To fight DD's English accent.

[NicknameTaken]

I'm Irish, DD (2.10) is growing up in England. She won't sound like me, I accept that. But ho' wa'uh for "hot water"? I'm going to have to start beating her till she says it properly, it's clearly the only possible response.

Riven - your dd could join ds2 in his 'band' and sing the effing 'I love you' barney song together, forever and ever. for full effect

it goes round and round in my poor head (and out of his mouth) all day.

I hear you, OP. Scottish, married to a posh Englishman, living in England. I have two little posh boys, although I did squeal with happiness when DS2 (aged 2) offered me a "wee cup of tea" the other day.

YY to the dropped "t"s though.

I feel your pain, DH has won the battle between whether we live in Scotland or England. DS has a lovely English accent at the moment. I give it until Christmas, he'll be Scottish. I it will be weird for him not to sound like me.

Nickname, I feel your pain. My children are growing up with a Meath accent.

I'm English, and my children are Scottish - it is weird, but lovely to hear dd's accent and dialect developing. "he wants IN, mummy!"

FluffyDonkey (a few pages back) I'd have thought you were me except my mother isn't from the south. In fact my mother still tries to "correct" my accent. Doesn't need correcting it's a Brummie accent, which is where I am from.

I've the opposite problem to you NicknameTaken i'm English living in Ireland -girls = gorls and burger = boorger (hmmm can't get those down phonetically - think N dub accent)

Does give me a giggle though when he says "Mammy and I have a glass of war-ter, tanks"

His accent is so screwed up

Dd's accent is completely different to mine. I have a RP/slightly home counties voice, she has an (at the moment) incredibly broad West Midlands accent. I hate it.

sketti?
beeth?

shudders

You need to do what I do. When ds doesn't speak English correctly I pretend I can't hear him. It drives him nuts but does correct his English from things like 'nuffink' to 'nothing'.

I am Scottish, DH German, we live in French speaking Switzerland, our friends are English, Scottish, American and Australian. You can imagine what our dc sound like.

My cousin said that they have the "elite international Expat accent" - a comment that pleased my mother no end.

YANBU my DH is an Aussie and as a result my kids call the rubbish bin the "trash can" and the slide is the bloody "slippery dip"!! WTF!

I could go on....

I'm originally from Yorkshire. We have lived in Birmingham for a decade, and now back in Yorkshire. DS, 3.5, had a very definite Brummie accent - but within a few weeks of moving had adopted a Yorkshire one. Now he's started nursery he often veers between his 'old' accent and a perfect Yorkshire one! And he drops his 't's. The problem is my accent's coming back too and along with that an occasional dropped 't', which means I am correcting him and then sometimes doing it myself unintentionally .

No YANBU,but be warned teen speak is even worse...

LOL at Anemone and the "slippery dip"!

DH & I are both English (as is DD1), but we moved to Australia when DD1 was about 2.5yrs old (4.5yrs ago). I know all 3 of us have got an Aussie twang now... and yes, we use the Aussie words too - so pants instead of trousers, capsicum instead of pepper (the vegetable that is), trash for rubbish, slippery dip, etc etc.

And of course the lovely "hi, how are you?" "good thanks" chatter at the shopping checkout LOL. And the ever so delightful intonation that makes every sentence sound like a question LOL.

DD1 still speaks "properly" though - I pull her up on dropped t's and h's - although she does occasionally launch into a godawful hannah-montana-esque accent (shudder)

Tigurr

Oh yes! Capsicum! And "Lollies" when they mean sweets in general! And BON-BON'S for Christmas crackers!

My DH always used to get it wrong when I wanted some chips..and bring me crisps instead! I was pregnant and wanted a bag of chips...he went out and got me a bloody packet of walkers!Seems I hsould have specified that I wanted "Hot Chips"

Ok. I may be being dense and uneducated - but I'm a Northerner and don't understand why 'barth' for bath etc is seen as correct. There's no 'r' in bath! Annoyingly for me the DCs have picked up DHs southern accent instead of mine - despite living in the north and I automatically correct 'barth' etc when they say it as it drives me mad! But then I feel guilty because I know their way is seen as correct by society - it just irritates me!

At least I am not alone in my suffering.

Tigerr and Anenome - DId you/they live in Sydney or Melbourne? I am Australian I have never called then bon bons instead of crackers. And its a rubbish bin not a trash can. Ahh I miss doonas, pants, lollies, snow peas and chatting at the check out.

Depends on what part of Ireland you're from OP.

If you're from Dublin, like me, then I think an English accent's definitely preferable to either a 'Skanger' accent("Starry, buuuuuuud?"), or the good 'ol Ross O'Carroll Kelly one, where every second word is 'loike' and they take the 'Doirt' into town.

Disclaimer: I love my home town, and its accents. But I reserve the right to take the piss out of them unendingly. :)

I don't think it's so much the accent - it's the lack of announciation you dislike.

My mum spent years correcting us on "how to say things" but she really meant "how not to sound like a chav". I got mercilessly teased at school because of my accent. My cousins, whose mum never bothered to correct their accents but insisted on proper annouciation never had a problem. I'd go down that route if I were you.

Some people pick accents up really easily - I do, having lived in the north-east most of my life (Sunderland... do not ever ever ever commit the mortal sin of calling me a Geordie) and then ending up in a posh uni town where people couldn't understand a word I said, then going to Somerset and picking up a really really strong Bristolian aspect to it before ending up in Nottingham - mine's a bit of a mess! My husband though, despite living down here with me, has still completely got his Geordie accent and half of the guys he works with can't understand him on the phone!

I'm sorry, proud as I am of my home town - I think that a strong Wearside accent is ugly as sin, my brother still has a really thick one and it makes me cringe - my mother has quite a posh variant of it which doesn't sound as bad, and I had to make the concious effort to tone mine down when I went to uni. I still think you can tell where I was from originally by it - and I was shocked recently when someone said I sounded like I just had a Nottingham accent - although mine's now very mild, I still thought I had one.

I guess the rambling point I'm getting at is that I had a hideously bad version of the local accent as a kid, and it wasn't until I made the decision to actually speak properly (out of necessity because rich southern toffs weren't going to bother to understand a northerner) that it toned itself down. I guess at least Nottingham/Derby where I seem to have settled doesn't really have a massively pronounced accent or I'd have picked that up - and I'm nowhere near the level of greeting people with "aye up me duck" yet.

(It's still a total pain in the rear when working sometimes when I have to teach certain phonemes - oo is a particular problem for me because Mackems say that in such a distinctive way compared to the kids round here, and even the black and white stripey unfortunates 10 miles down the road)

My DD gets a lot of stick because she's seen to be 'posh'. For 'posh', read 'well spoken'. It used to upset her, but now when someone calls her posh, she just smiles and replies; "Thank you for noticing.". I always tell my kids that just because they live in what's considered a chavvy area doesn't mean they have to speak that way. :)

Hell, I have a strong Saff lunden accent and I'm slowly beating it out of myself.
Thankfully I've mostly succeeded. Unless I'm talking to my family.

Yeah - my accent will come back with a vengeance if I go home to the family for a day or so. I just pick them up really quickly!

I do have hours of amusement with junior school kids when they try to guess where my accent's from though - we go through the inevitable Scotland, before they decide I sound Irish!

i'm scottish and dh german but after living in the NW of England for the first 7 years of dd's life i'm glad now that since we moved to germany most of the english she (and the other 2 dc) hear is from me!! i'm realy working on them having a scottish accent!

they regularly use the word "wee" and i'm determined they will say "peely wally" in the end!