How would you feel about your partner mocking your accent?

[Chickentikka567]

He has a more 'RP' accent than I do, well a slight one, but the rest of this family a lot more.
Sometimes I'll say things and he'll repeat it but in a very heavy Northern accent, which I don't really have tbh.
It doesn't matter whether I have it or not, it's just an accent, but he exaggerates mine sometimes. Not sure how to feel?

How often does he do it? If it makes you uncomfortable then you are picking up on some underlying mocking feelings from him. On the flip side I’m a southerner but husband is from the NE. His accent is not as strong as his family but his mum mocks my accent every time she visits. I ignore her comments as I realise she finds me a bit of a threat as a “posh southerner” (I’m not) and mocking me is a way to make her feel better about her insecurities.

I'd imagine it's just banter if you don't actually have a northern accent. My husband and I are from the same place (northern) and he still mocks how I say some things, it isn't offensive coming from him though being from the same place. I did go out with a southerner at uni and he was obsessed with my accent and mocking it, it would have been a long old life with him 🤣, got to the point where it got old. Funnily I only went out with him because my friends said I was narrow minded only going for northerners, stick to what you know 😆.

I think this is entirely dependent on whether you think it's funny or not. A joke is only a joke if all participants are laughing.

My husband is Norwegian and while he speaks perfect English his pronunciation of some words makes me laugh. I have never, ever let him live down ordering Crudités (which he pronounced CRUD-ites) in a restaurant once. And our whole family now says Luc-o-zar-day instead of Lucozade.

And he mocks me mercilessly for how Welsh I go when I'm cross or drunk. Calls me Nessa. I have been known to "OH" at people.

But we both find it funny, we're both in on the joke. If he's just making fun of you and you're not laughing, he's being mean and needs to pack it in.

My husband and i are from different parts of the UK and we mock each other all the time.
Harmless fun for us.
Different if it bothers you though

^This with bells on. It doesn't matter if he thinks it's "friendly fun", you don't like it, you've asked him to stop and he won't. He's a Dick.

Depends how it's done. I don't mind him taking the piss out of me speaking every foreign language with a hint of Dorset. But if he takes the piss out me for speaking English that way, I wouldn't be impressed. Fortunately, he seems to think it's sexy.

Previous boyfriend was German, so I probably modified my voice a bit, aiming more for RP. I was more focussed on learning German with him, and really struggled with his mother's thick Ruhrpott accent with added lisp. But I also remember sitting with him and trying to hear the difference between wurde werde würde, which I could when they were next to each other, but a single one in the middle of a full sentence, not necessarily, especially if context wasn't telling me. But still, I misheard things in English from time to time, too.

I have had colleagues mimic my voice. Usually only once. Also back in my student days, it was pointed out I get a stronger accent talking to family or about being back home. What I found odd was a boy at school doing it. He had a fairly thick accent himself, given we were both brought up in the same place, so mocking my voice was just odd.

I love regional accents, and it's become a bit of a bugbear of mine that the RP brigade think they speak properly and therefore can correct the rest of us. Actually it's not just the RP brigade - my daughter's inlaws are from Brighton (MIL sounds just like Katie Price), we're from the Midlands and, on our first meeting with them, France was mentioned (probably talking about holidays). "Don't you mean Frahnce?" as I'd pronounced it with a flat "a" sound as in "cat". Sister in law kept asking my DH to "Say that again, it's so funny". And they wonder why we want as little to do with them as possible.

Just last week I was taking a large group on a guided tour of the castle where I work. One woman said to me "I notice you say "castle" (flat "a") and I'm just curious where you're from?" I said (smiling while secretly fuming) I live a mile up the road and most locals speak as I do. She then said "We used to live in Windsor and I once heard someone say castle as you do, and I said to them 'Sorry, we don't have a casstle, we have a carstle'. I wanted to say" How fucking patronising are you?" but I smiled and said oh" I love accents, It's good we're not all the same", and carried on talking in my obviously amusing regional accent. Something for her to recall at a future dinner party.

But the pronunciations - things like barrrth and glarss just happen to be from the South of England.

Crikey I'm a foreigner living in another country. My friends tease me about my accent constantly. Its done with affection

I hate these kinds of fucking bigots.

I'm from Wiltshire. We (and my relatives in Somerset, Bristol, Gloucestershire and South Gloucestershire) all have a really flat 'a' sound. You're mistaking posh for southern, and there are as many plebs amongst us as anywhere else in the country, and as many different accents as there are counties.

