To say it’s “because my parents were professionals”?

[seegulle]

Ok yes - it is generally BU.

But what do you say when someone asks you why you don’t have a regional accent?

Where I grew up, there was a strong regional accent. Not everyone had it, but most did. Unfortunately it was drilled into people of a certain generation that speaking like that was not proper.

And so, despite my family having lived in the area for time immemorial, with my parents having gone to university in the 1950s/1960s, they had no strong regional accent. Perhaps a bit of a twinge but most people wouldn’t tell.

Recently I was chatting to a stranger in the pub who asked where I was from. I told him I was from the next town over. But he wouldn’t have it.

He kept asking me why I didn’t sound like everyone else. I told him that maybe it’s because I went away for uni. That wasn’t enough. He suggested maybe I moved here as a child. I told him no, I was from here. Then he kept asking why I or my family didn’t sound local if we were local. So the best I could come up with was “well I guess it’s because my parents were professionals”. Then queue all the lah di dah comments.

I think it's true that many people who want to get on don't choose to speak with a very strong regional accent.

I think you have it the wrong way round. People don't "choose" to speak with their natural accent. They might choose to try to change their accent and put on a new one though.

I’ve had this a lot, and it’s irritating.

I wish people wouldn’t ask personal questions of strangers they’ve only just met. It’s a personal remark akin to commenting on your weight, your clothes or your features.

Why should we feel we have to satisfy the idle curiosity of nosy strangers?

It’s not because you parents were professionals but because they somehow made you to speak like them. It can’t have been easy to do.

Inverse snobbery - seems to still be acceptable. I be he wouldn’t have liked you to call him a chav in response to his lah di da comments.

I think this is my beef with the professional comment too. I do think this guy sounds rude and nothing you would say would have really stopped him getting at you OP. But putting that aside, I am proud of where I am from and IMO broad accents aren't inherently unprofessional. It's sad that people feel they have to change their accent to get ahead or to change how their children speak but I do understand the rationale.

I worked for a woman (exec director) with a strong NI accent years ago, she was perfectly easy to understand. She was also pragmatic, considered in her views, always happy to mentor junior colleagues. I miss her!

The person you were talking to sounds insufferable.

If have just said that you used to have the same local accent as them but you came to realise that it makes people sound really thick, so you took elocution lessons.

Then ask him why he’s never taken elocution lessons.

Not everyone has a local accent.

There's a sense in which people choose. Some people ham up their accents - A J Odudu, Tess Daly, Lisa Nandy. Some underplay them

My grandparents are from Jamaica and when they came here and had their children they made sure the children spoke the queens English with no Jamaican accent despite most of the community having the accent so I’d say parental input of ‘speak properly’ has some play - but also so do peers, me and my brother were both brought up the same way and I say ‘baRth’ and he says ‘baFF’

My mother was from Derby and had no accent. My father was from Luton. His parents had the Luton accent. He hated it and got rid of it. I went to school in Herefordshire from the age of 5. I was never, ever allowed to speak with the local accent. I sound like I went to private school. My children grew up in Herefordshire. Neither has the local accent. My best friend's family are brummies. She went to work in a bank at 17 and it was very much not the thing to have a broad accent so she got rid of it . I was really surprised when I met her family for the first time that they didn't sound at all like her. Accents are entirely a choice. If it doesn't serve you in your working life then it needs to go.

There is a lot of evidence that education, particularly going away to university, modifies how people speak. I think what you encountered is a kind of reverse snobbery.

Being nicely spoken is a life skill, like being able to write well and clearly. At some point it makes a difference in life.

YANBU, it was a stupid question to begin with and even more stupid to labour the point. There are loads of reasons why someone wouldn’t have a “regional” accent.

Yes as I said you can choose to change your accent.

Well yes yabu because neither being a professional nor being the child of a professional precludes you from having your local accent.

I spoke very differently from my friends as my dad was very Victorian and wanted us to speak the way he thought was "proper" for a lady (hahahahaha). This lasted until I went to senior school, got bullied for being a "snob" and up myself and quickly adapted 😂 I still speak differently to my husband (who grew up in the same area) but not as noticeably so. I just tell anyone who picks up on it (not many) about my lovely dad's pipe dreams 😂

Everyone has an accent, even the very posh ones.

Exaggerating your accent isn't the same as changing it. We once sat at the next table to a well known Yorkshire cricketer who was often on TV where he displayed a broad Yorkshire, ee bah gum, accent. In real life he had a fairly mild Yorkshire accent which he was loud enough for us all to hear him unfortunately.

I moved from one country in the U.K. to another aged 5 and discovered children would hit you if you spoke funny, I picked up the local accent quite quickly. Only to discover my mother was one of those people who thought the local accent just shouldn’t ever be spoken, let alone using the local dialect. It was battered out of us quite young. As a result, I have a very non descript accent where all words are pronounced “properly”. That said, havjng a “posh” grandma and a non posh one, I became quite adept at changing my accent to suit who I was speaking to. My husband jokes that the closer I get to “home” the more my accent slips into how I spoke when I was 5. I find it useful on a professional level because no matter who I speak to whether it is the CEO of a company, or the bloke cleaning the windows, they think I am one of them and tend to warm quickly. I am accused in my house of being posh because of the glass/glass divide. 😆

Everyone might have “an accent” but that doesn’t mean you can attribute it to a region. Many people think my husband is from Inverness. He has never been there in his life, but like me, his mother was keen to rise out of her very working class roots and adopted quite a fake posh accent. The most you could pin him down as is “Scottish”, which is about the same as saying someone has an “English” accent or an American one, which means very little.

I don’t think so. My niece and nephew have been born and brought up in Newcastle and whilst they’re clearly not southern they have very soft accents. I would say it’s because they’re from a fairly affluent part of the city. Same as my SIL who is from Manchester, she has a very slight accent in that she says ba-th not Barth and gras not grahs but she is very much from there but was privately educated and is the child of immigrants who still have strong foreign acccents

Ah maybe I just don't know any genuinely posh people 😂 I was thinking more along of the lines of nurses, teachers and solicitors. I know quite a few and they have local accents

I got a problem with accents. Maybe it's because I'm not British but I keep picking up accents when I hear them. I just listened to a Val Mcdermid audiobook and I started speaking Scottish to a friend. If I go somewhere I wind up speaking like the locals after a week. Surely this must be a syndrom of some sorts. I admire people who keep their accents wherever they go, don't know hiw they do that.

I recently attended a wedding in Yorkshire. The brides family were from Yorkshire but none had a regional accent. All very wealthy. Kids went to boarding school - but in Yorkshire.

I assume the lacing regional accent is y generation after generation were educated outside the public school system and they didn’t spend a lot of time with folks who had a regional accent - despite living in the area.

Best to say 'my parents didn't have an accent'.

I went to private school so didn't have much of an accent to start with but when I went to drama school I had special.after school lessons to knock what accent I had out of me.

From observation most kids get their accent from school or choice.