talk to me about accents

[stripeypillowcase]

I am curious.
what is it about a strong accent that make people think the speaker is not very bright/uneducated? especially rural accents?

I have a strong accent myself, speak 3 languages fluently, went to university, have a good job...

I'm Cornish, it's hysterical how people slip into bad generic West Country accents and make incest jokes the moment they find this out.
I'm a graduate and professional who's lived in London since 1988 and people still expect me to be terrified of electricity and carpets...

That's a big assumption OP, I have never made that assumption. I judge on the content, not the accent.

Mostly it's snobbery (or inverse snobbery - as a working class northerner I've been known to roll my eyes at a cut glass RP accent and assume they are snobby).

I have English as an additional language, I didn’t know people thought that about accents.

I’m really really awful at understanding a lot of accents, I used to work with a guy from Aberdeen, I genuinely couldn’t understand a word he said and we had to communicate via email only.

sadly not an assumption.

it's sadly also not only a 'thing' in the uk.
germany also has some accents that are stereotypical 'dumb'

Speaking as a foreigner, the (incorrect) thinking seems to go (Area X) = historically poor / industrial / working class area = uneducated. It’s amusing until you realise that it actually affects people’s career prospects and lives.

Well I don't think that but I'm not British.

I get the impression somebody is intelligent if they are articulate and don't umm and uhhh and like

It’s amusing until you realise that it actually affects people’s career prospects and lives.

yup. it's quite sad actually.

I think in some underprivileged areas, a person could feel pressure to use two or three very basic words to explain what they mean, even when they know exactly the pecise word to perfectly verbalise what they want to communicate.

So habits form.

I am always amused by anyone who uses body parts to answer a question.........

“ears” or “nose” . Mainly British aristocracy, but it’s dying out now, they are dumbing down more. Well, all except JRM.....😂

surrey, almost RP, some people would call me snobby but i'm not bothered, i'll talk with anyone i love accents and dialects.

I don't think strong accent=stupid either.
my accent is more mixed-bag-metropolitan though dc say I speak funny
you will rarely find some one speaking cockney in a law firm.

@SimonJT They don’t.

I was born in Birmingham and spent formative years in The Black Country. Boy was I teased when I went to work in London .🙄

Can’t say I’ve ever even considered someone’s level of intelligence based on their accent!! Never heard of anyone doing that either!!

My level of intelligence is normally judged based on he fact I find it utterly strange when someone doesn’t have the same accent as me, because I just la de da through life thinking they do!

Liverpool here, dental professional, run clinics all over the country, a lot of people stunned that I actually have an education!

I agree with you. I have a very RP accent (largely because of a forces brat upbringing and no chance to develop a regional accent of my own) and constantly have to deal with people calling me 'posh' and declaring that I'm a clever clogs/know-it-all.

Sadly, some people are dicks. I have an accent (black country). Its not particularly strong, but you can tell where I'm from.

There's a certain type of person that comments on it. I usually find their opinion to be worth very little and actually makes me think negatively of them.

I bloody love a good accent! I'm terrible at being able to "hear" them. I've worked with an Irish lady for around 6 years, it was only recently that I realised she was Irish and not Welsh

you will rarely find some one speaking cockney in a law firm.

Some possibly can though. I can 'speak' broad Scots but lived outwith Scotland for many years from my early 20's so basically have 2 languages

It's about the same in the US. We don't have as many strong regional accents as the UK seems to, but some do get a bit of stereotyping. A southern accent (which derives primarily from early French settlement in the area) is often seen as a clue that the speaker is uneducated. Some see a New York accent (from the very early Dutch settlers) as a sign that the speaker is pushy and overbearing.

Most New Yorkers have a more neutral accent. The really strong one is found mostly in certain boroughs of the city.

I come from the north of Scotland and so grew up with a rural accent. Started losing my accent about a week after I started Uni and gained the 1980s version of the infamous University of Glasgow accent. And that accent is a good indication of what happens when people leave the place they grew up in and mix with people from around the world, generally the edges get rubbed off their accents. So the assumption is if that you have a strong accent you haven't had the opportunity to travel much and meet people from different places.

@happycamper11
I love to hear Scots expressions like "outwith", reminds me of my Scots granny & the words & phrases she'd use. My childhood was peppered with Scots words I used without thinking because I was used to them. It's surprising how often I say something that is perfectly clear to me (whether it be Cornish or Scots) & then have to explain it to people.

It's a class thing: traditionally if you were from the right stock and went to the right school, you spoke "received pronunciation"; it's what divided you from the people who spoke with regional accents who were poorer and less educated than you - and who you probably had to tell yourself were stupid because otherwise why would you be in charge of them? Was it George Orwell who said that an Englishman could exchange five words with a stranger on a train and accurately deduce all he needed to know about his background? Sad that some people still set so much store by accents or make a big deal of them - it always makes me cringe almost inside out when people meet someone from, say, Yorkshire and start going: 'Ey up, lad!" or "Trouble at t'mill!" or whatever.

Because there is a correlation between strong regional accents and social class, and because there is also a correlation between social class and education. Both of these links are getting less strong than they used to be, but they are still there.

As an outsider, it's not just class.

It's that location weights the perception of class.

Two people one from south of england and one from the north of england could have had exactly the same upbringing and yet the one from the south of england will be perceived (most of all by his or her self) to be more middle class than the person from the north of england.

It was interesting viewing it objectively.