Dropping her T’s

Most people I know end up talking like their parents, so if you keep speaking with Ts she should be OK!

These days, if my teen DS talks when out of the room, I often think he's my DH at first.

I am so surprised that you’re getting such a hard time on here for posting this - it sounds like a perfectly reasonable question to ask help with. I am not British but we lived in London for a few years. My DD came back from school one day early in YR1 and said bu-on and I corrected her and said she can’t drop her t’s because when we move again no one will understand her. That ended the t-situation, but she also befriended a couple of other international kids, which may have helped. Anyway, if it’s not how you speak, I understand that you’d prefer your child to pronounce their T’s. What an outrageous overreaction you have faced here!

Is it like British dropping Ts like wo-her (water) or more American softening Waa-der if the latter I would imagine tv/social media

Maybe she wants to just 'fit in' with the crowd & not be called out by her peers, or worse, get bullied. It will pass, in time. Not today, but in time. Not the hill on which to make her stand out as different - sad as that may be to yourself?. Is it just at school / with her peers? My friends now (36) year old son, now a lawyer, went through a phase of the 'innit' type speech when at school - just to fit in. Let it go - making a big thing about it would just make it worse. xx (Unfortunately, yes, but kids just want to fit in).

I’ve come to realise that some MNetters seem to believe that all children are taught the exact same phoneme sounds in words, local accent notwithstanding. I remember on a previous thread a pp being most surprised that Scottish and Irish children were taught to pronounce ‘er’ and ‘ar’ with a rhotic accent. I think she imagined that they were all taught the same non-rhotic pronunciation as her children were, but later somehow deviated from that and got it ‘wrong’.

This is a good point. I've had speech therapy for a lisp as a young child, and before i had the therapy, I had no idea that the tongue placement for the letter 's' was behind the top front.teeth. I thought the sound obviously didnt exist as i couldn't hear it, so it was fascinating to see diagrams of tongue placement and how to form the letter from using the "t" sound tongue placement, and then bringing it to form the sound "ttsss" and eventually evolving to say "tsssh" and then "s".

Obviously i would never had learned this without speech therapy, but it is important to know letter tongue placement for good enunciation and sound articulation. I've been able to pronounce the letter "s" properly now but I remember as a child calling a boy's surname wrong in my class - I didn't realise his surname was "Culverhouse" so pronounced it with a "th" sound at the end 😅

That's really interesting (and explains why my son pronounces bath with an 'ar' sound rather than like me with a flat 'a'!).

Really? It's not a teacher's job to be able to reinforce this with 30 plus pupils.

Personally, I didn't pick up the local accent as I had been so ingrained with mine from my parents and travelling but my siblings did.

It just happens naturally. You can correct it at home but please don't expect a teacher to intervene. Pronunciation is taught but can you imagine trying to ensure they all speak immaculately at all times???

This. Like it or not, accent and dialect are still class markers.

Ironically, my 6 year old son corrects me when I drop my Ts. He attends a private school in the south of England though (and I'm a Brummie).

Please do not contact the teacher about it. This really isn't her job. Over time, your child will pick up all sorts of things from her peers at school (and teachers too - some teachers drop their Ts as well remember!) and this will be the least of your worries. Just reiterate at home so she understands 'correct' pronunciations. As another poster has mentioned, children learn to code switch (but only if they are exposed to the different 'codes' in the first place!). Audiobooks are good to help with this (but listen to them first to make sure you're happy with them!).

Just don’t. Kids copy other kids and she’ll speak like the majority of children she spends time with. Mine acquired a regional accent within weeks of moving.

There are so many pages in this thread and I haven’t read them but I agree with you. It’s important to correct this and I mention it to the school, I wouldn’t be bothered about sounding “snobby”, it’s my kids future and they need to be able to speak properly. I’d liken it to correcting “was you”.

I also got laughed at at secondary school for saying “for Pete’s sake”, like they do in Thunderbirds, which was first broadcast a whopping twenty years before I was born.

Apostrophes are definitely used when you’re writing plurals of lowercase letters. ‘Mind your p’s and q’s’ is used rather than ‘Mind your ps and qs’.
It’s easier to read that way.

I’m not sure about uppercase letters, but the ‘clarity rule’ still holds for at least some letters.
The meaning of M’s is clearer with the apostrophe, for example.

I remember the head of my primary school tearing a strip off children who sang “fam-er-ly” in a song which had the line “cause we’re all one family”.

My DS is age 5 just gone into year 1 we experienced this last year too.

Like you I’d prefer he didn’t and we correct it at home!

But I did put YABU mainly due to contemplating raising it with the school or moving school because of it!

Children will pick up habits and language from others. It happens everywhere!

Shouldn’t it be dropping her Ts, not T’s?
I’m afraid I’m that person.

No, pp is correct. They’re dialect words common to several northern dialects.

Wow, this thread is a lot! Children generally code switch, so I wouldn’t worry about it. Speech and Drama lessons, maybe if you’re worried about her speech? Also, how much is she hearing you speak at home? Do you eat meals at the table together and discuss things?

We lived in the US for a while, and several people, adults as well as children, seemed surprised to discover that they had an accent.
I taught DD to read before she started school (a year later than in the U.K.), and one reason I did it was because I was worried she’d be confused by the differences in pronunciation between American and British English (XH and I have fairly RP accents, though I have short As because I come from the East Midlands).
Now we’re back in the U.K. I don’t say her way of pronouncing something is wrong, but I do sometimes tell her how I’d pronounce a word she’s only heard spoken by an American.

Have you not heard how a lot of well known successful business people or well educated type speak? especially when saying "sumthink", "sumthin", "anythink", "anythin" etc.....

Haha 🤣 that’s hilarious and def a lot more embarrassing than dropping a t or two!

owt and nowt are 100% slang, please tell me you’re joking when you say they’re dialect

I was browsing MN and the reason I clicked on this one was to actually check if it was as ridiculous and pompous as it sounded and it was!
The teacher will be dying to roll her eyes at such a silly criticism!
Unless the school is some kind of posh “finishing school” (whatever that is!) elocution isn’t on the curriculum!

It could be worse - my mother told me that when I came back from my first day at primary school, I would continually refer to the lavatory as the shithouse & would not stop doing it. My brother started in the same year & it morphed into every swear word known to man. It was mixing with the Rural Poor that did it. Anyway, it wore off quite quickly.

War-er ?! Sorry but that isn’t right! Where did the r in the middle come from?!*
I have absolutely, no idea, it probably came from copying my mates. I was only 9!! No wonder my mum kept bollocking me about it!!
Same as I did with my kids when they used to say things like 'should of' or 'could of'!!