To feel angry when judged purely on my accent?

[manchita]

I just find it really depressing the way a lot of people make a habit of judging others on accent/class/appearance/children's names but what gets to me the most is the assumption you are thick and unworthy if you have any kind of regional accent

My parents brought me up to dislike the use of 'posh' and 'common' but I think that was because they thought it rude to comment rather than a snobby thing. Which is why I struggle to write 'posh' without speech marks...

Yes, apparently loo is fine, or (as somebody else said) lavatory, but I actually can't bring myself to use lavatory, so loo it is.

Actually, I would normally say loo, but for some reason whenever I'm near them my brain seems to always come out with toilet!

Other "bad" words are pardon, serviette, living room, kids, settee....... I could go on. It's like a minefield.

Penny, you've picked a whole load of the U Non-U words there! What's interesting is that the list "flips" periodically - say, for example, "loo" is seen as "correct" - it becomes a prestige usage, and so people who want to seem prestigious use it, it becomes fashionable, then the norm, and therefore "common", so "posh" people will start saying "toilet" instead.

I know - when I actually read Nancy Mitford, it was all so familiar!

I shouldn't be mean about them, they are really very lovely, and have been very kind to me, but there's nothing like putting the new girlfriend under pressure - I mean, those are just the "bad" words I know about! It was terrible knowing that at any point I could unknowingly say something which will cause snooker balls to stop roliing!

Have you read Jean Aitchison's "Language Change: Progress or Decay?" Gentle ammunition, and she really really knows her stuff.

When I grew up my parents were very hot on the way I spoke, and I was always told to speak the Queen's English, my nan was always very well spoken so I was too, comapred to the people I grew up with that is, I don't have a particularly posh or common accent.

I no longer have contact with ym parents and from the age of about 15 have always hung around with people who had more Eastenders style accents, so mine kidn of fell in with theirs I suppose.

Now though, I have moved and my partner is terribly well spoken so coupled with how my parents actually taught me to speak (and probably partly through actually typing properly rather than using the kind of slang I would have used vocally) I find I speak alot better than I did a year or so ago, not intentionally, but I do, as do my children, and now I get looked at strange by people I used to know who think I have 'turned posh', whereas I used to get the immediate 'common as muck' label.

I have always been careful to 'speak properly' as my parents would say when trying to get someone to do something for me, for example a call centre or a school teacher, if you speak properly they do take more notice.
Accents really are a strange thing.

Another good book about the difference between classes is Watching the English by Kate Fox, it is suppoedly just about the things English people do, like queueing, and talking about the weather, but talks a lot about class too.

I had never really thoguht about the rule of not using french words (serviette, pardon etc) because my parents didn't say them, I always thought it was jsut preference, like what do you call the end slices of a loaf of bread.

Once I read it I realised my mum said the posh words, whereas my stepdad said the other words. I'm sure it was my nans influence.

I have a very broad yorkshire accent and my old boss used to pull me up on my accent all the time. Turns out he was from 20 miles downt he roas, but had elocusion lessions in the Army!!

There's an interesting test called the Matched Guise Test where people listen to a couple of different accents, and are asked to "judge" what they think of the speakers. They are unaware that the speakers are in fact one person, using different accents.

I actually think it's pretty handy to have a range of accents! Accent prejudice is just plain wrong, as is dialect prejudice, though in the second case I'll accept that Standard English (NOT RP) is a useful tool when talking with people from different areas. I do find myself getting more Scouse when I go home to Liverpool, but I also now have a rhotic accent from living in Scotland for a long time, and so just bewilder people...

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manchita you sound really touchy - I think that may be what people are responding to....

People have had a go at me for being 'posh'. Its actually a regional accent that is valid as the person's accent who's had a go at me! Just put it down to their ignorance and being blinkered.