original poster

mortified - someone at work said i

141 replies

EnlightenedOwl · 02/04/2015 19:34

talk "rough"
i have a strong accent - think Lancashire x Yorkshire and confess the odd "t" has been dropped but do have an immaculate phone voice
No one else has mentioned my accent but this person who I've worked with a while often makes reference to it saying they can't understand me etc
However to say I talk rough is an all time low.
Anyone else ever felt mortified by their accent?

OP posts:

textfan · 03/04/2015 03:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

textfan · 03/04/2015 03:23

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

SteveBrucesNose · 03/04/2015 03:51

I'm an expat so have many discussions with offers about my northern accent. Usually that after I've been home for a visit, it takes a few days for people to understand me again as my accent thickens after talking to other mancs for a week

The best one was being told (by an Indian guy) to put someone else on the phone who could speak proper English as mine was terrible his actual words were 'because you no speak good English' but I'll let him off for that as a non native english speaker I burst out laughing, handed thd phone to a colleague next to me, and let him deal with it.

LancashireTea · 03/04/2015 04:30

Best accents ever, northern ones. I might be biased though.

Effendi · 03/04/2015 06:10

My accent must be rough too, I'm Lancs/Yorks. I remember an old boss describing my accent as 'very northern'.
I'm an ex pat and get ribbed for it all the time at work but nobody has had the bad manners to say it was rough.
How rude.

NorahDentressangle · 03/04/2015 06:36

It's him/her.
A way of getting at you in an 'innocent' way - pa.
They are jealous or something.

Shame you aren't in Scotland - no one ever has too strong an accent.

darkness · 03/04/2015 07:05

I have run into this occasionally, its quite ignorant and receives a stock response along the lines of
" I don't mind you judging me on what comes out of my mouth, it makes me feel better about judging you on what comes out of yours !"

KatieKaye · 03/04/2015 07:30

My maternal grandmother was one European nationality, my father another and we all lived close to each other in Scotland.

I never, ever noticed that Nana or Dad had "foreign" accents - they were just their voices. The accent was so completely part of who they were that it never even crossed my mind that they even had an accent, if that makes sense. It was only after Nana died and I heard a tape recording of her speaking that I realised she had a very strong foreign accent indeed.

And sometimes, when I meet an older man from the same country as my DF (who died some years ago) speaing English as a second language, the shared accent and some linguistic peculiarities takes me right back in time - and it's like having my Dad back for a few moments.

StrangeLookingParasite · 03/04/2015 07:53

2boys2girls · 03/04/2015 08:44

I would have had replied with a "come back" ;-)

2boys2girls · 03/04/2015 08:44

I would have had replied with a "come back" ;-)

drudgetrudy · 03/04/2015 08:50

"Someone can only make you feel inferior with your consent"-Eleanor Rooseveldt.
I have a strong Northern accent and don't live where I was brought up.
I have worked with one idiot like this who used to mimic me.
Don't feel mortified its her with the problem.

Hurr1cane · 03/04/2015 09:01

This really irritates me, I once started dating a guy who was from the same northern town as me, except he was born and bred here and I moved from down south when I was a teenager.

Anyway I have little bit of a local accent and he doesn't at all, he sounds more Southern, which didn't bother me, I just assumed that's how his parents spoke or something...

Until one day he said something like
"Because I speak properly" or mentioned something about how well he talks or something.

I told him that he didn't 'speak well' he just had a different accent and everyone was different and he argued that no, how he spoke was correct and the rest of the town were just too lazy/ stupid to speak correctly.

Dumped him on the spot. Arrogant swine.

carabos · 03/04/2015 09:05

I have a soft, but clearly Geordie accent, somewhat polluted by years of living elsewhere, but nevertheless, you can still hear it. Back in the NE, family and friends tell me my accent has gone, but on meeting a new colleague in London (City boy type- bit rah) one of his first comments was that he could barely understand me because apparently I "talk like Gazza" - the footballer, Paul Gascoigne. Gascoigne, the poor man, is an incoherent drunk with a broad, specifically Newcastle accent .

