Beda

To be honest I do not usually post on message boards at all, I read RTG infrequently and in truth posting on this forum is quite out of character for me, so forgive me if I do not take the time to review post or threads counts to verify what you're saying, I would hazard a guess that RTG receives considerably more traffic than this forum though. In the real world my personal experiences would not agree with what you're saying but I think the majority of both sides tend to be balanced when it comes to banter, we know where our sensitive spots are and know where the barriers between banter and insults lie. I'm honest enough to know I can never be fully objective on this subject so I'm not going to bullshit you about that. I'd say the majority of Sunderland fans accept what we are, a team that in reality can float anywhere between 8th and 17th in the Premier League and that would be a fair reflection of what we are as a club, my experiences with Newcastle supporters suggest there are a fair amount of you that arn't comfortable acknowledging the same.

You're very wrong, I'm very proud to be referred to as a Wearsider or Mackem and will take the opportunity to promote this to anybody from outside of the region; Having worked in Newcastle for a good few years now I'm well aware to many it's an insult, however when you look into the etymology of the word it refers to our rich ship building heritage. Conversely the people of Newcastle were known to us as Tackems. So if you think about it the term Mackems is in essence a reference to our building of mighty ships through skilled craftsmen taming hot metals by the Wear, Tackems were the ones who generally received those ships to fit the carpets, curtains and toilet roll holders.

Re: Accent The Wearside accent is a kick in arse off a Teesside accent which is in turn a kick in the arse from a York/North Yorks accent. It's generally accepted that most accents are a continuum, one interpretation of the Wearside accent could be a blend of Tyneside and Teesside, which would suggest to me if you can't understand a Sunderland accent you wouldn't have a snowball in hells chance of understanding anything further away. Think of this though, although most accents are a continuum, I'd say Newcastle/Tyneside/Northumberland is a bit unusual in that it borders Scotland. External pressures that cause accents to change in Scottish and Northumberland accents historically have essentially been polar opposites; whilst Geordies have become more and more English sounding (non-rhotic among other features) the Scottish accents in the Borders are absorbing more and more features associated with Central Scotland. In short, Geordies have by far the more non-standard or unique accent when compared to Sunderland or any other place south of the Tyne. TORKY BORGAZZ!!

My comments were completely unrelated to football, I was merely responding to another non football related post.

I'm a Mackem who has worked in Newcastle for over 5 years and have encountered this kind of bullshit opinion from Geordies over the years, it is regularly pushed as legitimate yet in reality has no real foundation. I do not know Newcastle well but have been asked for my trainers whilst meeting a friend in "Cow Gate" (yes, somebody in an undecipherable accent asked to have my trainers, or trainazz as he said). Your accents are deploreable; with special emphasis on your double vowel sounds "ee" and "oo" which are unique to England (however can be found in Scotland), you almost pronounce them as an "i" and "u" respectively. If you look across other northern cities; Manchester, Leeds, Hull, Middlesbrough and yes Sunderland the vowels are lengthened (hence the two vowels) as they should be. Your pronunciation of words ending in "-ers" become the hilarious "-azz", you even throw a "y" sound into the word "here" = "hyerr". My personal favourite however is placing your guttural "u" sound where it doesn't belong, for example; The letters "Ur" together make the sound we can all make in words such as "Burn", "Hurt", "Work", "World" etc, however you decide to substitute this for a caveman grunt when it comes to; "Hurry", "Worry" and "Durham". For clarity I supervise over a floor of more than 50 people, when i joined I'd estimate 80-90% of the floor were Geordies, over the years I've managed to get this down to around 50-60%.