No I am not - perhaps I should have said RP is a south East England regional accent. I am aware of the Wiltshire and Somerset flat a as I spent a lot of time in Bath and was amazed to find that true locals don't call it Barrrth.

My point is that although it can be used by people (as I said) from Harrogate and Edinburgh - both of which I have known) RP isn't neutral in the sense that it uses South Eastern English pronunciations, like Barrrrth. RP speakers are incorrect in saying it doesn't have any regional origins.

It sounds like he's being a patronising, undermining prick to me. It's pretty normal and OK among families to find things like accent differences interesting or amusing, and to laugh about that with each other, but what you've described just sounds like your partner being a sneering twat.

I've got a strong London accent and I live in the north-west. At one time I worked with a woman who constantly mocked my accent, tried to do impressions of it (badly) and also kept saying things 'Oi, Manatee - say 'grass'. Say 'cup of tea'. Say 'towel'' etc. Eventually I snapped one day 'The only thing I'll say to you is fuck off and die' which I'm sure was unprofessional but did solve the problem.

On the other hand, I said something where I now work last week and one of my colleagues said 'That was the most cockney sentence EVER' and we just had a laugh about it because it was an affectionate observation and not a sneering one. I think you can just tell the difference, can't you? You alone know whether your partner's comments are coming from a good place or a bad place, and if you feel they're coming from a bad place, YANBU to be annoyed/upset/undermined by it.

RP is a south East England regional accent

It's not - it's class-related, not regional!

Posh people generally speak RP regardless of where they're from. (For example, Alexander Armstrong has an RP accent despite being born and bred in the north-east. The most RP speaking people I know in real life, both achingly posh, are from Birmingham and Somerset.)

(Sorry to get on my high horse but I studied accents as part of my degree!)

I see your argument but still quibble about RP being regional in that many people in the South East don't speak it.

It wouldn’t bother me as long as it was done in a loving teasing kind of way. But of course if you say you don’t like it and ask him to stop, and he continues, he’s a dick.

My DP is Cornish, I've got a strong east London accent, we work with a brummie and a Yorkshire lass so all we ever do is take the piss out of each other's accents!

But if you studied accents you must surely accept that RP contains South Eastern English pronunciations?

I'm from Newcastle and my husband is from nr Glasgow so we both have very strong very regional accents, we have a 6yr old DS who sounds like he was born on Mars lol. I've never mocked my husbands accent (by repeating words back to him in an exaggerated accent) but I do regularly ask him to repeat things in English as after 10yrs together I still struggle sometime to understand him. I think maybe your DP doesn't realise that he's hurting your feelings but perhaps also your just being a bit sensitive.

I've probably got a very similar accent to you, faintly northern.
I'm quite sensitive about it because I was teased a lot at school in the north because it was "posh".
Dh knows that and doesn't tease me. He does comment that I get more northern when I go back, but that's as far as it goes. I occasionally get people asking where I come from now we live down south, but no other comments.

I am London born and bred but have a weird northern 'thing' to my voice. It really upsets me when people impersonate me as I am self conscious enough about it already. So no, you are not being unreasonable.

Not my partner but I have friends who have mocked my accent in the past. I have an average working class type Glaswegian accent, its the kind of accent that is considered well spoken by people from a similar back ground to me but rough by people from middle class back grounds even those from Glasgow!

I have one friend (middle class, privately educated) who has mocked my accent multiple times especially when he is drunk and telling me how awful he finds it and that I need to sort it out, sometimes I am talking and he just makes a cringe face. Its partly a joke but it is partly what he really thinks. At parties I've been told I sound like the sort of person they usually only encounter on a cheap easyjet flight to spain, the type who use freezer shop bags for luggage!

Anyway I am kind of done with those types now because to me it betrays that they are looking down their nose at you the whole time really. I had the same when I dated boys at my university, they fancied me and liked me but when it came right down to it they did look down on me because of my accent and where I am from. I couldn't be with someone like that and finally met and married my lovely DH who like me was from a working class background, first in his family to go to university and beyond. So much better because we can enjoy our working class cultural background with each other and our families without someone internally sneering at us for sometimes saying dug instead of dog!

My FIL used to slip into a “funny” northern ee bah gum type accent, I thought he was mocking me but it might well have been my accenting triggering some reflex in him to mimic to bad seventies comedians. I hated it.

The problem is you don’t like it and he’s ignored your request for him to stop. If he doesn’t respect you then what’s the point?

This

Sounds like normal, playful teasing. I have a fairly RP accent DP is cockney we do it and our kids do it but we don't go around ridiculing people with different scenes accents. You don't seem to be too familiar with your other half and talk about him as though he's a stranger...