Dropping her T’s

No, it was my dad, as I said in my first post on the thread. He nagged about it all the time (because he was a raging snob), but it didn't change how I spoke elsewhere. My point is, OP's kid doesn't need everyone in her life to speak the same way and be constantly correcting her. She'll pick up a variety of accents and use them as necessary to fit in, the same way bilingual kids do.

Poor little girl 💔

Leave her alone she’s in year 1 and this should literally be the least of your concerns.

I hope this isn’t a glimpse of what sort of parent you are because else I feel very sorry for her.

It's not interesting, it's pure and utter snobbery with a sprinkling of racism. Guess who tends to use th-fronting and t-glottalization the most?

I’d just help her with her reading and mention it occasionally. It is a hard habit to break later on but I agree with others who say model it at home, then she has a choice.

It’s funny how quick people are to call someone ‘posh’ or ‘snobbish’ based on their accent, while the same people would take offence if you called them ‘rough’ or ‘common’ based on theirs.

I wonder whether it comes from jealousy, or some kind of inferiority complex. Unfortunately, I think this often happens in state schools, which is why some kids feel the need to change their accent.

Yes, but someone made sure you have the ability to code switch, as you say, it's very useful. Was it your mum?

This is really interesting. You consider rhoticity to be a valid regional feature but not th-fronting or t-glottalization?

the kid will easily be able to switch as needed when they're older. My accent goes all over the place depending on which friends and family I'm with, and I can go full RP when I want to.

@Stick0rTwist this is what you are aiming for: when she is older it will stand your DD in good stead if she can code-switch at will (i.e. adopt different styles of speech and vocabulary), depending on the situation.
So she can speak in fluent RP when at a job interview for a "posh" company, but speak in a working class code when e.g. down at the pub to fit in with the people around her.

However, as she is only 5, her 'home' accent is not yet settled. Keep correcting her at home and when talking to you, but let her speak differently to her friends and at school.
Don't contact the school.
View it in a similar way to children who grow up bi-lingual. They soon learn which language to speak in each situation.

I wouldn't like this OP, and that has nothing to do with being snobby.

Shes 5 so she's picking up the language of who she speaks to the most, simple as that.
As you were around her more over the holidays she adapted to talking like you, now all she hears is no t's so she's picking that up.
The only thing a teacher can do is try and change the accents of everyone who is speaking like this which is ridiculous and wouldn't work so it would be silly to ask the teacher to do this. If your constantly correcting her you're going to affect her self confidence and she will be apprehensive to talk.

In light of this post, I should add that my DN who reverted to RP have done very well. Perhaps it is because this is how they spoke as young children?

I agree that sounding unnatural is sad, though I understand why someone would try.

Interesting Aussies are mentioned here. Most Australians you meet or hear on tv are probably middle or upper middle class Aussies and probably come from cities. You would rarely hear a broad rural working class Aussie accent in a professional setting. This doesn’t mean that no Australians from rural working class settings are successful in business- plenty are - but the very broad accents will be refined through whatever life experience pushes them towards success. The Aussies you meet also probably have very clear speech and it translates really well internationally- but not so a broad outback accent!

My mum constantly corrected our speech, and still does! I learned to code switch early just to stop the constant correction. Just speak to her normally at home and leave her to it.

Projection. Your repeated infantile attempts at a burn reveal your utter rage at having been ridiculed repeatedly.

You are behaving exactly as a provincial, small minded fool behaves when their ignorance is revealed. It's to be expected. I am genuinely embarrassed for you.

My DS5 has been through stages of doing this, definitely picked up from school- also rural-ish midlands. I went through a stage of correcting him but it made him do it even more so I just ensure I pronounce the words as I normally would. I havent heard him do it for a while and I'm sure they will change things over time.

I wouldn't expect the teacher to have an input in this, they might not be able to tell if a child have family from elsewhere that have a different accent which they'd probably be told off for correcting. Teachers have enough to put up with.

I say 'moe - sher' for motor. Is that unclear enunciation?

This is a year 1 child learning sounds to help reading. They need to know the correct sounds and this is what the teacher should model regardless.

I don't speak RP and I've done fine. That's not to say there isn't snobbery about.

Interestingly, the only situation in which I've seen someone's accent really work against them is when a woman I was interviewing from yorkshire who attended Cambridge. She spoke in very pronounced RP. I didn't really notice it but two of the other interviewers (both English) felt it came across very false and weird and that made her seem less trustworthy. I think it was a factor in her not getting the job, which I didn't agree with, incidentally. My guess was that she altered her accent when she went to university. It did seem a bit forced, but I understood why she did it, given the sort of raging snobs that are on this thread.

Good news/bad news, OP:

A close relative also in the Midlands with a decidedly posh accent had the same dilemma with their two DC. They ignored it. One DC reverted to RP spontaneously at Oxbridge and the other when they themselves became a teacher.

In my home country, I spent early childhood in a region with some of its own grammatical constructs. There is no doubt they were technically wrong but even our teachers used them all the time. DM was from a different region, hated this, and tried to forbid us using them.

It just made me awkward and self conscious and reluctant to bring friends home when I could play more happily elsewhere. Is that what you want for DD?

If you cay 'car' with a rhotic R or not, that is regional accent. If you say 'motor' (non rhotic and a glottal stop), that's unclear enunciation.

Bath - 2 possible ways of saying it. Baff isn't one of them.

My son is younger but he models what he hears. I don’t have a strong regional accent at all but I do speak with short, northern “a” sounds for bath, path, grass etc. We live in the south and he will naturally have southern “a” sounds but if I say “it’s bath time” and he says “yes, bath time” back, he will have a short “a”. It isn’t conscious and I doubt it is for your daughter. It’s called linguistic accommodation and we all do it to a degree, in different ways. She will either “grow” out of it or if it’s how her friends speak then she may not. Doubtful there’s much you can do about it and it may well mean she’ll be good at adapting to the tone of those around her when she’s older. Not a bad thing.

Exactly We had a French teacher who was a French native speaker - she also taught geography, no one made her pronounce her 'h's at the beginning of words when she was teaching Geography in English... I guess because that would have been deeply insensitive at best and linguistic bullying at worst?

So if I say 'car' with a rhotic 'r' rather than 'cah' am I not enunciating properly? It's a genuine question because I'm not sure what you mean.