General Chat

And it's back.......

Probably very late 50’s we trekked ( by train) from London to Scotland on holiday. My little brother and I were swinging on a gate when we’re asked for directions. We just waved our arms up the road. We didn’t understand a word and thought they were Russians.

It is not as though we had never come across foreigners as our parents often entertained people from all over the world because of Dad’s work.

This is probably racist too but, when I was working in market research, I always preferred to interview Asian rather than West Indians.

This was because the Asian languages are so different from English that they invariably speak carefully to make themselves understood whereas the West Indian patois are a distorted form of English which they speak naturally and at a fairly high speed and which I never could keep up with.

Island, I intentionally learnt a few words of Bengali - much to the displeasure of a young lad at school
He was 10, had been born and brought up in Winchester, but started getting 'bolshie', and would occasionally mutter a few words of Bengali.
I listened very hard to these words, then, on the offchance asked my dad, who spoke Arabic and bits of a few other languages, if he knew what they meant.
Well, he was shocked - so shocked he burst out laughing! He had a plan!
We went to his friends house, who happened to be Bengali.
He taught me to say 'School isn't the place for such language, and if I hear one more swear word from you, in any language, I'll tell your dad'.

It was near Christmas. The children were asked to draw the stable and manger. He objected on the grounds that depictions of the human form are forbidden in Islam (though his older siblings had no objection)
I pointed out that he could just draw the stable and manger, with some trees, THAT isn't against Sharia law

Miffed that he'd been 'caught out', he uttered his Bengali words,
The look on his face was priceless, when I told him, in Bengali, what I'd been taught.
It was priceless, because he knew it was Bengali, but he wasn't much good at it , and didn't understand it! :-D :-D :-D
I said it again in English and explained that just knowing a few swear words in Bengali wasn't going to get him far.

,After that, he didn't know just how much Bengali I knew so stopped his bolshiness around me. :-D

Of course I have met people of all colours with British accents but this little girls accent was broad. She had a Vicky Pollard accent which really did come as a surprise.

There were,of course, a number of other people of varying hues, expressing their thoughts and I really could not tell you what accent any of them had, apart from the little girl in the headdress talking like the Wurzels.

Missed the OP shame the rest of us adults can't make our own minds up on whether we should be offended by the OP!!

namelessone, you could learn - if you really wanted to LOL

I read somewhere within the last few months of a woman with a very complicated African style surname who claimed we were all racist as we didn’t know how to pronounce the name but appeared not to explain how to say it.

Is it South Africa where the official language is to be ‘click’? Are we to be called racist because we haven’t a clue how to do that.

Maggie, I read Sharrons post yesterday and it WAS about skin colour!
I didn't consider it especially racist, rather more 'ignorant' and about 40+ years behind the times!
I thought we'd all got over the novelty of someone with darker skin having a posh or brummie accent by the 1980s!
What accent was that little girl supposed to have?

Thank you for explaining everything ( including your bedtime routine ;-) ).

If Sharron had not put that caveat in about it not meaning to be racist thenI would agree that it was potentially racist. I think Maggie made a good point at 1.33. I also live in a very small community so it is unusual to see/ hear a lot of foreign accents.
Nowadays it is not only accents that make you look twice. Even the chap with the parrot on his shoulder (true) made you look twice. Life is becoming very complicated.

Apologies I should have said this earlier but became tied up in a rather long conference call.

I reported the opening post because in my mind it was racial, maybe unintentionally but you obviously had your own doubts Sharron, simply by justifying the content in the title…..

My children are white British, they don’t have the same accent as me….would they warrant a mention, I think maybe not….

namelessone…thank you for your thoughts on my morning routine, I always get out of bed the same side, the other is deemed my lovers, whether he’s in it or not to roll across a king size bed to simply “get out the wrong side” takes far to much effort, in my opinion. I didn’t reply directly I read the post, I wanted to see if I felt the same after mulling it over….hopefully this has cleared things up for you.

If you live in an area where the accent/dialect isn't very strong, and someone comes along with a really strong, amazing accent, It's not necessarily the colour of the skin - it's the unexpectedness!

I'd also like to point out, that in the sleepy backwater where Sharron lives, I doubt there are many 'incomers' of any creed or colour!

Oh come on Sharron, have you only just noticed that people with darker skin sometimes have 'UK' accents?
Did you miss Lenny Henry, Trevor McDonald, Don Warrington (actor) and a whole host of other people in the public eye?
Have you not met many black people?

That accent comes from under a Glengarry..

Same as 'Luton Airport' really.

Why not Sharron? :-S

Like that Scottish seikh chef. That accent is not supposed to come out from under a turban.

one of my nieces, born in west ham moved to wales at an early age

at about age 11 she had the most,(to me) delightful accent.....

moving from wales back to london, at about 16.... she soon developed the most 'orrible common accent.... would'nt think it was the same girl!

Someone got out of bed on the wrong side a bit late this morning. It hadn’t been reported earlier..

In a sense the OP was pointing out that we shouldn’t make snap judgements. Shame the Rr’r didn’t see that.

yeah like that Zoopla advert

Its only bricks and Mor ...er innit?

Some years ago we were in Europe, saw this absolutely gorgeous girl having lunch near us. I couldn't take my eyes of her because she really was beautiful. She happened to be black, that didn't matter.

But I was surprised when she walked past our table, and she had a very broad Birmingham accent!