Accent acquisition in young children

[argyllherewecome]

I'm a teacher but have been off work sick so I've had loads of time to think (for a change!). Anyway, this is something that has fascinated me for ages and I'm sure there are posters here who know about this.
My school is fairly diverse. Most children with ESL parents come into school either with no English or basic words that have a distinct mother tongue accent. They lose this within several years usually, and by then they have a local accent.

I've noticed though some children do not adopt a local accent.
Irish Travellers: despite being born and raised here they nearly exclusively all have a very thick Irish accent, and this doesn't change over time. There are a few other children that have parents or a mother at least from different parts of the country, and they keep a very strong regional accent from them, which doesn't change much over time. This is an exception rather than a rule though.

Any language experts that can explain how this happens? I'm the embarrassing sort of person that goes somewhere for a few days and I pick up accents!

It could be external social circles. The travelling community tend to socialise within their own community, and all there will have the same accent. Other communities or cultural backgrounds may be less immersed in their first language outside their immediate family unit.

‘Thick’ is an incredibly judgemental term. Perhaps your local accent sounds just as ‘thick’ to the Travellers? And, as a widely stigmatised ethnic group, I can’t imagine the children are mingling all that much with settled people out of school hours, so they’re less likely to be peer-influenced in terms of speech.

Not a language expert... but I think it's related to their out-of-school lives.

I used to work in a school and we'd get a Polish DC start with a dozen words of English and within two years they'd be chatting away as if they were local-born, because out of school, as well as speaking Polish at home, they watched English TV, and played and attended clubs with local DC. Much the same happened to me: I went to a school when we lived abroad where RP was standard, as it was at home. Came here, went to school, played out with children with solid rural East Anglian accents and one day heard myself hollering down the hill, 'Yew a-comin', theyen?' Stuck to RP at home though... DM insisted.

Conversely, I once worked for an ultra-orthodox Jewish family. They and their neighbours all spoke very fluent English as well as Yiddish, but mixed almost exclusively within their own circles, and their English, though very clear and well-enunciated, had a very distinctive accent, from the elderly down to the children. I've occasionally heard it since, and the speaker is always clearly from that community.

I once knew two sisters - one went to private school and one went to state school, they both have different accents with the state educated daughter having more of a local accent. Both parents Scottish and neither sibling had any hint of a Scottish accent. Always fascinated me that they all sounded so different to each other.

As DH is Army, by children moved a lot in their younger lives, over several countries and regions. We settled when they 7 and nearly 9.
Now 12 and 13.

The 12yo now has a milder, but definite local Yorkshire accent.
13yo still has the "Army" accent (its basically a mild mish mash accent).

Oddly, it was only when DD2 picked up the locL accent, she realised mine was different... mine is a South East accent with apparently "extra letters in words".

Saying someone has a thick accent isn't judgemental? It's descriptive!

My kids are a weird one - and make me think there might be some key times for developing accents, as my eldest has a very RP accent generally, with some international touches, whereas my youngest has my accent - south-east, not posh, and has resisted most accent internationalisation.

The differences were that we lived with my posh MIL when eldest was young, and then he went to international schools until he was 10, whereas my youngest was entirely with me, as we started travelling not long after he was born, and he only settled in one school when he was 7.

So what are you supposed to say? Strong? Broad? Distinctive? Solid? Aren't those also value judgements?

I had a brief chat with someone yesterday who had a thick Suffolk accent. To me, saying that is not a value judgement, it's just a description. It happens to be an accent I love to hear, and which I sometimes fall into myself.

My husband has lived in Ireland, Wales and London but never around Somerset. His accent however got stranded somewhere in the West Country. I'm from South London, and that's where we and our kids live now.

Our son sounds like he's from Bristol, our daughter from South London.

Accents are weird.

Thick, as in very heavy and distinct. I have a thick local accent. There's nothing judgemental about it, it applies to any accent, it's nothing to do with Irish accents or the Travellers.

I get the children who live in insular communities will not acquire local accents as easily due to lack of exposure, eg ultra orthodox as they really only deal with each other in school and at home. But the Travellers are exposed to our local accent for a sizable portion of the day and watch a lot of mainstream TV. I also taught a girl whose father was from Birmingham, mother was Pakistani and only spoke Punjabi at home. The children had a very thick Brummie accent, right up until I last knew them in their teens. They only visited Birmingham for 2 weeks in the summer.

No, it’s highly subjective. Someone else’s accent is ‘thick’ to you. Your accent is equally ‘thick’ to other people. The late queen’s RP in her 21st birthday broadcast is more likely to be described as ‘cut glass’, but in fact is a ‘thick’ accent (all that yod -dropping, and non-rhotic pronunciation meaning ‘father’ and ‘farther’, ‘formerly’ and ‘formally’ are homonyms etc etc ), just a privileged one.

