Do you correct your DC's accent?

[Tawdrylocalbrouhaha]

We live in East London, and DS (4) goes to nursery for 10 hours a day, 3 days a week. He hasn't picked up a massive accent, but he is dropping his Ts pretty consistently (or pre'ey consis'en'ly as he would say).

He has just asked to watch the Go Je''ers, and shown me wha' a lo' of grapes he's go'. Am I wrong to keep correcting him? No' tha' it's working anyway .

I came from Dublin, so it's not that I speak like the queen anyway, but...what is wrong with the letter T?!

I just want him to use all the available letters.

Do you, though? Do you encourage him to pronounce the letter R at the end of the word water, for instance? I would imagine you don’t (due to the variations in rhotic vs. non-rhotic dialects).

I think that most objections to regional pronunciations are rooted in class distinctions in the UK.

Not even in Milngavie?

I'm not high brow enough to know people from Milngavie. I live in the east end

Do you encourage him to pronounce the letter R at the end of the word water, for instance?

How on earth do you say water without the R? Wateh?

I think that most objections to regional pronunciations are rooted in class distinctions in the UK.

I think too many people use 'regional pronunciation' as an excuse for lazy speech. They are not the same thing.

@Dramatical

Where I'm from Water would be pronounced like War-tah but very soft t. In Newcastle we don't pronounce d's t's er's ing's - there's a very long list! I still sometimes need to concentrate to pronounce the t in the middle of a word and I've lived in London 10 years now haha

Yes! DD went through a T-dropping stage about a year ago when she was 4. We corrected her every time.

DS is now 4 and having speech therapy, so we don't correct him as such, as you're told not to. We do repeat what he's said correctly though. He hasn't dropped his T (yet), however.

Rhotic and non-rhotic dialects, as I stated above. The /r/ is pronounced everywhere in most dialects in Scotland, the US, etc. but is dropped many dialects in England, Australia, etc. The way that an American would typically say “water” includes pronouncing the final letter, whereas in RP that letter is dropped.

I feel a bit sorry for londoner kids, white middle class ones picking up the MLE accent and sounding ridiculous, they cant really help it to a point.

Probably a losing battle.

I can relate. I’m Australian, DH is Australian and none of our kids have an Australian accent. Something I have always found so sad. Seriously. Tried to ‘fix it’ for years and one of my kids even seriously tried for ages but we all gave up.

When DH and I grew up everybody around us had a very Australian accent. The composition of Australia today in metro areas is completely different. All of my kids were the only kids in their classes at school that had been born in Australia or had parents who were not fairly recent arrivals so while the kids were born here the parents spoke another language at home with the kids. Plus most of the shows on tv are American rubbish or decent UK tv. When I grew up there was a lot of local tv and the other stuff was all from the UK, Dr Who, Benny Hill, Love Thy Neighbour, On the Buses etc. There were no Australian movies, just the Carry On stuff etc.

It seems the main difference is the unique A sound. They just can’t ‘get it’. They can’t even say ‘mate’. Sounds like someone trying to impersonate an Australian accent (badly) and is not a word that is ever used. Basically, if it’s not something you grow up with surrounded by schoolmates saying, doesn’t matter if your parents say it, you never will. Most people from overseas ask my kids (now teens/adults) where they are from, they are not pegged as Australians or indeed from anywhere, it’s more of an international accent.

So I truly feel for you OP. Sad to say but I think you need to accept it as a lost cause.

Hmm I think correcting a small child's speech could make them less confident tbh. I'd just model the way you want them to speak.
My 2yo is obviously still learning how to say some words, when he says that wrongly I just repeat his sentence back to him correctly.
I know it's a slightly different thing but I don't like the idea of 'correcting', they're not actually doing anything wrong.

Hmm I think correcting a small child's speech could make them less confident tbh. I'd just model the way you want them to speak.

I assumed that's what people meant by 'correcting' speech, speak to them correctly, repeat the words correctly, not by telling them they were wrong.

We live in the North East and so I do correct my dc if they don't speak correctly. Most people here will use the word 'telt' instead of 'told' . The dc know never to use that word in front of me! I'm a southerner so say 'barf, grarss, glarss' ect but my dc pronounce those words without the added 'r'. When I hear their friends from school speak, I am glad I correct my dc. DH has the strongest geordie accent you can imagine so I think I've done quite well

We don't. My husband is from Liverpool, I'm from east London, we live in Liverpool, so ds will end up sounding mostly like his dad maybe with a slight hint from me.
I pronounce th as f and similar, and don't pronounce t's. So I'd be a hypocrite to correct my son.
(And we will have more than just difference pronunciation to contend with as he gets older. I'm more thinking about different words used up here which are the opposite of what I'm used to..)

Don't be like my mother, I felt like she wasn't ever really listening to what I was saying

I do worry about thi. Every time I correct him he rolls his eyes and says "Stop distracting me!"

My kids have odd accents (and different from each other, depending on where we where when they were first learning to speak).

I've given up on it all. They both do 'f' not 'Th' which is the one thing that annoys me, but correcting doesn't seem to have helped, and the rest of their speech is odd anyhow, so what's one more accent artifact..

Do you encourage him to pronounce the letter R at the end of the word water

Of course I do - there's an R in it. Consonants cost nothing, let's use them.

Also, what does "proper janner" mean?!

I'm a dub too OP and as a child my dad constantly corrected me as I spoke. I now have a fairly neutral accent.. hint of dub there. I'm glad now as an adult he did it as I cringe sometimes when I hear really strong dub accents anywhere. As a child though I absolutely hated it and resented his massively for it as he didn't do it to my brothers!!

Janners are people from Plymouth

I feel a bit sorry for londoner kids, white middle class ones picking up the MLE accent and sounding ridiculous, they cant really help it to a point.

I was listening to a group of black first year students comparing notes on their first few weeks at university. They were chuckling over how they had had to ditch MLE because none of the other students could understand them.

I'm in Glasgow and I pronounce my Ts. Everyone that I know does.

I correct eg "li'le" when it should be little. Lots of people gloss over the t at the end of what as in "wha' she said". It's the t's in the middle of words that matter to me.

But then I increasingly find people don't understand my Home Counties / faintly Hampshire accent. I wonder what I'm doing wrong as I sound clear to me.

Well I’m south London born and bred and working class - I don’t do the stop thing or loose letters when talking. I was always told as a child to speak properly or I’ll never get on in life. Must have worked as even ds 1’s salts have never realised my background. I correct any mistakes by repeating back correctly.

I'm in Glasgow and I pronounce my Ts. Everyone that I know does

My ex-wife was/is from Kings Park in Glasgow and she pronounced her Ts too.

I'm sitting here talking to two fellow Glaswegians. All of us are definitely pronouncing our Ts.