Accent triggered phobia

[bunn]

Why is it that if someone comes on the phone with a particular generic-eastcoast american accent I automatically assume that they will be not just vastly competent, but the agent of a huge and hyperefficient organisation that will scorn and trample my tiny rural British IT business into the mud? I don't know why I get that reaction, but I do.

Whereas, if someone phones with a random Eastern European or Indian accent, I tend to leap to the conclusion that they are trying to sell me stuff I don't want. Admittedly, so far this has I think been 100% correct, but I feel bad about it for some reason.

Comments

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I have to admit that I do find it very funny when Americans declare that they "have no accent", when, of course, to me, they have an incredibly strong "AMERICAN!" accent. When we visited a friend in Florida, one of her work-mates was almost of the floor with laughter at the thought that, to us, SHE was the one with "the accent", and not us. "I don't have an accent!" she declared, in what was, to me, a comedy stereotype of an accent.

BTW, I have never noticed that you have slight Devon accent. Whether this is due to my general cluelessness about accents, of due to the fact that I was brought up in the Cotswolds, which also defaults to a vaguely West Country accent, I don't know.

[ladyofastolat.livejournal.com]

I seem to be incapable of typing "or" and "on" tonight, since I typed them both as "of." But if you'd seen the amount of cider I've drunk this evening, you'd be amazed that I even managed "of", rather than "ghsssbbgrgrggsgggg"

[bunn.livejournal.com]

That'll be 'cos you'm a westcountry gal.... :-p

[pellegrina.livejournal.com]

My boss frequently likes to send up acquaintances by performing imitations over afternoon coffee, and his "American" accent is a thing of horror. It careers wildly around the country in a single sentence, leaping from southern to northeastern. Another colleague likes to send up, how can I say this, the lower classes, by adopting an urban yoof persona, or something I think is supposed to be Yorkshire. I would rather listen to fingernails on a blackboard than these, though possibly not Sarah Palin saying "thanks but no thanks".

Let's not speak of my accent. I fear it is a goner, unless I move somewhere like Scotland or the Northeast.