Anyone else prejudiced against certain accents?

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Jacoby
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09 Sep 2016, 11:56 am

I've always loved accents and find myself subconsciously mimicking them at times, I do not feel I have a prejudice against them.



Noca
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09 Sep 2016, 3:03 pm

If I pick up the phone and hear an Indian accent, I automatically think scammer. It is just the product of endlessly being harassed by those as*holes.



lostonearth35
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12 Sep 2016, 4:57 pm

Either my hearing is not very good or my ability to process what people are saying is slower than normal, so when I watch videos I often have don't have a clue what people are saying even when they don't have much of an accent unless they have captions. This is one of the reasons I don't usually care for Let's Play videos.

If a person talks really fast I want to tell them "Slow down, I can't listen that fast!" :lol:

I have noticed that scammers on the phone usually have a really thick accent some kind, and then I usually just hang up on them. They almost never pronounce my name correctly, and sometimes I wonder if they do this on purpose in order to confuse you and make you fall for the scam, like that peddler in that remake of King's Quest who actually learned from a book to fake a stereotypical accent to trick people into buying junk. :)



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12 Sep 2016, 5:09 pm

lostonearth35 wrote:
I'm not really prejudiced but... okay, I guess if I have to use the word "but" that means I am. :(

Sometimes I have trouble understanding thick accents but I'm afraid saying so will me look like a total Archie Bunker. It's especially bad in videos with no captions. And of course turning captions on makes it even more unintelligible, which is both frustrating and hilarious.

People have all kinds of accents and dialects and there's nothing wrong with that. If you you judge someone just by the way they speak you're generalizing and dehumanizing because you're not seeing them as a real person with positive traits that you don't even know about. Its like NTs thinking all autistic people are mass murderers and terrorists.

And if *they* say it is then it must be true, because nothing we say matters at ALL. Better not make me angry offline, it'll be a challenge finding where to hide your body. :roll:


I can relate to this. When not-so-well-educated Finns start to speak English, the result is terrible to hear. The accent just is too thick, almost unintelligible. Soft consonants combined with mysterious vowels is not a good combination.


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adoylelb90815
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13 Sep 2016, 4:57 pm

I admit if I hear an Indian accent on the phone, I also think scammer, as for the most part, those telemarketers have those accents.

For someone else with an accent, I don't judge them because I assume they came to this country legally and are trying their best to learn English before eventually becoming a citizen.



MisterSpock
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17 Sep 2016, 12:56 pm

There are certain accents which I associate with "being thick". I assume this has come from my few interactions with people with those accents, and those people not appearing as intelligent as myself. An arrogant statement, you may say, but this "appearing less intelligent" is from my experience of learning the same material along side them, and they being slower to grasp the concept, and becoming frustrated by this. There are only so many times you can hear "I just don't get it" in an accent before it starts to grate.

Additionally, during my time in education, those who had had elocution lessons or came from well spoken families tended to perform better in testing, and I had what I thought were better conversations with them (though this could be though a difference in interests, of the less well spoken not wanting to appear like one of the posh snobs).


As you can see from my profile info (<<<), I am from Manchester. There is a popular and cultural dislike of people from Liverpool, the other large industrial town in NW England. Scousers, being there, with their stupid accents and stupid faces - why don't they get a work ethic, the petty criminals?

When it comes to phone conversations, I think everyone will dispair when a particular accent comes through, as you know it is nothing else but a call centre.



bethannny
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22 Dec 2016, 12:37 am

Yes. Big time. I suffer from Hoserphobia

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Y314M68mGg&t=26s



auntblabby
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22 Dec 2016, 1:24 am

if brassholes can be said to have an accent, I would be prejudiced against such.



IstominFan
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22 Dec 2016, 7:40 am

Accents faked for cinematic purposes by actors obviously not from the country they are representing on screen.



IstominFan
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22 Dec 2016, 10:27 am

I find it very hard to understand those Indian accents on the tech support line. Those tech support guys tend to have unusual prosody, even though their vocabularies are pretty good. I tend to get easily frustrated when trying to do anything over the phone as it is.



pasty
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22 Dec 2016, 12:14 pm

While I am not prejudiced against any accents, I find it incredibly difficult to understand many accents. I also dislike the sound of some accents. Certain words, phrases, and sounds bother me for an unknown reason, and some accents use sound combinations and sound sequences that are uncomfortable. I'm from the Deep South in the U.S. and I can't stand how everyone here pronounces "ranch" and "on." I don't judge people negatively because if it, but I wish those sounds didn't bother me so much. I also find it hard to understand people who don't pronounce the "r" in words. This bothers me about music. It seems everyone drops the "r." It makes "weirdo" sound like "widow." That is confusing to me.



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22 Dec 2016, 12:28 pm

^rhotic consonants vary widely between languages-there's a hige variety in what sounds are represented by "R", perhaps more than any other letter. the reason speech like "wabbit" is considered childish to english speakers is because the 'r' sounds are usually the last to be mastered.

CaptLasik wrote:
Language is about communication and people speak what they've been taught. Haven't come across a dialect that didn't interest me somehow. f**k prescriptivism. Everyday speech isn't an English essay.


you got it!!


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Kiprobalhato
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22 Dec 2016, 12:37 pm

Krabo wrote:
I can relate to this. When not-so-well-educated Finns start to speak English, the result is terrible to hear. The accent just is too thick, almost unintelligible. Soft consonants combined with mysterious vowels is not a good combination.


the finns on youtube are an example of this. the consonant gradation/lengthening central to finnish often carries over to their english.

i think of the guy from hydraulic press channel, lauri vuohensilta. his content is entertaining and he's a funny guy, but christ...he can be hard to understand sometimes.

It iis ekstrimili deingeros änd mei attak at eni taim, so wii mast diil with iit.


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IstominFan
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22 Dec 2016, 7:53 pm

It frustrates me when I'm so stressed out that I can't put together a coherent sentence. I have a good education and a good vocabulary, but there are times I feel absolutely stupid because I can't speak. I think this is why I'm frustrated by people who are glib-tongued, but say nothing of substance or those who are plain ignorant. None of this has anything to do with accents and everything with being readily understood. English wasn't my first language and I was called "stupid" and worse by my kindergarten teacher because of it. I felt I had to compensate by getting the best grades in English from then on. I have been called a snob and a stickler, but I am hardest on myself when I say something stupid.



auntblabby
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22 Dec 2016, 8:56 pm

it has been my experience that the lions' share of art snobs have an "accent" that makes me want to slap them. :x



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22 Dec 2016, 9:03 pm

I am from the Southeast United States. However, I do not have an accent that is noticeable. However, I do use slang from time to time like y'all.


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