Stories – The Accentism Project

Alan

I always wanted to study at Oxford and/or Cambridge, but I was born and raised in the North East region of England. I always suspected I would have little chance of passing the entrance interviews if I spoke like my classmates. Even from a young age, the prejudice from ‘down south’ was palpable.

Therefore, I changed my speech to sound southern (and became the linguistic black sheep of the family). In my home town, I was regarded a ‘foreigner’ for my whole childhood. ‘Are you from London?’, someone from school asked me. Yet I was only a couple of miles from my birthplace, where I had loved my whole life.

Changing my accent seemed to work, though: I got my Oxbridge degree and managed to fit in (unlike other with stronger regional accents who, sadly, reported that it was a struggle).

I heard only one example of a North East accent while I was down there: a construction worker.

BA

I have been riveted by accents ever since I learnt all that I could about them but there have been times where people mocked me because I sounded like a Southerner and not like a Northerner and this has affected my mental health profoundly and personally and if you want the truth I really hated my accent and how it has developed throughout the course of my life but I have to face the football pitch, I have to face the scene and I have to face the painting because I never asked for my accent to change because sadly we can’t preclude and eschew that change but all we can do is try to embrace our innermost selves rather than castigating ourselves for it.

My accent has changed as I’ve got older but this change is one that is classed as natural and pliable but I musn’t dwell on what can’t be changed and instead focus on what can be worked on which is my mental health but I do still fear that because I sound like a Southerner and I have a Southern Standard/RP accent people might rip the plaster and persecute me because of it.

But my message is that I have faced discrimination in my life only because of my accent change and this has weighed heavily on my mental health but I’m still living my life the way I want to live it and I’m always embracing my life the way I want to embrace it so my accent has got nothing to do with how I function in my life.

All I want to say is that we shouldn’t rip the bandage off and disparage each other about our own accents but we should embrace the way we speak and we shouldn’t think of ourselves as being superior to others only because an accent reigns supreme than another because all accents reign supreme regardless of how they are spoken, how they are formed and how they are forged and that’s why we need to tackle such prejudice we should vanquish such tyranny and we should eliminate such oppression, barbarity and abhorrence of accents because we are free to speak how we want to speak, we can talk however we want to talk, we can sound however we want to sound and I hope that together we connect with each other and unite to expunge the persecutory attitudes that some people have about accents even mine because every accent is unified, every accent is emphasised, every accent is poetic, every accent is tuneful and every accent is equal and we must join forces if we are to survive the cruelty of accent discrimination and we collaborate to perform the show of our lives and how accents are intertwined to make a ballad, a poem and a song on how we need to respect each other and honor each other and value each other as we live our own lives and we look for meaning, for emphasis and for clarity in our accents, in our speech and in our dialects.

Be happy with how you speak, cherish the way you sound and savour the moments of how you convey and carry yourself in your deepest moments!!!!!!!!

Callie

I speak with an RP accent and have been judged from an early age because of this. Throughout my childhood, I would be ostracised and excluded by other children who labelled me ‘stuck up’ and ‘snobby’ simply because of my accent. For them, the fact that my family was living in social housing and on benefits was less relevant than the way I spoke.

Accent based prejudice is not all one way. While having an RP accent may have some advantages, it can also lead to social isolation and even aggression from people who believe the stereotypes. As a result, I am always cautious about speaking to people if I don’t know how they might react to my accent.

Lucy

I’m from County Durham and went to a notoriously posh uni in Leeds, and quickly became used to blank faces looking at me when I spoke, and lots of people, friends and strangers, repeating things I said back to me because they found it amusing. I didn’t mind it at first, but it started getting pretty annoying and making me feel self-conscious. One day, I came across a video of my friends from London that I clearly wasn’t meant to see, of them blatantly mocking me and mimicking my accent (I thought we were all good friends, and I hadn’t done anything to give them a reason to do something like that).

Other experiences include someone asking me “how did you make it to a Russel Group uni?” and hearing people in a lecture start laughing for no other reason than the lecturer played a video where the kid had a strong Yorkshire accent.

I constantly have to change the way I speak so people at uni, even my own housemates, can understand me and it gets tiring. When I go back home my mam says to me “you can stop using your posh voice now”.

Helen

For context I have a slightly mixed accent and can be a bit hard to place. I am from Southport but my whole family is from Liverpool and I have spent much of my life in Manchester. I also took part in a lot of drama and performing arts as a kid. This has meant that I have a Scouse/Lancashire hybrid accent but I also enunciate very clearly. People from Liverpool think I’m from Lancashire, people from Manchester think I’m Scouse, people from the north think I’m a bit posh, people from the south think I’m a northern scally. So I can quite often feel my voice doesn’t really fit anywhere, luckily my sister has a very similar accent to me so at least I’m not alone.

The most clear occasion that I realised my accent may be a barrier for me was in my first year of college. I was studying Classics and Ancient history as one of my AS levels and our teacher decided to take us on a trip down south to Oxford to go to a lecture about Greek pottery. The trip was very enriching and I found the lecture fascinating, so much so that I wanted to ask a question. I waited until the Q&A part of the lecture and spoke in my clearest ringing drama voice, I can’t even remember what I asked now, but I can remember the response. The don scoffed a little, and said “Pardon, what did you say?” I was quite surprised, as I said I can speak extremely clearly when I want to, but duly I repeated the question. This happened again a few more times until we both gave up, and he said something (that I’m sure he thought was very funny) disparaging about scousers and the people in the hall tittered a little.

