Something that made Geneva that bit harder, despite it being the least of my worries at the time, was the fact that many people couldn’t understand my accent. For example, I befriended an Italian guy with an advanced grasp of English, but he found it easier to understand me in French than my own native language! There was one conversation we had about football that still makes me laugh because it highlights the language barrier:
Him: …or there’s Juventus based in Turin.
Me: Oh yeah, I know that one.
H: What?
M: I know that one.
H: But what did you say? Was it some slang?
M: No. I said, “I…know…that…one.”
H: What language are you speaking?
M: English…?
H: You are not speaking English.
M: I am — it’s just my accent!
Now, I hold empathy towards learners of English since there are a lot of accents in the UK, with an average shift in accent for every 20 miles you go. Take Manchester and Liverpool — there’s just over 30 miles between us, yet they’re speaking another language over there! My dad found it hard when he first came to the UK from Turkey, but his accent has now assimilated into what we jokingly call Mancunian Turk. I, however, have less patience with middle-class Brits who act as though they’ve never met a Northerner.
I was originally planning to go to uni in Durham until I learnt about its reputation for classist, elitist students, and I realised I wouldn’t have enjoyed that environment. I instead chose Lancaster, my logic being, “I’m still in the North West — there’ll be plenty of other Northerners.” Oh, how wrong I was. I seemed to come across far more Southerners than Northerners, some of whom would poke fun at the way I spoke. My favourite one, which ironically was from someone who came from Lancashire, was one of my supervisors at work asking why he found me so hard to understand, to which I said, “I don’t know — maybe because I’m from Stockport.” Looking back, my response should have been, “I don’t know — maybe you’re just not listening.”
I don’t really get offended by such situations, unless people are straight-up rude or implying classism; I’m actually flattered that my accent pays homage to where I’m from. One question I received that did offend, was my uni friend from Norwich asking me whether I’d describe myself as sounding ‘more Mancunian or Liverpudlian’ — is he serious? I went to a grammar school (on a bursary), rife with ‘actually-I-live-in-Wilmslow-which-is-in-Cheshire-not-Stockport’ type folk, so I found my accent properly emerged only when I left that school and went off to state college. I felt more ‘me’ with a proper Northern twang.
The irony of my accent is that it’s in the eye, or rather the ear, of the beholder of whether I’m considered ‘posh’ or ‘common’. It also depends on the day you catch me on, as my accent comes out even more when I’m drunk or angry — don’t get me angry when I’m drunk or I might be unintelligible! My family think I’m posh, whereas the boarding-school kids at uni would laugh at how I say words like ‘bath’ and ‘grass’. Caitlin, my best friend from uni and a Bolton girl at heart, always used to say I sounded posh; she pronounces ‘hair’ and ‘her’ the same, but I told her, “Wait until you meet my other friends from Stockport; then you can decide whether I’m posh.”
Even with my state-educated Stopfordian friends, I often confuse them with certain lexical differences, like ‘chuddy’ (chewing gum) or ‘ginnel’ (alleyway). Some of these quirks come in part from my love for The Royle Family — I even use the word ‘notes’ as a synonym for ‘pounds’, despite being born decades after £1 notes went out of circulation! I’ve also had the age-old debate over the names of the three meals of the day more times than I’ve had hot dinners. To clarify, I say dinner referring to the midday meal and NOT the evening one. When people use the argument of Christmas dinner against this, it’s redundant since we eat Christmas dinner at midday up here. And it turns out I wasn’t alone in these experiences…
At around the time I started at uni in Lancaster, an article was published in the MEN about a Stockport student being asked if he was from ‘desolate wasteland’ during Freshers’ week because of his accent. It goes on to say that 41% of Northern university students fear their accent could affect their ability to succeed in the future due to accent bias. That’s heartbreaking — why should we dilute ourselves to fit such a narrow idea of an ‘educated’ person? What mithers me even more is the hypocrisy: Northern accents are celebrated in the media, take Victoria Wood or Peter Kay, yet in reality we’re treated like we’re second-class or, worse, criminal.
Call me conceited if you want, but I’m living proof that being intelligent and Northern aren’t mutually exclusive, as are the 19% of students at universities in the UK from either the North East or North West. 52% of workers in the UK admitted to toning down their accents in professional settings, but, despite comments that my accent makes me sound uneducated, I will never (consciously) be a part of that 52%. If I were at a job interview and genuinely got rejected for the way I talk, it isn’t somewhere I’d want to be working anyway. I’m not ashamed of my accent, even if it’s a mish-mash or an enigma to some. You know why? Because first and foremost, I am Northern, working-class and proud.
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