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!!!!!!!!

Mediterranean girl

I’m an academic in Applied Linguistics and Tesol and have been in academia since 2010. I’m teaching at a University and I think I’ve never consciously tried to sound more ‘native’ like because I like the way I talk and it has never led to any communication gaps. Some of my postgraduate students would ask me during inductions if I’m Italian (which I’m not) and that would be fine by me. What is not fine, is having colleagues (non-native speakers of English) commenting (or perhaps gossiping) about my accent, even in front of me and saying “Oh the students think you’re Italian hahaha”. Some of these ‘colleagues’ are supposedly working in the field of social justice! The irony…

AbiOla

I thought it was just me overreacting or over thinking, but I soon realised that it wasn’t. In some situations my mild Nigerian accent , was proving to be a hindrance to people making connections with me. I saw it at work, (some) parents at my children’s school, as a participant enrolled on a professional training course – “it” kept following me around. I would say my name or introduce myself and the look on their face and quick withdrawals was obvious. I was the same person, with years of professional UK work experience, but I was beginning to question myself based on these repeated experiences. Why would anyone judge me on the basis of my accent?
Why should my contributions and answers be taken less seriously on a course, because I did not sound like those with an English accent? I moved to the UK from Nigeria in my twenties and surely could not be expected to sound like someone that had lived in UK most of their lives. Or maybe, they wanted me to sound like them?
As a test, I changed my accent a few times, to hide the Nigerian tone and they connected. I even did it on the phone – I got better responses with a London accent than with a Nigerian accent!!
It is quite sad that with diversity being all around now, some people still see others through myopic lenses.
How boring if we all sounded alike?
Also, who judges what accent sounds better than another, based on the part of the world that you come from?
I cannot sound like you, because I have not lived in your part of the world!
I am who I Am – not who you say I Am?
I am so glad to have found this website – accentism.org.

Tired Mortal11

For as long as I can remember people have made comments (ranging from polite, mild, bold and wholly insensitive) about my accent, diction and soft tone of voice. It has had them describe me as posh, a speaker of The Queen’s English, Miss RP, plummy, coconut and sell-out.

The crux of the matter for them is that I am Black; the double prejudice knows no bounds.