Inspired by another thread. Is accent mocking ever OK ?

[toddymummy]

This one has always bothered me. Being from mixed European heritage, but not having an accent myself- I have found myself the subject of accent/ gesture mocking many times.

It doesn't happen as much anymore as it used to,say 10-15 years ago, but it does occasionally happen.

Is it ever OK ? People mock all kinds of accents- Irish, Scottish, Welsh, French, Italian, German.

It really bugs me, especially if it's done repeatedly and especially if it's done at work.

AIBU ?

I’m quite geordie and worked in a Newcastle law firm a few years ago and I was relentlessly mocked for my accent. I had to say that I was speaking in the accent of the city in which we were standing before anyone realised that perhaps it wasn’t acceptable.

@Greenmarmalade

Jokes are fine. It’s not always mockery or bullying. As a brummie, I’m ready for it!

Be proud fellow Brummie. I have the piss ripped out of me constantly for my accent (it is ver strong). But I love my city and I am proud of my Birmingham roots. Just wish I had the tenacity of the Peaky blinders to deal with it. Arthur Shelby anyone?

Every time Jeremy Clarkson says something rude about Scottish people pronouncing the R in words, it makes me want to rip his face off. He sounds like an ignorant prick.

To be honest though, it’s not even just people from other countries that take the piss out of Scottish accents. I’m from Edinburgh and I’ve lived in Glasgow for the better part of a decade, I don’t have a strong east coast accent but Glaswegian friends and colleagues still slag the way I say certain things. I’ve also noticed (obviously not from every Glaswegian but it is very pervasive - I’ve seen this attitude a LOT online and in real life) this notion that Glasgow is the epicentre of Scotland, it’s the only valid Scottish accent and anyone from outside of Greater Glasgow is a teuchter (i.e. country bumpkin, hillbilly, etc). Even Edinburgh, the country’s capital

No it's pretty awful.

Bullying, snobby, often racist.

In the Uk I’ve only ever had people imitate my accent as a pathetic form of snobbery-always using wording/sayings that is reinforcing some stereotype they have about Americans. Always in an OTT tone that makes us seem thick or slow or aggressive.

DH isn’t British either (not American) and has the same experience. Colleagues think it’s ok to mock his accent and aspects of his culture because he’s white.

People Assume because you’re white it’s ok to mock you (or during Brexit- make derogatory comments about immigrants without irony). It’s not.

I’m from Yorkshire but live in the south, so I get it occasionally. I’m pretty laid back so I just roll my eyes and take it in good humour. It isn’t very funny though, and I find it’s generally done by twits who think they are hilarious but aren’t.

Dh is Dutch and used to get Shtop! Shtop! from his friends quite a lot when I first met him. Like me, he would just roll his eyes rather than get offended. I’ve noticed that as the years have passed, they don’t do it any more. I think it’s quite a juvenile type of humour that most people grow out of.

I don’t think so. I live somewhere where my accent is not the local one and it’s the tedious nature of it that annoys me. Every person thinks they’re the first one who’s ever made the same joke everyone else has made. I’ve had the accent all my life. I’ve heard all the jokes.

I personally think all accents are very sexy tbh

Imo it's only ok between close friends and family who are definitely comfortable with that kind of joke with each other and do it in an affectionate kind of way. Otherwise absolutely not acceptable- definitely not at work!

I teach languages, and one of the barriers is getting kids to be comfortable attempting the accent of the language they are learning. It's sometimes very hard to persuade them that they don't sound silly or weird when they speak in an accent that's not their own. A culture of mocking different accents really doesn't help.

@Notevenabit

In the Uk I’ve only ever had people imitate my accent as a pathetic form of snobbery-always using wording/sayings that is reinforcing some stereotype they have about Americans. Always in an OTT tone that makes us seem thick or slow or aggressive.

DH isn’t British either (not American) and has the same experience. Colleagues think it’s ok to mock his accent and aspects of his culture because he’s white.

People Assume because you’re white it’s ok to mock you (or during Brexit- make derogatory comments about immigrants without irony). It’s not.

Yup. Not American, but that all sounds wearily familiar.

No it isn't OK. But if people mock me (some of my family do, and it just seems to have become a family joke) then I mock them back. If you can't take it, don't dish it. It's amazing how some people take offence quickly, yet make fun of others.