Up until this point I had considered the idea of attending Oxford but this experience immediately put me off the idea and I instead attended a Russell group university up north.

Llinos

I’m from Powys, Wales. In the valleys of Maldwyn, we have our own dialect of English, largely influenced by Welsh pronunciation. Obviously, the Welsh language is mercilessly mocked everywhere, online and offline, merely for being different; in fact, it was genocided within the last century with the use of the Welsh Not. But, the Welsh dialects of English, if you’re not from, say, Caerfyrddin, is treated horribly. Having to move to England at a young age, I found this out quite quickly.

Speaking with this dialect in school, I was mocked for the way I talked (often told I was “away with the fairies”), the word choices I’d make (which were often more “archaic”), and more. I was constantly bullied and told to “speak proper English”, even though I wasn’t *that* far from Wales. I got punched, I got ostracised, everything, all because I wasn’t…a Midlander? And this has continued well into my adulthood…because I talk with this slight whimsy and have a lot of vocal fry? Because my name is pronounced with a rare sound? It’s not the easiest to understand, but it’s how I was brought up, y’know?

Wanting to get into teaching one day, I eventually killed my accent. It slips out sometimes, especially if I’m taken by surprise, but in large part, it’s been replaced by a Midlands/RP-like accent. Going into academia to try and become a teacher, I’ve noticed marginal differences; I’m often seen as more intelligent, I find it easier to get my points across, and so on.

Helen

I have a hybrid accent. Though I am from Teesside, I have lived in Leeds for over 25 years and so I have learned to talk more slowly so that people understand me better. (In the North East we talk much faster than people from West Yorkshire). Leeds is a city full of people from all over the world and so I would expect that there would be more tolerance of different accents.

A recent example of accent discrimination: at a restaurant I was at a long table with a party of people . The waitress asked each person in turn for their drink order. I asked for a Corona – I’m aware I pronounce the ‘o’ sound slightly differently being from the north east. Words like ‘moor’ and ‘Coors’ are kind of hilarious to people who don’t share my accent, when I say them. So this time, when I asked for Corona, one man in this party, who I don’t actually know, shouted out loudly “OH! Hear that Yorkshire accent!”
When I looked at him pointedly, he tried to clarify “Well, I look at you, and you look like that, but then you open your mouth and that comes out!”
Which I took to meaning that I might look like everyone else and appear to fit in with the rest of the professional middle class people at the table, but that actually my accent made me ‘other’ and subject to ridicule. I can tolerate not being understood, and I try hard to slow down and enunciate, if I’m talking to someone who seems to find it difficult to understand me. But I don’t expect to be made fun of as it offends my sense of self and belonging. Particularly as I am now in middle class circles professionally and socially and I don’t want to feel shame about my accent that I brought with me from my working class background.

I recently recorded an interview for my work, to be shared online, and I tried to speak with a more RP accent than normal as I’m aware that it will be listened to by an international audience. I feel annoyed that I have to do this, where British people are so used to hearing American accents and seemingly have no issues with understanding them.

Alice

I have grown up in England but have always spoken French at home with my family. I met a group of french people on a night out and told them in French that I could speak the language. One guy looked at me and said in English that if I never lived there then I cannot be French. He completely dismissed half of my culture and upbringing.

Ruth

Growing up in Dudley in the 70s and 80s it was made clear to us at school that if we spoke with a Black Country accent that was wrong – punishments were given for using non-standard dialect such as “bae” and “dae” or saying ‘buz’ not ‘bus’. Furthermore, we were also told that if we spoke like our parents we wouldn’t get jobs – this was in the era when the steelworks were closed and the pits were closing. The education authority’s answer was to introduce the “Dudley Choral Speaking and Elocution Competition” – classes from primaries competing in how they learnt and recited various poems (Edward Lear and Kipling were much favoured) and individuals reading inspiring speeches. It was a big annual event: coaches to the town hall, the Express and Star newspaper covering it all, and lots of proud parents. I stopped “dropping my H’s” and forgot my dialect, as did many of my generation.

The “use Standard English” message was reinforced on reaching Uni -apply North, not anywhere South (you wouldn’t fit in). The world seemed full of RP speakers, and we all wanted to fit in. When I started teacher training the ‘SE and RP’ only message was made more explicit: to be a good role model you had to “speak properly”, which certainly didn’t mean revealing any Black Country origins – pupils would never listen to you if you did. After all, it was common knowledge that Brummie and Black Country (usually seen as the same by outsiders) were the most disliked accents in the UK and associated with lack of education. It was years before I questioned whether this was true in practice, and have come to see that children love to “latch onto” the distinctive ways in which their teachers speak and are fascinated by variety. Although I absolutely accept that sometimes differences in accent and dialect can form barrier to communication, I feel that this is rare and I truly wish I had retained more of my language identity.