Anyone else prejudiced against certain accents?

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This may seem awful but I judge people by their accents. Especially rednecks in the southern U.S. who insist on butchering the English language.

I'm prejudiced by what the say instead of their accent.

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.

Not really, I find different accents interesting but not in a bad way. I have a room-mate with a girlfriend from the southern U.S with a very obvious accent but I wouldn't say she's a redneck...actually pretty cool person as far as I can tell. I find it more annoying when people sterotype someone simply based on their accent.

We all have prejudices, whether positive or negative, based on what we see in the media and lived experience. What matters is that you remind yourself that an assumption is just that - an assumption. Until you get to know a person, you can't know what they're like and it's wise not to let prejudice negatively impact how you treat them.

That said, here are some of my own:

When I hear Received Pronunciation, I subconsciously assume that person is likely to be arrogant, intellectually elitist.
Midwestern US and Canadian accents give a friendly, down to Earth impression.
Same goes for Hispanic, country accents, and Scandinavian.
"Working class" accents/dialects, e.g. Cockney, ebonics, Scouse/Geordie, give the impression of being straight talking, unpretentious, street smart, and maybe undereducated/uninterested in intellectual topics.
"Redneck" accents make me think of blue-collar jobs, guns and Christianity.

I consciously remind myself not to let these stereotypes cloud my judgment. My own accent I've altered depending on environment; around my mother's family who are more "working class" I speak in a harsher, more relaxed version of my accent; around my father's family, I speak more "formally" and pay more attention to my grammar.

I have always had a passion for language and it's vexing to see people dismiss entire dialects/sociolects because they have different rules. I've been mocked both for sounding uneducated/lower class, and (more often) for sounding "posh". It's no less stupid to throw it at people you think sound uneducated than it is to mock someone for speaking too formally. 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.

As someone with a speech impediment and a strange so called "accent", this thread offends me.

Maybe have empathy and think about how it feels to be someone else?

Anyway thats my opinion and I'll left this thread so just food for thought.

Fake put-on posh accents. And sorry, I don't care what you have to say, it's probably not worth listening to.

lol

According to you.Don't listen if you don't like it,we sure don't give a double damn.
I'm calling you out on cultural prejudice.Judging someone on how they speak is as wrong as judgement on color or religion.
For your edification.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Souther ... an_English

I judge people more by what they say than I do by their accents. I like different accents because I like diversity.

That's very well said. I have an accent as well as a slight stutter.

I normally don't have problems with American accents EXCEPT Pittsburghese. I've been trying to red up that accent for years, but yinz always keep telling me that a hero ain't nutthin' more than a sammitch

I normally don't have problems with American accents EXCEPT Pittsburghese. I've been trying to red up that accent for years, but yinz always keep telling me that a hero ain't nutthin' more than a sammitch. It don't matter what part of Picksburgh you come from, yinz know it drives this ole PA Dutchman crazy.

Regional dialects are not "butchering the English language" because there is no one right way of speaking. What's right and proper changes depending on context, audience, and location. Just like how there's no one "right" culture. No one regional culture is more valid than any other.
The only issue I have with accents is that British, Spanish, and Indian accents (all dialects) are hard for me to understand. That might be a sensory or processing issue. It sucks because Spanish with an American accent sounds dumb but I can't speak in different accents.

Honestly, yes I do. Sometimes positively so (like British English (and that despite finding it harder to understand than American English), Italian and Italian accent), but also negatively so, not giving any examples though, as I don't wish to offend anyone and wouldn't tell them. I think it's very common.

I, for instance, come from the capital, which has a dialect that is seen as posh in some other parts of the country. To us in the capital there are definitely dialects that sound like butchering Norwegian (and it's common to think the same way for some Am Eng dialects as well). Some dialects are broadly thought of as less than nice sounding. That's just how it is.
I don't think there is anything wrong with that as long as you don't treat people worse for it. You are entitled to have opinions, and most people have prejudices and biases. That's just human nature.

If I was still using my Scourtney avatar, this would've been really awkward, LOL.

But, nope. Not really bothered by certain accents all that much.