To think rejecting someone for job on the basis of their “strong Welsh accent” is disgusting and discriminatory?

[CounsellorTroi]

I hope she gets bsomewhere with a discrimination case.

nation.cymru/news/cardiff-woman-who-posted-rejection-letter-blaming-her-strong-welsh-accent-offered-legal-help/

@RampantIvy

DH nearly missed a flight from Mumbai because, although all the announcements were made in English, he could not make out what they were saying. BTW he has spent a lot of time in India working so it wasn't as if he wasn't used to Indian accents.

A quite extraordinary post. Think about what you're saying...

A British (?) man in India wasn't able to understand what was being said by an Indian announcer at an Indian airport in Indian English where presumably everyone else was managing just fine to get on their planes...

And... are you trying to suggest it's somehow the Indian guy's fault?

It’s not prejudice. When you are having a one to one conversation with someone with a strong accent you can ask them to repeat themselves. You can’t ask a teacher or university lecturer to repeat themselves all the time. They might be a brilliant communicator and explain things well, but if it is in a difficult to understand accent then students will struggle.

There are no difficult to understand accents. It's a prejudiced way of looking at it.

Some accents may be unfamiliar to you. Or you may just be a poor listener. Maybe you need to pay more attention to these accents, especially at first. You may need to ask people to slow down or to spell out words.

The point is, communication is not a one-way process. The listener has input into the process. Deciding unilaterally that someone else has a difficult accent is discriminatory and othering.

If that’s a strong Welsh accent then 99% of wales is utterly impossible to understand. I hope she takes them to the cleaners frankly.

where presumably everyone else was managing just fine to get on their planes...

The other passengers were all Indian. Just as Glaswegians understand other Glaswegians - see post upthread.

The common language in India is English, but accented English in India is understood by Indians, and less so by people not from India. Also, the sound quality in airport PA systems isn't great.

Why do you think call centres outsourced to India came back here?

So, perhaps you could think about what you are saying. I don't know why you are being so sneery about people who can't follow very heavily accented English.

There are no difficult to understand accents. It's a prejudiced way of looking at it.

Of course it isn't. Stop being so obtuse

They might have thought it but they didn’t need to write it! Some accents are just so hard to understand though. I had a Liverpudlian guy call me up recently and he spoke so fast and with such a strong accent that I had no idea what he was on about. I had to ask him to slow down! If the job was customer facing like that then, frankly, customers don’t like it 🤷‍♀️

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about accents @MasterBeth.

Why?

@TrashyPanda

Interesting survey by Gala Bingo (who have branches all over the country) on accents

www.womanandhome.com/life/news-entertainment/uk-most-attractive-accent-favourite-324865/

Welsh accents are second top.

I think that survey was for entertainment only. . My personal favourite is the "Edinburgh lawyer " accent. However I do think that a degree of familiarity with a regional accent makes understanding it easier. When I lived in Colombia, my English speaking friends had no trouble understanding Brits and Americans, but they struggled with Aussies, who were less common. Accents are fun!

HR are there to stop a company risking itself to breaking employment laws. Clearly their HR didn't function here. Was the job in Cardiff too? I realise it might not have been, the company need

I'm 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 and would have thought she was 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿.

Can't really hear any 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿.

Before we get on our high horses about discrimination on the grounds of having a strong accent, we really need to know what the job was. I used to work in HR and was asked by a colleague if her friend had a case for discrimination. She spoke with a Scottish accent and had been turned down for a job in England as a teacher of English for speakers of other languages. I asked if her friend was able to teach RP English, if this was what the students wanted. The answer was no. Case closed.

@RampantIvy

where presumably everyone else was managing just fine to get on their planes...

The other passengers were all Indian. Just as Glaswegians understand other Glaswegians - see post upthread.

The common language in India is English, but accented English in India is understood by Indians, and less so by people not from India. Also, the sound quality in airport PA systems isn't great.

Why do you think call centres outsourced to India came back here?

So, perhaps you could think about what you are saying. I don't know why you are being so sneery about people who can't follow very heavily accented English.

Again, it's you who's being sneery and othering to call it "very heavily accented English".

Everyone has an accent. Not just Glaswegians and Indians. It's not the accent that is problematic, it's your husband's inability to understand it.

I expect you'd say my lower middle-class Home Counties English accent is less heavily accented than a Mumbai English or Gorbals English accent, but it isn't. It's all a question of perspective. Your perspective is that your accent is "normal" and everyone else's deviates more or less from it. That's where the prejudice comes from.

@MigsandTiggs

Before we get on our high horses about discrimination on the grounds of having a strong accent, we really need to know what the job was. I used to work in HR and was asked by a colleague if her friend had a case for discrimination. She spoke with a Scottish accent and had been turned down for a job in England as a teacher of English for speakers of other languages. I asked if her friend was able to teach RP English, if this was what the students wanted. The answer was no. Case closed.

Its a good job that you used to work in HR and no longer currently do.

Given that the trade unions are publicly stepping in to assist this woman it clearly not case closed. Its no longer acceptable to discriminate against people for being Scottish, Welsh, or any other nationality.