Rude, on so many levels. As we Geordies would say, tell your colleague to hadaway and shite.

StoorieHoose · 03/04/2015 09:23

strange I love that Burniston clip. I cant say eleven any other way

MagentaOeuflon · 03/04/2015 09:26

The clip made me LMAO - I'm not scottish but have lived here for yonks and everything about that sketch is so true.

soapboxqueen · 03/04/2015 09:32

I think your colleague was incredibly rude and unprofessional. Years ago I lived further south and had to slow down mostly for others to understand me but they were always polite about it.

I had moved from the North East to the Midlands and bizarrely enough there were many older generation types from back home . The grandparents of the children I taught would come into school and ask me to talk to them because they missed hearing a 'broad Geordie accent' . I absolutely have an accent but it isn't broad. I struggle with a really broad Geordie myself.

A pp mentioned someone saying ' I'll learn you to do something' as wrong. It isn't wrong it just isn't standard English which is just a variant of English itself. Dialects aren't just about how words are said but also the use of different words and grammatical gymnastics. My mother used to correct anyone who said for example 'I'll learn you to ride a bike' until she found out that it was a variation of the Norse word meaning 'to teach'.

As much as children and adults need to understand standard English, we must not do it at the expense of our beautiful dialectical heritage.

CrowBagDad · 03/04/2015 09:35

Carabos, that made me smile! Instantly heard 'hadaway and shite' in my Nana's voice!

My old man is the same, his Geordie accent has softened noticeably over the years he's been living down south, but if he's been on the phone to any family back there or visited, it'll be stronger for a while!

PushAPushPop · 03/04/2015 10:04

vitamints a fellow South Yorkshire lass here.

I was once told by a Spanish resident that he found the Yorkshire accent the most friendly-sounding accent he had heard.

Just as well

Aridane · 03/04/2015 10:10

Do you swear like a trooper?? Otherwise totally uncalled for!

flora717 · 03/04/2015 11:00

I'm frequently considered to be taking the piss with my accent. I was born in Peterborough, moved to St.Albans age 9 and (after a few years in Lancashire/ London split in my 20's) now live in the West Midlands. Nowhere have people been more precious about accents. Apparently my use of 'yes' over 'yeah' and saying bus (with an s) are a clear sign I'm mocking them. sigh.

Original poster

EnlightenedOwl · 03/04/2015 11:07

oh that's the other thing. I say Buzz not Bus. Apparently.

OP posts:

mom2twoteens · 03/04/2015 11:11

I'm from just outside Birmingham and don't think I have an accent, (LOL)
I lived in Herts and working in London for a while, things were fine there. There are lots of accents in London. However I've been on courses up North and have had the mickey taken out of me. Mostly it doesn't bother me but one time I spent the whole week with a guy repeating everything I said in broad Black Country accent so that everyone would laugh. I stopped speaking in the end and hated every minute of it.
Some people enjoy being cruel, but some people just don't think how what they say affects you.

I'd say ignore it, but as you have to work with her I think you need to tackle it in some way. Either a quiet word explaining that that's how you speak and you'd appreciate her accepting that and not making any more comments or something like some of the other MNers have said about her manners being rough or does she mean you speak roughly'. I like those.

Good luck with it.

AlpacaPicnic · 03/04/2015 12:14

I used to get laughed at because of the way I say tooth. I say it 'tuth' because my welsh mother said 'tuth' (but oddly she says 'years' for ears and I don't do that)
I married a Cornishman and certain ways he pronounces things seem odd to me - short a so father not farrther for his male parent!

But I do love a northern accent! I watch rugby with a friend from Lancashire and he sounds so scary when he shouts! He sounds a bit like Owen Farrell who I have a teeny crush on which makes listening to him get shouty really fun. As long as he isn't shouting at me ;)

fairyfuckwings · 03/04/2015 12:20

I bet you come from the same part of the world as me as I have the same accent. It's got broader the older I get much to my well spoken mothers disgust!

So as well as pronouncing bus as buzz how would you say bus fare? Buzz fir?

And is the number 1 wun or wan? As in swan but without the s.

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