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.

Michael McIntyre
"After attending the "unbelievably upper class" Arnold House prep school in St John's Wood, young Michael was sent to Merchant Taylors' public school in Middlesex, but was obliged to finish his schooling at a state sixth-form college"
www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/comedy/features/will-the-real-michael-mcintyre-please-stand-up-1823680.html

Annick!!!
Have been told that this is where posh Geordies live

Loads of people in public life have more neutral versions of whatever accent they might have had growing up. It’s not a ‘neutral accent’ but a more neutral accent (or manifestation of one).

The thing is that it’s got to be a spectrum. Some people will have more or less neutral versions of accents, and will deploy them in different circumstances.

And different people will have different ideas about what ‘neutral’ is. Look at all the threads about paint on MN. You’ll find a variation between people whose idea of neutral is nothing but magnolia (still a colour, though) and people who think dark battleship grey falls into the neutral category. And lots of people who are discussion a range of more neutral shades (where neutral is defined as paler).

So some of those claiming a ‘neutral RP’ accent may, in fact, have what the rest of us consider to be bloody strong accents.

Mine is a generally fairly neutral version of a west central Scottish accent (especially at work) in the sense that it’s much harder to place geographically than it used to. It’s still very obviously an accent. And a Scottish one at that. Just a bit more geographically vague (and probably quite a lot less interesting than it was).

My DF is from Cumbria and has a strong Westmerian accent, DM speaks RP (army brat so moved around a lot and not pinned to one region. My DB and I grew up in the Home Counties. He sounds cockney and mine is just a well spoken admittedly, southern accent.

DM used to force us to try and speak a certain way, my DB rebelled and dropped his H's, T's etc

Well the ‘posh geordie’ in question grew up in meadow well. But now he lives in ponteland and sends his kids to private school. 😆

But his obviously Geordie accent is not the sort of accent the person he was speaking to considered ‘posh’.

I'm grew up in East London and now live in the NW.
DP has a strong NW accent, I have a strong EL accent, DD(4) is very confused and says some things like me and some things like DP.

Since being at nursery the NW accent has come out in full, so I'm resigned to being the odd one out.

Grass & grarse and bath & barthe cause constant arguments in this house - with DP and I telling each other to 'SAY IT PROPERLY!!!!'

My family moved to the UK from South Africa (DC were 4 & 6YO) we all sounded the same on arrival in the UK.

As soon as the DC started school and made friends they started to talk like the locals

They now (18 & 16YO) have different accents to us completely. I always found that fascinating, it literally took a few months for them to lose their South African accents completely (I guess it's because they were so young and still learning new words and to read etc.)

@ActuallyItsEugene same as my husband and I.
I'm from east London, he's from Liverpool, we live in Liverpool. Ds is 4 and a half, he doesn't have an accent as such yet but some words you can hear he's starting to pick up the local accent. Will be interesting to see how he sounds as he gets older. I sometimes say things with a slight accent as well without even realising I'm doing it.
Our bigger problems are different terms or names for things (eg my husband says breakfast dinner and tea, I say breakfast lunch and dinner. To me tea is a hot drink). Will be interesting to see how that works as he gets older as well.

My parents are from scotland and have notably scottish accents, I grew up in the thames valley and have a horrible mix of I have horrible mix of pony club, London and West Country. My children are growing up back in Edinburgh, and have far nicer local accents.

Broad Lancashire here - we live abroad - kids sound Russian (we don't live in Russia)

I grew up in a America so have a very different accent. I noticed when small and watching a lot of US based childrens TV my daughter would say the odd word or phrase with an American accent, but now they speak like their peers, not like me.

Typically accents follow friends and surroundings at a young age. So my parents have English accents moved after I was born here, I have (softened) Aus due to over twenty years here and dc have English.

Well, inspired by this thread I (originally Northern parents, born and raised in the SE and educated at a school which placed a good deal of attention on "proper" English) have taken the accent quiz.

Turns out, I'm pretty decisively from the South East with hot areas in both London and Oxford. Which is hardly news to me, seeing as I'm not brain damaged enough not to remember where I've been all my life even after two months of utter isolation.

Fascinating, though, how accurate this is!

Also, where on earth DO people say "but" and "put" in such a way that it rhymes? I don't think I've ever heard this!

