General Chat

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.........

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

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 ! ;-)

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.

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.

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

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

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*

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

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

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.

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

Well said, 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.

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

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.

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 :)

Course you can,my luvverr.

I've been in Canada for over 53 years, and I STILL have a Lancashire accent! OH has a Canadian accent, at least until he talks to someone from England or Australia or .........

Daughter was born here, went to school here with mainly Canadians girls, and yet her accent and voice was very similar to mine, to the extent that OH got mixed up between us on the phone.

She now has a Maritimer's accent and word use after 21 years on the Eastern coast.

Fortunately, no-one here seems to mind that I have a pretty strong accent, because I do use only Canadian words now ......... they just ask how long have I been in Canada, expecting me to say last week or last year, and nearly fall of ftheir chairs when I say how long.

Your accent does make a difference in lots of ways .............. a northern accent used to be a problem if one desired certain jobs in London. Remember there used to be the BBC accent, never heard a regional accent on national radio or TV back in the 50s and early 60s.

Tawny did mention it, and I picked up on it because I knew exactly what she meant, and similar had happened to me, so it was a "you're not alone in that, Tawny" sort of post.

Well it's good to read that the person who upset Tawny in that way didn't do so on the boards as 1) I can stop wracking my brain about who it was, even though I couldn't imagine it was any of the current users and b) I can stop searching for the audio button.

I moved to London from the Midlands at 18 and apart from a couple of silly girls who picked at my accent and local words *rolls eyes*, I never had a problem getting work - even though I came from 'North of Watford'.

Don't let an ignoramus get you down Tawny I understand what you mean about not having a quick answer or to that affect, it's frustrating.