If you have a different accent to your children

[doadeer]

My son is a toddler so just starting to build words. I'm from NE but live in an area of London with a "neutral accent" - DH has more of a London accent (not neutral)

I say BOOK rather than BUCK, GRASS rather than GRARSE etc.

His nursery when he goes back has lots of different accents including nationalities and regional accents.

Just curious how your children's accents developed if you live somewhere different to where you grew up.

DH and I are both Scottish but live in NE England, kids have the local middle class accent (which is really what people mean when they say neutral). I have 3 accents, the one I use when talking to family using very local dialect, a more generic (UoG) Scottish accent when talking to other Scots using generic Scots dialect that the English struggle with (outwith, flit, whirly-gig, squint, messages) and my 'English' accent which isn't English at all but is a non-scary Scottish accent with no dialect. Except the words I don't realise the English don't use until I use them and I get told 'that's not a word'.

Book is a good example- id say boo-k DD's say buk. If they want a pear to eat, especially dd2 who's accent is even further from scottish, she'll ask for a paah whereas I and her circle in general would say pay-r

I'm a Brummie, DH is from Warwickshire and our DDs have picked up the local accent from schools and nursery, which isn't either of those accents. Their accent isn't very strong, but you can certainly place them within the local area!

It brings up some others too, like tooth with a very short O!

Looks like wool is the safest example of a short O sound - I don’t think anywhere rhymes it with rule.
And similarly tool for the long O sound - nowhere rhymes it with pull?

DD and DH have roughly the same accent. Mine is different, but it has morphed a bit over the years to sound more like them sometimes.

DD went through a phase in her teens of speaking in quite an exaggerated local accent, probably influenced by school. She's 22 now and it's much less forced.

People where I live now and certainly where I work tend to think I have a "posh" voice, but it's partly because my own accent isn't hugely strong and it's one of the UK ones that's harder to place. People from where I was born tend to speak nasally for some reason.

I have a mildly London accent typical for someone brought up in the outer London suburbs. My mother was from Lancashire and father from Scotland and I don't have their accents at all though I do understand Scottish dialect that other southerners don't understand and am inclined to adopt a Scottish accent when talking to Scots.

My husband and I have noticeable Yorkshire accents and my two kids sound like Aussies most of the time. They do both have the occasional flat vowel so say bus and not bass as an Aussie would. I'm sad they won't sound like us but then they were both born in Aus!

I think people try and acquire accents to fit in too. Family members have done this as adults. NE and Yorkshire accents have been worked on. Without a local accent you are doomed to remaining an outsider apparently.

Yep, I'm Scottish and book rhymes with look, which is also said the same as Luke! But DH is English, no regional accent, just generic RP, and he says those three words differently.

@MiaowMix yes, same here for buck!

In the Student Room thread I linked I noticed “buk” was used for the short O sound - that probably makes it clearer.

(There are loads of examples there of oo inconsistencies. It’s really interesting!)

I always find 'oven' interesting. I say 'uh-ven' but I've met a lot of people who pronounce 'of-ven'.

I found trying to help with phonics the worst.

DS, then aged 5, came home from reception to tell me his teacher says I'm saying the R sound wrong and "it's not Orr Mummy it's Ahhh"!

He couldn't even say R at the time and it came out as a W until he was nearly 7!

Now he regularly over-pronounces that sound. So he asks for Wat-errr instead of Wat-ah.

(Some of the poems in kids books still do annoy me as they don't scan for me. I can't rhyme "draw" and "roar"!)

Children's accents change very quickly at this age. So I think DC sounded more like us as toddlers but as they've gone to school, watched more tv etc it's shifted. A good friend took her DC back to her home country and within less than 6 months both children were 100% sounding like their new peers.

I'm NE, geordie in fact, and my dh is from the midlands and we live in Teesside. My DD5s accent is interesting at times!

She's fairly well spoken in general but swings between the local accent, mine and DHs, occasionally a bit of cockney pops out. She's just started noticing it and will often question why I say things 'wrong'

Bowl, ball and bow are a huge source of hilarity in our house. All sound the same in geordie.
Phonics is a living nightmare.

Thanks @GiantKitten that's super useful.
I still don't think Londoners/southerners pronounce book as buck though, do they? Yes to 'buk'!

I would pronounce buck and buk the exact same... I don't understand how they would sound different?

@CountFosco I think I know the accent you’re describing in your kids. I’m not sure it is quite the local middle class accent though. If it’s what I’m thinking of, then there’s a noticeable difference between the accents of middle class kids with parents from the area and the even more generic sounding one that loads of the kids whose parents are from other places seem to have. The latter definitely avoids the pronouncing all the vowels in the word as spelled, plus adding some extra ones for a laugh, thing that seems to be a thing in any variant of the Geordie accent.

I grew up in Scotland but have lived in various parts of England for about 17 years now. Some people can still tell I'm Scottish but others mistake me for Irish or American (I really don't know why). DH is from London and has quite a cockney twang to his accent still. We've lived in Devon for 12 years now and out of 3 dc (who have never lived anywhere but Devon), 2 sound just quite English - no particular accent but sound well spoken. And 1 DC sounds very Devonshire. I love that we all have different accents.

Having a bit of my Scottish accent did make phonics difficult when DC were little though. I say or as o r whereas they were being taught it with an an English accent which I think sounds more like oar without the pronunciation of the r

@GiantKitten so like loom?

@Reginabambina Yes!

@doadeer it's so hard to describe. The only thing to do is google book and buck pronunciations and listen.

If i say 'up' it's the same sound as 'buck'. But not 'book'!

My previous post doesn't make sense. Neither DH nor I are from South Yorkshire, so DD doesn't speak in broad local dialect, and was told that she had a posh accent when she went to secondary school.

@doadeer “buk” is just an attempt to represent in writing the short OO sound in eg London book vs the long one in eg Stoke book

Buk is meant to be the same sound as in bull.

(It’s really hard to represent actual speech in writing!)

If I Google Book Pronunciation and I had to spell that I would write buck

If I Google BUCK pronunciation and I had to spell it I would write Bach

Based on how it sounds to me.

There are hundreds of words DH says differently to me, he can't mimac my accent at all. Ive lived in London 12 years so I find it easier to do his accent. And to me it sounds like he says buck 🤣

I'm Home Counties neutral nowadays but originally Essex. DD is going towards very posh with an American twang.