Dropping her T’s

We moved to Yorkshire when my eldest was 5, the other three were under three and the youngest a tiny baby. My youngest DD was born in Yorkshire. My children spoke Yorkshire dialect at school but RP at home (both their DF and I have RP accents). Even my youngest doesn't have a Yorkshire accent, although my eldest (who is married to a Yorkshire girl) varies more than any of the others. I always tell them that they are bilingual, but the way they speak depends entirely on who they are talking to!

Good God, is there nothing that doesn't apparently fall under the umbrella of 'the teacher's responsibility'? I have heard it all now.

Oh and anyone who believes there's such a thing as talking 'properly' is an utter utter moron.

My friend's pathetic, racist dick of a husband specifically complained about Amol dropping his T's.

I think Amol is fantastic on University Challenge, much better than Paxman.

As a former teacher, I would say please do mention this to her teacher.

I would love when a parent came in and said something totally batshit - I'd be on tenterhooks waiting to get to the staffroom to tell everyone else. There was a sort of competition around who had the most batshit story and yours wouldn't be one of the top ones but it's a nice nugget of shit. You'd have made my day.

I would just keep correcting her at home. As she grows up she will learn different registers for different audiences.

Not necessarily. None of mine ever did.

There's no such thing as speaking properly. That would imply that anyone who talks differently to your preferred speech patterns is speaking improperly, which is a profoundly ignorant notion.

Perhaps your daughter is trying to carve out a different identity from you, out of embarrassment at your extremely provincial mentality and desperate social climbing.

This is nothing to do with the teacher 😂
Voices and speech patterns adapt, I bet yours does too and you speak differently to different people. I live a long way from where I’m from and my DH always says when I’m with school friends the way I speak is more aligned to them whereas day to day I’ve picked up a more local twang.

This is telling, even though you've put 'posh' in inverted commas. Bath, grass, and castle are all indicator words for the trap-bath split, which is a linguistic vowel split which can be tracked very precisely on a map and runs directly through the English Midlands. It is only tangentially related to class in terms of the prestige form of English.

The glottal stops will be coming from somewhere. Have you heard the other children or teacher speak?

@TheOtherAgentJohnson He doesn't. As pp, he gabbles. It's not being 'racist'.

I’d say leave it. I have a tendency to mimic accents (can’t help it, it’s horrific) and I started speaking ‘properly’ again when I left school. Both my kids voices change when they’re at school but I just inwardly cringe a little and let them get on with it. If it helps them to feel like they fit in, so be it.

What do you think the teacher is going to do about it exactly?

I’ve always talked to dc about first impressions. I used to say “pardon? I can’t understand without ts”. Now I’m lighthearted as they are teens. They can speak how they like with friends but in front of me I expect them to speak properly. Dropping ts isn’t about accent in this context, it’s about lazy speech and that’s not professional. I don’t think it’s about being snobbish but just aware how we all make an impression.

But we're not talking about her developing an impenetrable Geordie dialect. This five year old will be perfectly able to make herself understood when one day she is running Deutsche Bank.

Going against the grain, I don’t like this either OP and I correct DD7 when she drops her Ts too. We’re in a mixed area of London and a lot of her peers at school do it - as does the HT (who also says ‘f’ for ‘th’, as in, ‘What do you fink of this?’)

My own parents are old-school Cockneys but they were absolutely diligent about insisting that I spoke ‘properly’ in public when I was younger and I’m so glad they did - I can code-switch with the best of them, but my ‘normal’ accent now is very neutral.

My friends’ teens all have the ubiquitous ‘road man’ accent and I think it sounds terrible - the other week the local schools were all posting on social media advertising their stellar exam results but the students they interviewed, with their strings of 8s and 9s, sounded like they could barely string a coherent sentence together. It’s not the main reason that we’re in the process of leaving London - I’m aware that this sort of stuff is everywhere - but it is a factor; my friends’ kids in the leafy Shires are nowhere near as extreme in they way they speak. I am fully aware that this makes me a raging snob but I don’t care - being able to communicate clearly and accurately will stand DD in good stead for the future, just as it did me.

This was exactly my experience (also from the Midlands).

OP, code-switching is a useful skill, let your daughter fit in.

Just let her speak! We're allowed to have accents now, she's not going to be held back in life if she doesn't speak RP. You do sound very snobby I'm afraid.

I don’t actually think it’s snobby to want your daughter to pronounce her ts. You can want that for her without looking down on others. Your post doesn’t sound snobby at all. It’s far easier for non-British people to understand English where ts are pronounced and her speech will shape how others perceive and interact with her throughout her life. I make no apologies for correcting my DD when she drops her ts. I also write this as a foreign born citizen- I was born in a different English speaking county (Commonwealth) and found it very difficult to understand some dialects when I moved here. We live in an international world and speaking English in a way that is more universally understood is very useful!

I’m from the midlands too (big town with no strong local accent) and I naturally speak with a typically RP accent (say all my t’s etc and considered ‘well spoken’ I suppose even though we’re not well-off/posh - normal lower middle class family)
However when I went to school, from primary upwards I did drop my t’s and drop/soften my ‘posh’ accent because everyone else at school did too (although admittedly especially more when I was older as people would take the mick- even though they were doing the same and naturally had the same ‘posh’ accent as me!)
I wouldn’t make a big deal of correcting your daughter all the time as it won’t help in my experience, I’m sure she will grow out of it.

Try going to a primary school in the south of England with a strong Welsh valleys accent (Sirhowy to be precise) and see how many friends you make. Sum total of zero because "You sound weird." I remember sitting in front of the mirror in my bedroom over the weekend after my first week of school teaching myself to sound the version of English that the kids in my class spoke. Mum instead of Mam. Castle with an 'R' in it, even though none exists and doubly confusing for me because it's Castell in Welsh which also does not have an 'R'! It's a fitting in thing and it worked for me. I have a magpie accent now - I pick up new bits along the way all the time because it's what I have always done. Except for when the rugby is on and wine has been consumed because it turns out you can take the girl out of the valley, but not the valley out of the girl.

TLDR: Leave her alone to find her way.

He only gabbles when it’s neck and neck and he’s trying to cram the last few questions in. It is a bit annoying, but Amol’s just trying to give everyone a chance!

You sound like a snob because you are being snobby.
And, unfortunately, I'm that, too! 🙈
I'd like my children to be as articulate as I am, however I am raising them in North Somerset, where the regional accent is very different to mine.
Thus, I have altered (not lowered) my expectations and whilst I gently mention 't' here and there, I'm not on their case, as a) they're 7.5 and b) my parent was always going on at me about pronunciation and enunciation.
Please don't mention it to the teacher, especially not in the early days.

If there are 30 in the class it might be a full-time job correcting them. What else would the teacher drop?