It's definitely school. Mother is European and Father Scottish, we live in the Home Counties and all 3 of us have Surrey accents but I did have a Scottish accent until I went to school apparently!

@happymummy12345 That's freaked me out a bit! The same situation!
DD is 4 and a half too!

I've been here for so long now that sometimes the accent slips out... and DP says I do a 'boss' impression. Highest compliment from him because he rips me to death the rest of the time!

Will be very interesting to see what happens when they get to school. At the nursery Christmas show DD sounded so northern in her singing.. was very funny (and actually quite sweet..)

I'm interested to see if my youngest accent will change at all during lockdown.

My eldest just has an English accent. I don't know if you can really tell the region. Well I can't but possibly others could.

Youngest is a bit broader. Not a real strong accent but definitely stronger than his accent.

We don't actually live in an area known for strong accents.

DH are both from a different part of the Uk known for a strong accent.

Dh born and brought up in south of England same as me but his parents were from the north of England so he drops his r's, well the imaginary one in bath and similar with grass, graph, path etc but has a plain neutral accent. Just the pronunciation of words are slightly different and he can slip in to his dads Yorkshire accent in a millisecond!

I'm not great at hearing accents, I am genuinely tone deaf but I have a generally perceived as posh accent and DH a pretty general middle to top half of England but you'd never guess where he was from. DC1 is pretty plummy/ less regional compared to the others (have noticed this in other families raising children in a new area a lot) but still basically Northern. I remember showing her how to feel your heartbeat in your wrist and telling her what it was and her repeating back the word 'palse' rather than 'pulse' so I suppose that it what I sound like to her!

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 had a boyfriend from the Midlands, he and his friends thought it was hilarious how I said 'Birmingham'. They would miss out all the letters and would say 'BEU-min-am' whereas I'd say 'Burr-MING-ham'.

Know what you mean about the different NE accents depending on the parentage, the DC are definitely 'northern' but DD1 definitely has less of the local accent than DD2. Not Geordie though! And my Scottish family think they sound 'posh' because all English accents except the very strong urban accents are considered 'posh'.

Yes to phonics! So tricky. We had a baby book of rhymes and one was "sheep goes skipping near and far. WhT does sheep say? Baa baa baa. Dog is cute with short brown fluff. What does dog say? Woof woof woof." Reading it in my SE accent, it really perplexed me (the woof is supposed to rhyme with fluff) until I heard my niece from Yorkshire read it: "short brown floof...woof woof woof !"

I'm interested to see if my youngest accent will change at all during lockdown.

After reading rhis thread and being utterly fascinated by it:

I'm wondering what DD sounds like now. I'm meant to know (last spoke to her today, never paid attention to her accent, though, apart from realising she sounded like me):

She normally lives with me (see previous posts, pretty RP-ish on the whole). But her father is Irish and, due to a combination of hopefully sound parental decision making in the face of a crisis and utterly unfortunate timing, is riding out the current situation at her dad's, along with his new wife, her son from a previous relationship and their baby (all Irish, baby not old enough to be properly intelligible, never mind an actual accent).

It's been weeks. I haven't been paying attention - just glad to speak to her every day.

But I'm going to have to check if she's sounding more Irish at all now. Also, when she comes back: if and how fast she returns to sounding a lot like myself.

She's only 4, so she's at an incredibly impressionable age for picking up that sort of thing.

And my Scottish family think they sound 'posh' because all English accents except the very strong urban accents are considered 'posh'.

So true

Mines northern, dd (born in London) is neutral, ds (born near Liverpool) has London twangs and DH is Canadian.

DD1 was a member of a good kids choir and I think they made them use RP pronounciation for every song which I always thought was a pity. You had to travel to it after school in a large Northern city centre so vast majority would have had a strongish regional accent.

I'm from the South East, DH is from northumberland with a very very strong accent. When he speaks to friends, I struggle to understand him!Both dc spoke like me (graRss/baRth ect) until they started school as I was a sahn. Now they say grass/bath. Weirdly dds accent is very neutral but a slight northen twang. Everyone comments on how posh she sounds. It's weird listening to her talk to her classmates as they speak so differently. Ds is much more northen though! Weird how they've both lived here their whole lives but have different accents.

I used to know twins who were born in Ireland but moved to England as children. They've always lived together but One has an English accent and one has an irish accent.