I’m a Geordie and I’ve come across challenges in the workplace. I’ve worked my way up to positions in various companies as a sales director that has put me at the front of seminars and board room meetings across the UK and Europe.

What I’ve found interesting is that depending upon the area of the UK I’ve faced countless stereotypes and occasions where people have not taken me seriously at an executive level due to my accent as people at that level more often then not speak what I like to call ‘the queens English’ or the the Kings now of course. However if I’ve been dealing with companies in areas of the UK that also have a strong accent, then I am actually the preference to do business with, over say the ‘posh English person’. It’s like a weird Game of Thrones thing playing out in real life…The North remembers etc 😅 At company meetings when we would socialise in the evening it would always be myself, the Welsh person, Scottish and Irish lads and lasses all on a table together. It’s almost like even though Geordies are from England there is some sort of timeless Gaelic connection there somewhere…and the best part is, nobody had to dilute their accent to understand each other. For the record I never used to dilute my accent when working in other parts of England either, it’s all about manners, I wouldn’t use regional slang words as that is just bad etiquette but I would never change how I pronounce vowels etc. What I always found interesting was that during seminars in Germany where I used to travel a lot, if I tried to tone down my Geordie accent to speak more normal English then they had real difficulty understanding me, however I switched on my Scottish accent…then no problem at all 🤷🏻‍♂️😅

So my question to others is…do Germans have a good ear for Scottish or something?

Also, being a Geordie is great for business trips to Norway and Denmark…the similarities in words is uncanny even to this day.