General Chat

Course you can,my luvverr.

Oh blimey off the boards for a few days and this breaks out!

Sorry if someone has been an idiot to you Tawny.

I'm from Ampshire but mum never let us talk like it because she's a snob LOL but I can drop my H's with the best of them...but relatives all around the country/world and I can pick their accents up in a phone call/meeting to the extent it can be thought I'm mimicking them. Funny enough I don't do the Canadian accent though. Over the years Canadian kids ask me to speak with a British accent and I'll do all the regions which really throws them :)

That explains why I didn’t think I’d ever seen you get involved in politics on here.


I am a bit surprised that you haven’t picked up any accent by now.

Until The Scottish Govt remove the vote from non native Born Scots you have as much right to an opinion and protection in law from harassment.

*sigh of relief* Thank goodness for that, Tawny :-)

They are not on GR. We have our disagreements on here but I don’t think anyone would sink that low.

Thank you everyone for helping me.

Well said, Tawny.

So can you just say, Tawny was this individual a GR member or was this on another forum? :-)

My apologies for muddying the waters. What mattered more was that my accent still reflected the place of my birth despite moving to the city I live in now in 1990 when I was 5. I live in Scotland and my accent is still English. I wasn’t born here nor do I sound like it so why should I have a say.

Having time to think confirms for me what other people have said that the individual is petty and narrow minded and not worth my time.

I will not name and shame them and in turn add more fuel to the fire. The fact that they have disappeared is enough.

Yes, I saw that Joy but it's kind of muddied the waters.

When Tawny mentioned her accent yesterday, Island, and it carried on from that post.

I'll kick myself for asking but......

How do accents come into this?
I assumed Tawny had been upset by someone on the boards?
*confused*

I'd be inclined to agree with Sylvia about the name and shame thing - with the reminder to that person that if she can't stand the heat, then stay out of the kitchen.

No one can expect no rejoinder after speaking out of turn

Also, Sylvia, I know what you mean.

My accent is very much that of where I live now - or so I and others outside the area think. My local friends, however, have always been able to pick that I was not a Durham native - the hard pronunciation of the final 'g' in words such as 'being', just one example of the difference that comes from Liverpool. I still use Scouse and Oz words too and even some of the sailors' slang that Dad used and it's not likely to change now.

My children can change accents at the drop of a hat - it really is a small world.

It is such a shame that you have encountered a small mind, Tawny. More to her detriment than to yours, I'd say.

<3

They have probably read this thread and I do hope they feel very ashamed of themselves. :-) Be more like Mr Owl <3

Thank you everyone for your replies. I need to try to be more like Mr Owl if anyone starts and say before you start that......

Strangely enough the individual is quiet now.

Tawny ...........

for heavens sake, pay no attention.

She doesn't know you in person, does she, only from what has been said on these boards.

I've faced similar ......... after all I'm a Lancashire lass born and bred, and proud of it, taught in Cheshire, married a Cheshire man although I met him in Liverpool, and left the UK gladly 50+ years ago partly because MY accent would have held him back. Now I'm proudly Canadian, but a few (no longer on here thankfully) didn't like that.

Husband picks up accents easily, within a matter of weeks ............. I used to be able to tell how drunk he was by the accent ........... if he got back to broad Cheshire he was well gone, but he had to go through Australian, Texan, Devon, Liverpool Scouse to get back there!


Try to forget it. She can't harm you ......... and if it comes to it, name and shame her in public, on the open boards.

Well my paternal grandfather was German but we were born in sarf east lunden! Gran was a local girl

There were times we didn’t say we had German ancestry because of ww2 but my German grandad served in the British Army and was in the second boar war
He died in 1911 so pre any world wars

He was in the royal artillery and woolwich was their barracks ,it’s still there , he was stationed there as a home posting when he met the local girl he later married .
His parents and siblings lived locally too having come to the uk during the 1880,s

I still get times of humph if I say I have German blood but my response is we are who we are and wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the mix of our ancestry

My mum,bless her , would say tongue in cheek we are all mongrels ! ;-)

Because of my colouring, in my 'youff', I used to get 'Where are you from'.
My response would be 'Station Road', or 'Tregoney Court' (my address), totally unaware of their angle.
Then they'd say, 'No, not where you live now, where are you from?'
'I used to live in Devon'.
'No - where were you born?'
'Worthing', I'd say.
'Where are your parents from'
'Oh', I'd say - thereby giving them hope - 'Dad's from Cornwall, mum's from Southampton'.
Normally, by then, they'd have labelled me as an idiot and (hopefully) walked off - obviously unaware of their own ignorance! :-D

Mr Owl deals with it better than I do. Mr Owl speaks with an accent local to where we live but like me has a parent who wasn’t born here. He will happily put anyone in their place who start disparaging where one of our parents were born. I wish I had the confidence he did to say before you start down that road I’m half.........

People are strange.
I am a southerner, I live in the south and received, what I can only call abuse, about being a southerner from someone born northish. Yet she was prepared to live here.

She is not a very nice person and made her dislike of me very obvious. It was her problem, not mine and I never made comments of her upbringing. Luckily I haven’t had to see her for 12 months.

Tawny, there are self opinionated ignoramuses like you've come up against everywhere!

I don't have a 'set' accent - I moved too much as a child, and had to change the way I spoke, just to 'fit in' - and, in some cases, to be understood! :-S
We moved from Malta, where we spoke like Enid Blyton characters, to the North of Scotland - just in time for me to start school.
I developed a Scottish accent pretty quickly!!
Then we moved to different part of Scotland- different accent and dialect.
Then to Cornwall, where I had to change the way I spoke, just to be understood. Then to Devon - and yes, the accent is different - and so it went on.

In Devon, an Asian boy joined the primary school. Not only was he bullied because of the colour of his skin - they took the mickey out of the way he spoke.
They'd never seen a 'furriner' before.
I became incensed at their behaviour, and bolshy 9 year old me pointed out that he could actually speak TWO languages - could they? No, of course not.
As for the colour of his skin - why the hell do they try to get a tan like his every summer? Are they just jealous of him? I also pointed out that I (black hair and olive skin) was midway between his colouring and theirs - it's just different degrees on a colour chart - same with hair.

Now, my accent changes, depending on who I'm speaking to - it's usually a type of 'Ampshire' - but I am 50% Cornish, some Hampshire, a lot of Suffolk, and can speak in those accents/dialects. Am I meant (according to this person) to alternate my accents?

As for this 'person' not believing you have long links with where you live, because of your accent - well, to be frank WTAF!!?
How dense is she?
She'd probably be the first to deny any person of colour has deep 'roots' in the UK - I mean, as far as she's concerned, all 'Brits' must be white!
She'd also probably be shocked to learn how many 'white' people have black ancestry.

She's spouting balderdash through ignorance.
I bet she thinks she has the 'perfect' family.
Maybe you could suggest she tried a bit of genealogy, and sit back to wait for her to uncover a skeleton or two! :-D :-D