When they start talking like rejected extras for Top Boy...

[resipsa]

...how do you react? Laugh and hope it passes? Ignore? Imitate? Advice please as it's driving me mad, fam, innit.

It's peak innit, bruh? The youngers low-key roadmen talk to look dank and sick down their ends, blud.

Say less and be calm fam... that's my go to for my tweens when they cal me Bruv but to be honest we all talk like that as a bit of a joke and all find it funny they don't talk like that regularly thank god 😂

Stop givin him bare Ps until he comes off the road

I'm going to read this out to my 13yr old tonight and watch his face 🤣

I’m not sure that’s true- I think it comes from not being allowed belts in prison ( due to the hanging risk). At least that’s my understanding

We started calling him dushane and saying g at the end of every sentence . Seems to have done the trick

What is Ps?

True dat

P's is money

Oh as in pennies! Gotcha

Record it delightedly complete with David Attenborough style commentary

P's, that bag, dough, bread... all mean money.

Man like me yeah, my stacks a bit low right now. Cost a living innit bruh

I'm imagining if you pull them up on it they go all Perry on you - "yes Mrs Patterson, sorry Mrs Patterson"

Vaguely racist thread 😬 They're just adapting to another linguistic variety. Not everyone aspires to sound like Stephen Fry or to go back to the good old days of class hierarchy!

I teach in inner city London. There's no cockney accents left among the under 40s. It's all MLE.

Outright racist thread. How to cement the white supremacist mindset 101. Rather than mocking you can just address it the way some communities of colour have had to.

“Unfortunately DC, some ethnic groups and wc people are looked down upon. One of the many many ways they are judged to be inferior is by how they speak. If you speak British Multicultural English in inappropriate settings it could affect your prospects no matter how competent you are so please limit this to between friends”.

An absolute tragedy, cockney is really charming

Very soon we could heard that not aspiring to be a drug dealer is racist. 🤦‍♀️

Wouldn't it usually be called cultural appropriation though (I am half serious here)? I can see the point about racism and classism (though the kids I'm talking about are city kids and a mix of ethnicities and nearly all working class) but I think we'd be laughing at them for trying to mimic any subculture they weren't really a part of, whether that's black or white.

Ah the scream of 'racist!' How tedious

In what way does an accent make you a drug dealer? Does a northern accent make you coarse, racist and unhygienic?

I say ignore it! We moved to a place with a strong regional accent when I was a teenager. I acquired it to fit in. My parents were unkind about it (maybe without meaning to be?) by mocking me whenever I spoke (repeating accent back). They essentially shamed me out of the regional accent and now I have none and that actually feels like kind of a shame!

Also I felt like I had to switch between one voice out and one voice at home.

It’s just teens speaking and nothing is being done for commercial purposes. That may be a case for a few posters but have a look back through the thread. The bulk are mocking it for sounding stupid, poor and criminal.

That’s a problem because a lot of these women are decision-makers. I’m sure in these pages there are teachers, hiring managers, etc and these attitudes feed into institutional racism and have life limiting impacts on black people. There is research done on this for example, showing teachers attitudes can make black children stop participating in class because they’re worried about not expressing themselves correctly. It was one of the attitudes tackled when they were trying to raise the educational attainment of Caribbean boys. There are also negative psychological effects of code switching on black professionals.

It’s fine to discourage it because practically it is a disadvantage but it can be discouraged in a way that doesn’t belittle others.

Record it delightedly complete with David Attenborough style commentary
My personal favourite because we’re animals clearly.

I do get that @MCOut - I was very resistant to having my white working class vernacular changed when I found myself at uni, and I can see there's definitely a "punching down" element to this, particularly class-based as English-speaking middle class people of all ethnicities will generally be able to adapt their speech appropriately.

I think about this a lot because I think there's a big piss-taking culture amongst the white working class, nobody is immune, and whilst I question whether it can be seen as low level bullying, it also functions to make people part of the group. If we start excluding people from having the piss taken out of them on the basis that it relates to ethnicity or cultural background, is this itself not discriminatory? There's a danger that so many lines are drawn between people that it separates them rather than brings them together.

But it's about appropriacy and I think you're right about people questioning whether those attitudes that may (or may not!) be okay in some circumstances are carrying over to something more harmful.

Depends on where you live. Dorset? Fair point. London? They are just fitting in with their friends. My 6 year old says “booty” for bum and calls me “bruh”. Fuck knows who starts it, but they all do it.