I See...

There’s 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.

There’s 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 “Oh sure whatever is easiest”, “Which have you more of?” and, “Ah sure I don’t want to cause a fuss” 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 you’re 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 shouldn’t) 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 they’re stepping on a lot of cultural taboos and boundaries. Especially because the “It’s Chewsday, gonnae wot-ch sum yewchube innit” is a working class accent.

Now, that’s not to say we can’t 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 isn’t his first language so he says stuff like close the lights, which is adorable.) If we aren’t predisposed to liking you, then the joke you’re 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, they’d probably laugh along. If they didn’t like you or know you, they would punch you in the jaw.

Even now, after decades in Scotland, I still don’t sound Scottish. The English hear a slight lilt but that disappears as soon as I spend any time with them.

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 “plummy English” accent of one character in a play.

This is my native accent, the one I had as a kid but, because I am a good mimic and my mother always read to me using a Posh RP voice, I learned to mimic that accent. It made me stand out in school as a council estate kid, working class, single parent household and with this Posh Accent. I was literally a teachers pet partly because of this accent and how it enabled me to get away with all sorts because I didn’t “sound” like I was the bad child.

When I’m angry, my natural accent comes out. But over time, my posh accent has shifted to include a lilt to my words that sounds distinctly Irish. So I’m often perceived as very gentle, polite, softly spoken, and have literally had apologies given to me by people in positions of authority because of it.

I explained to my friend how, even here in the North West, the Scouse accent is perceived extremely negatively. There’s a reason why Hillsborough was such a horrid thing, beyond the actual tragedy, because the perception of Scousers was low class, scum, basically. So the narrative then of Liverpool fans stealing from the injured and dead was sensational and easily believed. Even now, literally decades later, there are still people who don’t care about the fucking police cover-up, or the government actually helping said cover-up because they see Scousers so negatively.

So when I come across the jokes of “chicken and a can of coke” like it’s just okay, it bothers me at times. Because the accent is exaggerated and reinforces this sort of… Gang-land, low class, rough and, basically, stupid, view of Scousers. I can only use my natural accent, my normal Scouse accent, with other Scousers and not be treated with suspicion, disdain, have police side eying me, and so on. In Liverpool, it’s actually becoming less common to hear Scouse accents regularly because there’s this bias of “that’s a scally!” when it’s heard.

Teenagers who are good, law abiding kids, with Scouse accents will still be targeted by police, still be kicked out of shops, denied entry with their friends in more than 2s or 3s at a time, because of this pervasive bias and discrimination.

I’ve literally witnessed how my mother, when we we lived in Cheshire for a short while, was constantly discriminated against, treated like she was an idiot, watched by staff in shops, and even outright treated beyond rudely by people who decided her Speke Scouse accent clearly denoted her as scum and intellectually inferior. Comparing that to how I was treated, or my mother when she put on an RP accent, and the difference was so startling to be outright offensive. Given smiles, chatted to about daily stuff, small talk, waving off of a few pence of change, given smiles by police officers passing by on the street, etc.

It’s such a big thing in the UK, the way our accents define a lot about us and how we’re treated.

I purposefully will code-switch when dealing with people who annoy me, or are being judgemental, and I relish the surprise they always show when I go from this soft-spoken, posh sounding, meek ‘girl’ to a sharp, witty, scruffy scouse sounding “threat” in the middle of a sentence while still casually smiling and acting like it’s nothing. It has left some people seeming to think twice about accents and some who couldn’t get away from me quick enough.

Especially when this sort of stuff is paired with how you physically look and dress. Trackies and scouse accent = scally/scum/council estate trash. Slacks and a blouse and scouse accent = makes no sense, confuses them, seems to have them doing a double take because you’re not what they expect with their attribution bias and prejudice.

You've probably heard a little about what was brought over from the New World, corn, potatoes, cocoa, cassava, peanuts, chili peppers, avocadoes, cranberries, pumpkins, and the like. Imagine cooking without chili! Without potatoes! Modern Indian cuisine contains enormous amounts of potatoes and we just didn't have those for the vast majority of history. The best of the nightshades all on one contiguous hunk of land. Hell, tomatoes! Almost forgot about those.

But we don't often look at what the Old World had. Wheat! Barley! Rice! A profusion of incredible grains, really, the finest poaceae has to offer. Carrots! Tons of rosaceous plants like apples and cherries and pears and peaches and apricots! Grapes! Soy and Bamboo! Okra and watermelon! All these things were simply never found in the Americas. The grains one is the wildest for me, the variety of grains available across Eurasia and Africa was truly astounding.