While working as a waitress in Spain I was once asked by a fellow Englishman if I had ferrets and lived on a farm because I was from the north.
Also while working at the same job another English customer told me ‘oh, you’re actually quite intelligent despite your stupid northern accent’.
While working as an English teacher in Spain, a student once asked me why I didn’t ‘autocorrect myself and at least try to speak in standard English’.
My best friend is from Menorca. Her native language is Catalan. We both went to uni in Barcelona. The Catalan variety of Menorca is quite different from Barcelona’s, which is considered “the standard”. She had to give a presentation for a pragmatics course. After she gave the presentation, one of the FOUNDERS of the linguistics department (first linguistics department in Spain) told her: “you probably did very good, but I didn’t understand much”. I (and the rest of the students) understood her perfectly fine.
