Stories

Coco

I am a student studying in  Macau where most of people here speak cantonese. I did have the experience of being discriminated by others on campus because of my cantonese accent.

For telling the story better, I want to talk about my language background first.

Since I was born and raised in a cantonese speaking family, I have picked up Cantonese as my first language very naturally. My father is from Hong Kong and  he speaks Hong Kong cantonese. However, my mother is from southern west of China and her first language is Sichuan dialect. She lives in Canton since very young so she can also speak cantonese but with an Sichuan accent. That’s my cantonese speaking background. It is true that I have been influenced by my mother and sometimes may speak cantonese with a little bit Sichuan accent. Plus, when I started my primary school, a policy of prohibiting students speaking dialects in school was conducted, which contributed to my cantonese proficiency decrease.

The story is that I went to the college next door to dine and ordered a stone pot bibimbap in cantonese. I pronounced the “pot” in Sichuan dialect way, unfamiliarly. It is “bun6” in Macau cantonese while I said “ban” at the time. Upon hearing my accent, the stuff suddenly frowned and curled her lip momentarily. I captured that slight disposition unfortunately. Even if it was a trivial case, it still made my feel being discriminated and uneasy.

Anon

I grew up speaking with a strong regional accent. At school, I was told to ‘speak properly’ and gradually modified my speech to fit in. In job interviews, I noticed I was taken more seriously once I softened my accent. It feels like I’ve had to erase part of my identity to be accepted.

Taz

I’m from the North East and I went to Newcastle University. I thought I would be making friends with fellow northerners, but it was clear straight away that the majority of people at the uni were of a completely different social class from me, and I stood out as one of the few people in my classes who had a regional accent. To be honest, the gaping divides between social classes were more the issue, but I think accentism is a part of that. I felt so self conscious about it that I didn’t dare talk to anyone and so I had a pretty miserable time at uni – until I spent my last semester abroad. Being among other international students, such as those from the US and Canada, Australia and other places in Europe, I finally felt like one of the gang. I was just ‘English’ to everyone else, and not ‘northern’ or of a different class.

After university I moved abroad again to teach English as a foreign language. It was incredibly hard to get out of the habit of slipping into a more southern-sounding accent when teaching, because I’d obviously been conditioned to think that the only acceptable accent to teach was a southern English one. Little by little I managed to stop doing this, and now use my natural accent when teaching. My students literally don’t care, and don’t even know I have a regional accent until I tell them. I can easily model a word in a different accent if they want to hear how someone from X, Y or Z place would say it, and this always makes for really interesting conversations.

Because of all of this, I’ve always felt far more at home abroad than in the south of England. I tried living down south for a while and got really sick of people at work answering my important work-related questions with ‘I love your accent’! Thanks Sharon, but the classroom is on fire and a kid’s just jumped out of the window, can we evaluate accents later?

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.

Mo

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.