I grow up in Southampton. Not the nice side mind you. The lower class part where people try to act all tough. My accent, which I picked up from god knows where, has made me who I am. I am made fun of for sounding extremely posh as I have a passion for grammar and accent. I would be ridiculed and told that I am a stereotypical British person and it makes it hard to feel like an individual. They shove me in a category and leave me there to waste away.
Tag: posh
Freya
I come from the beautiful countryside of Herefordshire in the West Midlands. It’s the county of Hereford bulls, cider, Tyrell’s, Ellie Goulding and apparently an un-placeable accent. One feature of the accent I noticed rhoticity with some Herefordians – typically the ones living in the very rural areas and coming from the farming generation.
I never felt like I had the ‘Herefordshire accent’ until I moved to university in Birmingham, where my flat mates (from both the north and the south) were unable to place my accent. To some, they found my accent to be ‘posh’ but to others they commented that I sounded like a ‘farmer’. This continued as I moved into teaching after my undergraduate, and children in schools that are in Herefordshire towns also were bemused by my Hereford accent, with comments that it was ‘posh’ or that they believed I was from ‘Cardiff’.
Whilst I’ve never felt anyone was rude towards me because of my accent (although there is much stigma around being a ‘farmer’ or having a ‘farmer accent’ in my area of Hereford) I’ve always found it bemusing that it seems to be an unknown place with an unknown accent, despite it having its own qualities.
Yampy Wench
I’m from the Black Country but have lived almost 40 years in Hampshire, I spent some time in school in Hants as well as much of my adult life. While I no longer speak with a strong accent it has marked me out as someone to laugh at or simply actively hate. Sitting miffed in interviews with people laughing so hard whenever I spoke they couldn’t catch breath. I’ve been asked if I know who my father is and received a long letter suggesting I never again aspire to anything due to my background, I’ve been refused service in shops, banks and cafes and graded downwards despite coming equal to or better than other peers. It still can be a daily issue to have someone somewhere remind me I’m a Midlander… I sometimes thank them for letting me know as it’s easy to forget without the constant reminders… always with a twinkle. The idea, it seems from some, is to bring me down a few pegs, put me back in that box from which I wriggled.
None of my schools nor FEs expected anything of me, nor offered support, the educators were in some respects actively hostile. Similarly I’ve had employers apologise to visitors in advance for anything I may do and say on the basis that I come from the Midlands… and I was never ever allowed to represent any organisation I have been involved in… just in case it’s infectious maybe?
Many have suggested elocution lessons and moving back to the Midlands despite having spent most of my life in the South East. I recall one director filming where I worked saying I was a long way from home, I didn’t catch on immediately since this is my home so I said no I just live across the water… he looked confused, I caught on and laughed and explained (I’ve thought about having leaflets printed it happens so often)
What really gets to some people is that I’m not ashamed of being a Midlander in any way shape for form, yes it’s a different culture to here. I now sound very posh (according to the Midlanders) when I travel back there to visit relatives so I’m neither fish nor fowl really. I like both areas and people, not everyone means it badly and those that do tend to regret it when they find their friends laughing at them when I tease them back.
All in all, like many of my fellow Midlanders, I’m a well read, auto didact with a dry sense of humour and a friendly manner. I must be a serious challenge to prejudices if I have them working so hard to try and make me feel bad about myself… but I am the only one with that power over me, perhaps one day more people will understand that and accents will become an interesting difference rather than an object of hate and ridicule.
Anon
I was educated in a private school and speak almost with RP; however, throughout my whole life I have received comments like ‘who do you think you are with that accent’ and ‘you can’t be from Newcastle’.
Antonia
The Greek I learnt at my mother’s knee was greatly modified, at the age of 7, when I attended primary school. It was accepted that one spoke “proper” Greek as opposed to Cypriot Greek – heavily accented and with its own words (sometimes of Homeric origin , like λαλώ) scattered here and there.
Emigrating 18 months later to London meant attending Greek school on Saturday mornings. The great and the good at the church school would hide their Cypriot origins by trying to talk “posh” with varying rates of success.
When my daughter was born, my mother kept berating me about the Cypriot I used. It needed to be cleaned up into the accepted higher level radio Greek.
Suffice it to say that I lost interest in imparting the language to my daughter, who, having an English father. Was happy to lapse into English only.
Subsequently, I’ve heard from Greeks in Cyprus how they don’t rate their own Cypriot accent/ dialects and chose to heap scorn in those who still use it.
What their reasons for this might be, I’ll leave to conjecture. But, for a small island under occupation by a foreign country , imposing its own culture and language and further culturally compromised by the recent entry of Overwhelming numbers of Europeans and Russians… I would have thought that self-effacement of a great part of Cypriot cultural roots would be considered by any thinking person as cultural suicide.
Belinda
I know lots of people on here might think this is ridiculous, but I was badly bullied at school for sounding ‘posh’. Do, next time you think an RP accent is a privilege and a ticket, think again. It made me miserable.
Adam
Man who’s just been introduced to me in a pub: ‘You don’t SOUND Australian’.
His partner: ‘Well perhaps he’s got a posh Australian accent?’
Man: ‘Oxymoron, dear. Don’t be silly!’
Alice
I was picked on when I joined my secondary school for speaking ‘posh’. I guess I had quite an RP accent from my parents who had both had elocution lessons when they were younger. I would definitely not have considered myself ‘posh’ though. No one wanted to be posh at my school. I had to very quickly start speaking North Londonese to avoid bullying.
Mark
I remember a kid in the PRU I worked in telling me I talked like a “posh gay nonce”