If we put the accent on diversity, we can all talk the talk

‘YOU don’t have a Kerry accent,” they all say, annoyed at the lost opportunity to feel better than me. I used to sound very Kerry until I realised what the rest of the country always seemed to know: it means people think you’re thick and a bit backward.

Hark back to the reactions to Nadine Coyle’s accent while promoting her appearance on ‘I’m a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here’. One online critic said “her accent has already ruined” the show.

And remember a couple of years ago when there was a TV segment on 60 sheep that had gone missing from Mount Brandon? One of the farmers was interviewed and the internet said it didn’t have a clue what he was saying.

After Michael Healy-Rae got a whopping 20,378 first preference votes in 2016, the media coverage was described as “racism” in a ‘Kerryman’ article that ran under the headline: “They think we’re all a pack of culchies.” They do and maybe that’s why the issues that affect rural Ireland like crime, closing post offices, zero broadband networks and high suicide rates are never tackled – everyone’s too busy laughing at the way we say “rhododendron”.

There’s a Reddit thread that asks: “Where in f**king hell did Saoirse Ronan get this accent?” Well, she couldn’t go around sounding like she’s from Carlow now, could she? I moved to Dublin at 18 and within a year I’d lost my accent. I found out that everyone is supposed to say sofa and not couch. With a bit of good old-fashioned work, you can put a dent in your accent of origin. Replace spuds with potatoes. Find out the right way to pronounce ciabatta and never get drunk.

When I got to Trinity I’d keep quiet in tutorials, even when I knew the answers and had done more reading than everyone else in the room. I started to talk and a D4 accent came out. Don’t blame me – I was an insecure teenager and wanted to fit in. It made life easier when I sounded like everyone else: bog-standard and middle class. Whether we realise it or not, most of us have a phone voice. Some of us change our original accents intentionally, others do it subconsciously – but most of us alter the way we speak when we make a phone call. The “Rindabite” (roundabout) accent of the AA Roadwatch radio announcers was initially laughed at and then adopted by everyone from Louth to Limerick who had notions. Now a new generation of us has made internet slang like “woke”, “slay”, “bae” and “lit” unavoidable. Walk through Tipperary town and you’ll probably hear someone shouting “Yassssss, Kweeen, werk”. Yes, we’re an odd paradox sometimes.

As a country, we vacillate from pride in our roots and heritage to feeling ashamed or hiding from what makes us unique. I think it could be a hang-up from our colonial days but it’s sad that in a time where this woke generation’s worldview is labelled the most historically diverse it’s ever been, our own regional accents are almost gone and everyone is trying to sound like they were reared in the Bronx.

The media doesn’t help. With almost a third of the population living in the Dublin area, the capital outweighs all the other Irish cities put together. If you switch on the radio or telly, you’re unlikely to hear any accent other than a fancy Dublin one. And the fact our airwaves, politics and the establishment all sound the same only reinforces the sense that this is the right way to speak. Does it really matter if you sound strongly like you are from Donegal or Cork or Connemara – or even Kerry? It really does. A broad regional accent might be OK in some jobs but has always been a drawback in more upwardly mobile careers.

Yale University has certainly shone a spotlight on the elephant in the room that many are convinced haunts their working lives. In not-all-that-shocking but still shocking news, its recently released study found interviewers will make presumptions about the social class of candidates within the first seven words of the interview. The study also discovered employers then used those presumptions to assess how good someone is at their job.

Asa country, we vacillate from pride in our roots and heritage to feeling ashamed or hiding from what makes us unique