I meant that I don't have a foreign accent by the way everyone.

To about seven billion fuckers, including me, you do.

@Notevenabit

In the Uk I’ve only ever had people imitate my accent as a pathetic form of snobbery-always using wording/sayings that is reinforcing some stereotype they have about Americans. Always in an OTT tone that makes us seem thick or slow or aggressive.

DH isn’t British either (not American) and has the same experience. Colleagues think it’s ok to mock his accent and aspects of his culture because he’s white.

People Assume because you’re white it’s ok to mock you (or during Brexit- make derogatory comments about immigrants without irony). It’s not.

This

I meant that I don't have a foreign accent by the way everyone.

To about seven billion fuckers, including me, you do.

I think it's pretty clear that by 'not foreign', the OP means she has an accent originating from the country she lives in, rather than that her accent is not foreign to anyone she ever meets.

We laugh at the way we say certain things within our family, dh has an Irish accent, I have a hybrid English/Irish accent and our kids kind of have a mishmash, they will say certain things how I do and others the way Irish people would and one kid has a raging connemara accent when he speaks as Gaeilge which even he finds funny. We all take the piss out of each other.

I would never take the piss out of anyone else though, that is reserved for family only.

As a scot in England, it's just boring and stupid. However, when I took DCs to Scotland when they were small, I would not accept mockery of their English accents. They were learning to communicate, not always confident and the last thing I wanted was for them to feel self-conscious about opening their mouths.

In a work capacity I think it can be very difficult. I know a nurse from Northern Ireland who nursed in London for 20 years. She didn't identify as Irish yet she was called Irish as a nickname by her colleagues and mocked for her accent all that time. That can't be anything other than bullying.

I imitate my husband's accent and he thinks it's mildly amusing but it don't think I'd do it to anyone else. I also imitate his family

I think it's something you should probably only do to your closest friends and family. DH knows that I love the way he speaks. We're both European migrants, so there's no power dynamic at play in that sense.

And yes of course it is rude to mock other people's accents.

On Danish telly sometime in the eighties (I think):
A female "expert" talking about people from the Mediterranean moving their hands "too much" when they speak. Meanwhile, the so-called "expert" was whipping her head around so much while she spoke that we worried she might get whiplash. What a moron!

I worked together with a woman from the darkness of northern Jutland. We Copenhagen locals didn't mock her somewhat rural accent ( because, unlike her, we nasty city-folk actually had some manners) but she kept complaining about us talking too fast and therefore "sounding like teenagers". She had lived in the Copenhagen area for almost 20 years and should have realized by then that talking fast is part of the Copenhagen dialect. But she was rude in other ways as well.

My DH and I deliberately forced ourselves to slow down our way of speaking when we had kids in order to give the kids a chance to learn to speak without having to guess when one word ended and the next one started, but that is another story.

@DinaofCloud9

Try being scouse and endless people tell you to calm down calm down. It gets tedious pretty quickly.

This.

Plus being asked to say 'chicken' and 'coke'.

Brit living in Ireland here. Yeah I get this a lot, mainly by people who’ve barely ever left the country and think they’re hilarious. When I have protested and said ‘I don’t speak like that!!’( as it’s always an exaggerated and purposely goading) I got told not to be uptight. Can’t win so I just try to ignore it.
It’s plain bloody rude, whoever you are. But judging by this thread, there’s arseholes everywhere I guess.

I am London and I am posh. My accent gets mocked a LOT. Why is that considered OK but other accents are not?

I was told I have a "terrible northern accent" when I went for a University interview many years ago by some snobby little oick in the waiting room. He heard me saying Grasss rather than Grarse or something.

I have a bog standard though well-educated educated East Midlands accent, as it happens that hasn't changed at all, despite living all over the place as an adult.

Yorkshire-born DS is picking up a London accent while at Uni but it reverts whenever he's home.

DP has a very soft Scottish accent that he likes to ham up after a few drinks

I'm not doubly educated - sigh!

@Haffiana

I am London and I am posh. My accent gets mocked a LOT. Why is that considered OK but other accents are not?

It’s not. It’s not ok to mock anyone’s accent.