As an aside do you know that non-English speakers learn English as a second language in Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, Birmingham, Newcastle, the US, Canada, Australia - all over in fact from people speaking English in non RP English. Your example is quite absurd.

@RampantIvy

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about accents *@MasterBeth*.

Why?

No more than you, I expect.

My accent is reasonably "high status" in the UK. I don't like people according less respect to others because of how they learned to speak.

Unfortunately as a Scot I have experienced what I can only describe as others’ lack of effort to understand anything other than their local accent, when visiting England (trying to ask for something in a supermarket in Stoke once was particularly trialling!) But only on occasion though.
I don’t have what is considered a particularly strong Scottish accent either, East-Central Scotland.

I don't have a problem with them rejecting her on the basis of her accent and (more importantly) her regional activities, but they were idiots to actually put that in writing. Heads should roll, not for the discrimination, but the sheer idiocy of telling the applicant that!
So racism is okay, just as long as you’re not dumb enough to be open about it?

(Let’s be clear, she does not have a strong or impenetrable accent - so if she’s being declined employment on the basis of a very slight Welsh twang, it can only reasonably be due to anti-Welsh sentiment, which I believe would amount to racism under the Eq Act).

I don't like people according less respect to others because of how they learned to speak.

Not being able to understand someone's very strong accent is not disrespectful FGS.

Everyone has an accent. Not just Glaswegians and Indians. It's not the accent that is problematic, it's your husband's inability to understand it.

You don't get it do you? Loads of posters have posted that they have difficulty understanding people whose accent they aren't attuned to. Why do you find that so difficult to understand? It has nothing to do with "not making an effort" or being disrespectful

Is everyone else on here who struggles with unfamiliar accents rude and disrespectful?

Can you really understand all very heavily accented English over PA systems in a noisy environment. You are being extremely obtuse - again.

I expect you'd say my lower middle-class Home Counties English accent is less heavily accented than a Mumbai English or Gorbals English accent, but it isn't. It's all a question of perspective.

I have the same accent as you. Any accent that different from your own, regardless of where you come from will be considered an accent. A Glaswegian will say that I have a strong London accent.

I love hearing different dialects BTW.

It's not rude or disrespectful to have to make an effort. It is rude and disrespectful to try and get a lecturer sacked because your efforts failed.

While your DH was missing his flight, thousands of people in the same airport were seamlessly catching theirs. The tannoy announcer wasn't the problem: your DH was.

She’s perfectly clear.

There are people who struggle with accents. I won’t speculate on the reason - I hope for some it’s simply that they’ve had little experience outside of a very small homogenous area - but I recall as a medical student sitting in on GP clinics and finding that overseas trained GPs, no matter how clearly they spoke, would receive complaints about being impossible to understand. Including GPs of Indian or African descent with English accents.

@BookkeeperBobby

It's not rude or disrespectful to have to make an effort. It is rude and disrespectful to try and get a lecturer sacked because your efforts failed.

While your DH was missing his flight, thousands of people in the same airport were seamlessly catching theirs. The tannoy announcer wasn't the problem: your DH was.

Of course he was making an effort to understand! Bangs head against a brick wall. Have you never in your life heard someone with a difficult to understand accent? Ever?

Of the thousands of people catching an internal flight in the domestic departures lounge the vast majority were Indian. DH didn't miss his flight because, you know, he was making an effort to understand the tannoy announcements.

I despair that some posters don't get that not everyone can understand unfamiliar accents, especially in noisy places.

It is NOT rude, NOR is it disrespectful.

Do you always have difficulty understanding that not everyone is the same as you, with your perfect hearing and talent for understanding the spoken word of everyone regardless of how they speak?

And nowhere did I say that I was involved in getting a lecturer sacked. That was another poster.

It is rude and disrespectful to have poor reading comprehension skills on mumsnet

Have you never in your life heard someone with a difficult to understand accent? Ever?

No, I have never in my life heard someone with a difficult to understand accent. Ever.

I have, of course, heard someone with an accent which I initially found more difficult to understand than someone with my own accent.

It's the fact that you don't seem to be able to grasp that these statements are fundamentally different that makes your response rude and disrespectful.

@MasterBeth agree with you.

I'd also add that I've never thought someone wasn't good at their job or should lose their job and their livelihood because I had to put more effort into listening to them because their accent was different from mine.

I mean, that's just mad.

It's the fact that you don't seem to be able to grasp that these statements are fundamentally different that makes your response rude and disrespectful.

I have just asked DH about strong accents. He speaks to people from Tamil Nadu every week on Zoom and says it is the most difficult accent he has come across to understand, so he has to keep asking them to repeat what they are saying.

I don't understand why you think he is being disrepectful, and therefore I think you are being rude by not trying to understand that some people really struggle with very strong accents, and they aren't being disrespectful at all.

It was nothing to do with her accent.

Her 'regional activities' are to do with Holocaust education. She was rejected because of antisemitism.

It's all on twitter.

@TheOriginalEmu

If that’s a strong Welsh accent then 99% of wales is utterly impossible to understand. I hope she takes them to the cleaners frankly.

It's because she works in Holocaust education