I am from North Wales and my accent is reflective of this. Its not what people would identify as a ‘typical Welsh accent.’ Due to the location of where I grew up, North East Wales, my accent sounds similar to that of Chester. I have lived in London for the past five years. The university where I work is not very diverse in terms of regional accents and I am always surprised and happy when I hear one.
This week, I went out for dinner with my sister (who has the same accent as me) and my partner (who is from Chester however was privately educated and has a ‘posh’ accent). When leaving the restaurant, the gentleman sat on the table next to ours stopped my partner and said: ‘Those girls are from the North’ to which he replied: ‘We all are.’ The man said ‘You don’t sound like your from the North’ to my partner, before briefly discussing the area he was from, after which we left.
Although I did find this encounter funny at the time, on reflection there were several elements of the interaction which bothered me. Firstly, as I wouldn’t necessarily think of myself as having a ‘northern’ accent I was surprised that his person picked up on it so much he felt the need to comment on it. Secondly, I wondered what his person hoped to achieve by pointing out our accent. From my perspective, it only made me very conscious about how others noticed and perceived my accent. Possibly he was only interested in learning where we were ‘from.’ However my final thought, and prevailing sense of discomfort about the interaction, was how this person directed the questions to my partner and did not acknowledge my own or my sisters presence. Thus excluding us from a conversation about our own accents. As this was my first direct experience of ‘accentism’ I searched online for others who experienced may have experienced stigma related to ‘northern’ accents and came across this project. Thank you for the opportunity to share my story.