To think that many Mumsnetters despise regional accents and dialects?

[binnibonnieboo]

I'm Irish, and I've been on Mumsnet for years. I've seen so many threads fulminating about pronunciation, spelling and grammar. These so often ignore the diverse accents and dialects across the UK and Ireland. There seems to be a view that anything not RP or standard southern English is common, ill educated, Americanised (wrong), and just Not Right. Sometimes (not always) I sense a thinly veiled contempt for how I and others (Scottish, Northern Irish, Welsh, northern English) talk. AIBU to feel this?

I love accented English but bad grammar and spelling actually is not paying attention in school and not reading. “Down the pub” fine, “I was sat in my car” not fine.

I wouldnt call welsh a regional accent. Wales is a country.

I went ‘trick or treating’ in NI 50 years ago (I’m 58.) It just wasn’t called that. Let’s face it, in reality there are rarely any tricks, just treats. We went around the doors with our smelly turnip lanterns, wore masks and sang or recited something, and were rewarded with sweets and sometimes a couple of pence to buy more sweets. Very similar to trick or treating. Not American. Not that it matters. Blame us instead😅

And..?

@Elsvieta , I don't have an accent. I have a mishmash of several.

@Daygloboo , @Waitingfordoggo posted " South Wales accents are my favourite. "

This is absolute nonsense. You should not always hear the -er. It depends on their accent. Who made you the authority on how to say drawer?

@MasterBeth , it's not nonsense. It's like saying river or ruler is two syllables.

When I was young, over 40 years ago, I was sent on a residential training course for work. The other people on the course came from all over England. I was teased for my accent and I remember everyone being very amused when I naively said “but I don’t have an accent”!

As far as I was concerned, I spoke standard English, so accents were things other people had if they didn’t sound like me. That included my father and his parents and siblings (who all had Lancashire accents), various school friends with Somerset accents (which is where I was born and brought up) and university friends with accents from a variety of places including Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Teesside and Birmingham.

I don’t despise any accents, though I definitely prefer some to others. The one I like least is a Northern Irish accent, which I blame on having being brought up in the 1970s when the only NI accents I ever heard were on the news, spoken by Ian Paisley and the actor speaking the words of Gerry Adams, and usually accompanying stories on the news about bombings or other traumatic events.

More recently, ‘Derry Girls’ has helped to give me happier associations with the accent!

The origins of Halloween stem from Irish and Scottish immigrants bringing their traditions to America in the 19th Century.

Bonfire night may have gone down in your area but in others it has not. I’m in Oxfordshire and both are celebrated.

Does it ever occur to actually look at the history before going American = Bad?

Many of the American traditions posters choose to moan about are stemmed from the UK and/or Europe.

@binnibonnieboo How do Mumsnetters determine regional accents through the written word? Are you confusing it with bad spelling or grammar. I know people get pulled up for the misuse of "myself" for example (which isn't regional, it's a modern and incorrect trend). Or posters who say "we was sat in the car" which again isn't regional, it's just wrong. Other than that, how can they possibly tell which way you pronounce scarf or bath or whatever?

I like a lot of accents but there are two I cannot listen to , Scouse and South African .

Quite. In Scotland it’s called guising because you are disguised. You do your “trick” - same sense as party trick - then get sweets/a treat..

How are people pronouncing “one” if it doesn’t rhyme with Bun?

Not saying you’re wrong but I don’t think I have ever heard it pronounced differently than that.

One to rhyme with gone.

@simpledeer , one rhymes with on when I say it.

Thanks! I’m sixty and never heard that! Feeling very provincial mouse here!

I have an accent. But I doubt anyone would know what it was from how I type?

Wtf?

I’m Irish myself and I have to say I’ve never experienced this. It seems sensible to just use plain English when talking on this forum. How would anyone even know what accent you have ? I don’t really know what you are talking about

When I went to (a posh) university with my northern accent I had the piss taken out of me morning noon and night, in a largely good humoured, banter type way. I’m ashamed to say that I deliberately started to take the edge off the way a spoke and made a conscious effort to speak “properly”. Now you’d probably be able to identify I wasn’t from the south but my accent has changed significantly.

Some people think they are clever when they police other people's grammar and like to feel smug and superior. I don't think they despise anyone but perhaps they aren't very open minded.

I’ve miss typed- I say one and won the same, to rhyme with fun. He says one to rhyme with on. We’ve just checked! 😆

I went to an unposh southern university and I was often asked to swear because people thought it sounded funny in a posh accent. I obliged them by telling them to fuck off which satisfied them and me.

I don't think this is not limited to Mumsnetters.

I did a German language course at the Goethe institute in Munich once and the teacher (a middle-class woman in her fifties) corrected me in a very condescending manner in front of the entire class when I used the dative instead of the genitive in a common phrase. She told me it was "schlechtes Deutsch" / bad German instead of pointing out it was colloquial German from the north of Germany where I had lived in the past.

The reality is that the genitive case is declining in Germany just as the Saxon genitive died out in English a long time ago. Language is constantly changing.

It may make you feel better to know that Hiberno-English is one of the closest modern dialects to Shakespearean English.

That's my pet hate. It's not the accent it's the butchering of the language.