why are british people always so mad when people make jokes about their accents. sorry you say yewchube. itâs funny though innit
This is something Iâve been dying to talk about.
Thereâs something called culture. People (especially USAmericans) think of culture as cultural dress, cultural food, cultural music. These are culture, but they are only the very superficial aspects of it. Like the icing on your cake. Far more deep rooted is the more meaty bits of culture: the attitudes, the ideas, the taboos.
Thereâs a guy on tiktok who has done a series that shows this very well, of Germans Vs Irish. In one video the German offers the Irish person two kinds of tea, green or black. The Irish person keeps putting off the choice with things like âOh sure whatever is easiestâ, âWhich have you more of?â and, âAh sure I donât want to cause a fussâ whereas the German just wants a straight answer. This is a cultural difference of politeness.
Here in the UK, accents mark your class very openly. They let everyone know where youâre from (though this has become less pronounced in the last 50 years,) and what your background is. A lot of people (especially northerners, but also a fair contingent of working class southerners) face discrimination on the basis of their accents.
Some of us (myself included) even change register (though I believe USAmericans call it code switching) in and out of our regional accent and a close approximation of RP. We learn to do it because it makes us seem more intelligent (even though it shouldnât) and helps us be taken more seriously.
Thus, our country carries a lot of baggage when it comes to accents. Especially those of the working class who have had their accents made fun of, or have faced discrimination based on it.
So when someone outside the country (usually USAmericans) makes fun of our accents theyâre stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the âItâs Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innitâ is a working class accent.
Now, thatâs not to say we canât take a joke, but this is the kind of joke you share with someone who you have been friends with for a while. My boyfriend often will pick up on the way I say certain words, in much the same fashion I pick up on his idiosyncrasies of speech (English isnât his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we arenât predisposed to liking you, then the joke youâre trying to make is more like an insult.
The way I like to think of it is if you were in a pub, and made those sorts of jokes to someone. If they knew you, and they liked you, theyâd probably laugh along. If they didnât like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.
HOWEVER: I recognise this post as a joke. I donât personally find these jokes offensive, but then no one really makes fun of me or considers me stupid because of my accent.
Oh that actually makes a lot of sense! Itâs like how itâs assumed in media that the southeastern Appalachian (âhickâ or âredneckâ) accent is audible shorthand for âthis American character is stupid.â That sentiment reinforces negative stereotypes about that region which has historically been home to a large working class population that has suffered from an underfunded education system and other systematic abuses. It is ultimately an underhanded joke, but not everyone from America (or even the region necessarily) considers it to be offensive despite its classist nature.
yes, thatâs basically it! it grinds my gears when certain Very Online Americans will quite rightly say that europeans have no right to mock the usâ lack of healthcare/gun control and working-class accentsâŚbut then turn around and act like working-class british accents and foods are hilarious and should be mocked âbc of colonialism and the bp oil spillâ as though all british people are directly responsible for the oil spill. and then some of them conveniently forget that there are in fact british people of colour - in the wake of brexit, a smug american blog defended saying that british people upset by the referendum were getting âkarmaâ for the british empire, even when british poc pointed out that they were the ones most likely to be negatively affected by brexit, by saying âobviously i donât mean youâ, to which said british poc responded âTHEN WHY DID YOU SAY BRITISH PEOPLEâ
The hatred, by the privileged of England, towards Scotland and any Scottish accent was so pervasive that my mother wouldnât let my brother and I develop a Scottish accent. She was born in Jamaica but her family moved to London when she was 11. She moved to Scotland when she was pregnant with me. Both my brother and I were born in Scotland and spent out entire childhood there. Mum was adamant that neither of us would have the local accent. It was âcommonâ and âlow classâ and âwould hinder us in the futureâ. She used to fine us half our pocket money if we used any Scottish slang or said anything in a Scottish accent. I got bullied at school for having a âposh English accentâ but she thought my job prospects were more important than a modicum of happiness at school. My outsider status was doubled by that. I was brown and âEnglishâ.
Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still donât sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.
I feel alienated on two fronts now, skin colour and accent. And one of those was avoidable if it hadnât been for the prejudice against against perceived lower class accents. Even in Jamaica Mum learnt to speak in an English accent like the white girls at her school. She could switch between the two. Jamaican with her parents, posh English everywhere else. Why couldnât I have had that?
The fact that a lot of regional actors are expected to code-switch their accent patterns the a kind of neutral English accent in Britain shows how pervasive the classism is.
When Christopher Eccleston was cast as the Doctor in Doctor Who, people were surprised that he used his own northern accent, instead of performing with an accent like every Doctor before him. That was only 15-ish years ago.
Even now, this still happens - James McAvoy made a very vocal protest a couple of years back about a critic who complained about the use of Scots accents and only applauded the âplummy Englishâ accent of one character in a play.
Regional and working class accents were used as joke accents for decades in British media. Look up old broadcasts and notice how many people only speak RP English (ie. the formal pronunciation that smacks of elocution lessons and enunciation). As media accessibility and productions expanded, there have been more regional accents showing up, but itâs still a big problem.
Putsimply when you mock âinnitâ youâre mocking poor people and often people of colour. Boris Johnson doesnât say âinnit bruvâ.
RP and attempts at RP are not a neutral accent, theyâre an approximation of poshness. Itâs SEEN as a neutral accent, but I just want to point out it very much isnât.
I lost my accent (English is my third language) after an incident where some people clocked I was foreign and didnât have any ties to the community the council had dumped me and my then-baby into, and decided it would be funny to try and bash my door down and scream threats through the letterflap. Itâs really fucked up because I have lost part of my cultural identity to prevent myself from facing violence.
British accents, from the point of view of a foreigner who lives here, are incredibly complex.
On the topic of food, I saw a post once trying to argue that the âfull Englishâ breakfast is Actually Posh Because Origins (and also that it was gross and inedible because âall British food sucks amiriteâ). And I just. Ways to prove youâve never spent any time in Britain and donât know shit about our culture!
The idea of a cooked breakfast centred around sausage, eggs, bacon, and some kind of bread, with or without various other elements depending on taste, availability, and region? Itâs one you find everywhere in Britain, not just England, and in Ireland for that matter. And it is not a âposh thingâ-it is universal across class lines too! If anything it is predominantly associated with the working class, especially with caffs that sell cheap, calorie-high hot food to people who are going to need the energy it affords them and probably donât have the time or energy to make themselves a hot meal first thing in the morning. More upscale places will do versions with higher-quality and more expensive ingredients because what do you expect, thatâs how rich people work whereever you are! It doesnât mean the whole concept of the meal is snobbish!
I just. I am so fucking done with Americans on tumblr shitting on totally neutral bits of my countryâs culture-or, often, on bits of Scottish or Welsh or Irish culture, because lbr most of them donât even understand the difference, let alone know or care about the shit those countries have suffered at English hands-and thinking theyâre striking some kind of blow against imperialism. The posh fucks like the royal family or Boris Johnson arenât going to notice and if they did they wouldnât care. The people you are hurting are working class people, people of colour, people who donât fit under the PoC umbrella but nevertheless have been discriminated against violently because guess what racism doesnât work by the exact same rules in non-American places, disabled people, queer people. People who are stuck dealing with bullshit from the bastards in power while we just try to live our lives. Because youâre proving that you donât know shit about how anything goes over here, and you donât want to. You just want to mock people for not being you, and then justify it by invoking imperialism as a reason why you donât need to feel bad about it.
