YES!!! That's it!!

Roh-berrt Moo-gah-bey. Remember that?

She was pretty good, for a news reader, though.

I really liked her. Very clear.

By eck lad Zargof your a cheeky bugger i am from Hull! actually you do have a point!
My Yorkshire Accent causes all sorts of confusion, my husband usually steps in and translates at some point.I was asked a while back by a young shop assistant" what language do you speak!" the obvious reply English!!!!!
But am proud of my Yorkshire roots and my accent!

Me too! Nowt wrong wi' it, is there? I don't have an accent though!

When I first met hubby, I was working in Germany and had two English girlfriends and a Scottish girlfriend (from Glasgow)

We would all meet up in town for lunch, or nights out at least once or twice a week. Whenever us girls would start talking, hubby would get lost in the conversation, I guess we talked too fast. He eventually started to 'get it', but he could never understand Alison (the Scott) I would always have to translate for him, in his defense though, I found her accent hard to grasp when I first met her

Exactly. It wouldn't have been the done thing to teach the coalman's son how to speak the Queen's English!

I had a cousin who went to a posh girl's boarding school when she was 12. Before she went to the school we used to talk about our mum's this and that. When I saw her about 6 months later, she had already taken on a posh accent, and was calling her mum "mummie dahling." We lived in SW England, and didn't have a broad accent though.

I have especially on the phone, i am a teacher and had to really learn to slow down when I speak but every now and then i just have to let my good old glasgow accent rip and believe me it is very effective in the classroom

So, reading those last couple of posts, may I conclude that, unless you went to a private school, not much was being done about accents and dialects?

Well, we would mock the Makem Scum, because they didn't talk like us but, other than that, no - not much.

Thanks for the replies guys.

At work with cars, my accent does help with some customers as it is a talking point and I insist on calling people "Sir" and "Madam" because I suspect they get a kick out of it with a British accent (butlers and all).

Some of my colleagues are picking up some of my colloqualisms, like calling me "mate" - none ironically, too so it's swings and roundabouts - I was able to call an obnoxious manager a "Doyle" to his face this other day and he didn't have a clue I'd just insulted him.

A Doyle is Teessidese for Eejit.

I never knew that, I have a friend who's surname is Doyle and he's from Middlesborough. He kept that quiet

The name Doyle always makes me think of The Professionals

Prefered Martin Lewis. aka Bodie

I think you mean Lewis Collins. Martin Shaw was Doyle and Cowley was Gordon Jackson...

I've been reading with interest. I recently got a job working on a switchboard, most people have no problem understanding me.

However there is one woman who works here who just glazes over when I talk. I've been talking to her on her speakerphone and she's saying "I don't understand what your talking about" when her colleague at the next desk has to translate.

I find that if someone also has a heavy accent they can't understand me as well. For example, I've found a new indian resturant and the own has difficulty understanding me - but I think it's because her 2nd language is American English, so to her, hearing my "heavily accented" english is nothing like what's she's used to hearing.

The other day I got quite upset when a rude and heavily accented african man told me that I have a horrible voice and why couldn't I speak properly, and that I was being lazy talking like I was, with plently of I can't understand you's thrown in there too.

I passed him onto the "Glaze over woman" heheheheh