DS and all his first cousins all have one Bristolian parent and one Glaswegian parent. All speak with the accent local to where they currently live (family is across the UK) but swap accents depending on where we are at the time , and it's not "put on" for effect.

I'm irish , dh is English, living in Ireland and our ds has the weirdest mix of both our accents. I know Eastern European children who have 2 accents and they switch between them depending on which language they are speaking. There's also a lot of polish people in my area who have developed a irish / polish accent mix .
There also people in new foundland in Canada who sound irish because of immigration. Same with people in Lebanon who learned English from working with irish peace keeping troupes.

I'm from Liverpool but moved south when I was 15. I then married and lived in Greece for 10 years and had my first 2dc there. All 4dc have hardly ever visited Liverpool yet they all pronounce lots of words eg grass and bus as they do in Liverpool. My youngest 2 were born when I was in my late 30s, early 40s and sound very posh most of the time until they throw in the odd scouse word. I don't have a strong accent. I'm waiting for gd to start talking with northern vibes (lives in the south).

you are really stretching to find offence there…. It may be subjective (my accent is not considered thick in Yorkshire but probably would be elsewhere) but it is not judgemental to describe it thus. Now, if they said thick but meant stupid, I would not be happy!! But in this case they just mean strong x

Right, and?

Sure, I have a thick southern accent (especially if I'm speaking to someone who I think is judging me for it).

Still descriptive, not judgemental. Thick, strong, pronounced - I suppose thick has some connotations of being hard to understand, but then that can also be true - I've heard thick posh accents, thick Irish or foreign accents - still not a value judgement on the accent itself, just its intelligibility to others (who don't have that accent)

Sigh. ‘Strong’ is subjective. And yes, I think ‘thick’ implies a kind of othering. No one describes the old-fashioned kind of RP as ‘thick’, despite it being a very strong accent indeed, because it was considered prestigious.

I don't think the OP means "thick" as in "stupid", but rather a really strong accent that differs from the local one. Canadians use it all the time to refer to anyone who speaks with a different accent from their local one. In my experience some Canadians make minimal effort to understand "thick" accents.

My accent is exceptionally hard to place. I've had guesses of London, Essex, Somerset, Bristol...the general consensus though being that it's RP. EDIT: perhaps not RP, it's come back to me that I was described as 'BBC English sounding' (I assume like a newsreader?!)

That being said, I spent the first 24 years of my life in Wales, with Welsh parents (one side of the family being fluent first language Welsh and often speaking it around me).

It wasn't commented on whilst I lived in Wales that I don't sound Welsh, however whilst living in Glasgow for 8 years it was often mentioned, and now living in Cumbria I still sometimes get the 'oh, you don't sound Welsh' remarks.

My brother does not have the same accent as me. Arguably he doesn't have the same accent as our parents either, but does sound a bit more like our dad.

My only explanation for it is that in both primary and secondary school, my circle of friends were nearly all from English families that had moved to the area - Reading, Buckingham, London, generally the South East - but all very strong RP accents that I assume I absorbed.

My eldest daughter is 3, and has lived in Cumbria for the past 2 years. She has SUCH a strong accent, like my partner, and sounds nothing like me. I suspect my youngest will follow 😂

This is weird - of course accents can be strong or thick, and it's not offensive or othering - it's just telling the truth.

If accents couldn't be strong or thick, then why would people learning a new language spend any time trying to be intelligible in it? Why do they strive to get rid of their original instincts for pronunciation? Because speaking English with a thick French accent can be hard to understand (and obviously the same the other way around)

I live in Ireland. I tone down my accent, and I've switched the way I say things like my phone number or spelling my name, because it made it easier for people to understand. On occasion, I've had to ask someone here to repeat something because their accent was to strong for me to understand the first time. This isn't insulting, it's just language.

Sigh. Actually agreed it was subjective but not judgemental.
Just to be clear though, I am judging you. A lot.

I know exactly what the OP means. And yes, absolutely, there’s a correlation between people who describe other accents as ‘thick’ and their own lack of effort in understanding them. I speak good French, unsurprisingly with the Parisian accent I learned when I lived and worked there. When I encounter people with strong French regional accents, I don’t think of them as ‘thick’, I work on listening so we can communicate, and I neutralise my accent, which doesn’t necessarily have positive associations.

The travellers will possibly retain their accent as they would be expected to within their families and it would be frowned upon to lose it. The 'Irish' travellers do not really sound like any typical Irish accent, thick or otherwise, they are easily identified as travellers due to the difference. I live within a few km of the village they visit for weddings etc and the families who travel from the UK sound distinctly different from the travellers who remain in Ireland, the UK travellers have a mix of traveller/British accents I guess comes from their family and mixing in schools etc.

You must be an absolute DELIGHT at a dinner party

Wait - you 'neutralise' your accent.. is that because your Parisian might be a bit thick for the other party?