To want my children to speak beautifully

[MiniMonty]

I'm a Londoner, we use "nice round vowels" so bath is "baarth" and grass is "graars" but I live in Birmingham with a partner from Sheffield and my kids use flat vowels which, I confess, are simply ugly on my ears.
Am I being unreasonable to want (and to encourage) my kids to use "round vowels" and to have a Southern (BBC or RP) accent ?

YANBU - we live in Glasgow and I Getty itchy teeth hearing how some kids speak;
No - Naw
House - Hoose
Yes -Aye
Cannot -Canny
Will not -Will'nae

It's awful and I would never let my DD speak like that (in front of me - I have no doubt that she will when she is older in front of her friends) but I want her to be able to speak properly.
I work for a large organisation in a client facing role and know for a fact that anyone who spoke like mentioned above would struggle to get a job in the company I work for. It just also sounds awful IMO.

Getty? get obviously

I haven't read all the replies on this thread so sorry if it's gone off on a tangent but I really really need to say to the OP - I moved to the black country from the South when I was 7, I had a quite posh BBC sort of accent and was picked on horribly for it. Not only in a taking the mick out of my accent sort of way either - people also made assumptions about me based on the way I spoke and I was considered 'posh', 'snobby' and just generally an outsider. I have married a brummie and have a twang these days - we are using the Southern pronunciations with our children BUT we socialise in circles where others speak like this, so it is the 'norm' in our gang. If they were going to be surrounded by people who would make assumptions about them as I endured as a child there is no way I would encourage them to be different from their peers.

whereis your post surprises me a bit.:)

Surely there wouldn't be a problem (with the accent you mention) in a public position?

Its a genuine, unaffected way of speaking/accent ...I think its a shame it wouldn't go down well IMO.

Maybe it's wrong feminine but it's true - there are some dialects in Glasgow that would be a real barrier to getting a decent job, I'm not talking about the lovely soft Glasgow accent you hear sometimes in films/tv programmed but the harsh, hard sounding (Rab C Nesbitt stereotype) accent.
It just seems lazy to me to not teach kids the correct pronunciation of words jmo.

I see what you are saying.

I love all accents , but maybe the real world is a little harsh ...and you have to do as you see fit. :)

Just wondering...is it difficult to change such a strong accent do you think?

I love the brummie accent but people assume you are thick if you have one (disclaimer - I come from the Midlands). However if you use RP people assume you are stuck up. So I'm guessing one is buggered either way!

I think you can change an accent or the way you speak not that i speak the queens english or anything but being scottish we dont have our own dialect while some of it is great some if it well its sounds guffy and if you have a strong accent it sounds worse, i have a central scottish accent so its quite mild but some areas like glasgow it can sound awful , that makes me sound really snobby im not really ,

YABU: if you want your children to have "beautiful" BBC accents then move close to London and send them to a public school. They are not purely a product of you, but of society around them as well, so they will learn to speak with a local accent.

YABU. It is only a matter of opinion that your way of speaking involves "nice" round vowels.

I am a northerner living in the south and I still find the whole barth/grarss thing a bit weird-sounding. I say bath/grass and no-one bats an eyelid, even when I am working in the crown court where pretty much everyone talks like BBC newsreaders. I don't think not using "nice round vowels" has ever been an issue - it just marks me as a northerner to anyone who even notices it.

And what on earth is with the saw/door not rhyming argument? How on earth could they NOT rhyme? Two linguistics degrees here and not seeing it!

I am from South Manchester/ via Cheshire/ forays into Wales- and I try very hard to distance myself from the 'Shameless' local accent. I know this makes me a snob. But really, wanting to sound like Frank Gallagher isn't a good thing, is it?

However, I think the best comment on this thread is this-

'I will never ever tell them that how they sound is more important than what they say.' by SilentBoob (sometime Sunday).

I don't get that door/saw thing either.

Its the same in an American accent too

i suppose it depends if you sound the 'r' in door or not...

I say door, and can hear the 'r'

but there is no 'r' in saw...it ends in a w. Sore, on the other hand....

if that makes any sense at all!

What accent do you have Raahh :)

Yes, door has an 'r' at the end. And has an 'oh' sound in the middle, while saw has a...well, an 'aw' sound

I can't get them not to rhyme

I speak with an accent that is not easily placed...even though it is totally unoriginal!

This is a very important distinction: According to my Granny tissue is the one word used to distinguish a commoner (tish -oo) from a wanna-be-snob (tiss-you), because, of course, real upper-class important people say handkerchief

You forgot snot-rag

Feminine- i really don't know- it is Northern, i suppose- but i lapse into a very welsh thing every so often (Dh thinks this is funny). I know i don't sound 'local', but i am definitely Northern- is there such a thing as slightly Cheshire mancunian?

I love accents. i have alovely friend from Bristol who still phsl every time i say 'up' and 'rollo'.

I cannot understand how your own childs voice can make you feel like that. There is nothing wrong with being proud of where you are from but there is something wrong with being a snob. You would do better to encourage your childen to be confident and happy with who they are rather than making them feel ashamed of there own voice. This is a slippery slope

Look - I've spent years cultivating pure Sarf Landan/Norf Kent and I do not say

Barth and grars are not RP for all of the UK, just for the south east!

Its baah (soft ahh) with a proper "th" at the end.

baah-th (not barff as my eastend counterparts might say)

Graah-s (soft vowels again and a soft short s, the gr is the hard bit) ..... tho' one might offer lawn as alternative

You're being a bit snobby OP. It's perfectly possible to speak politely with a regional accent. My children have a Scwelsh accent (Scottish parents, living in Wales). It's charming.

And as a Scot I say saw as in awe, and door has two syllables (!)- dough-er .

YANBcompletelyU - my kids sound very American because they have been here almost 6 years now... my oldest was 2 when we arrived. At first I was resistant to it, thinking it was a real shame as everyone here loves DH and my accent (fairly BBC), and I worried that kids would get teased if we move back to UK. Now though, I am used to it. Only when they say certain trigger words that I hate ('rowt' instead of 'route', 'urbs' instead of 'herbs') do I correct them. I do tend to snigger when they talk about 'Saaainta' in a deep Southern accent they presumably got from their teacher, who looks and sounds like a character from Gone With The Wind. It's who they are though.

Trois my Canadian relatives complain that we don't pronounce 'r' where it should be, then throw a few in where they don't exist, which is true really. So for a speaker of standard, non-regional English Baah-th and Bar-th are the same thing and just different ways of transcribing this sound.

As a speaker of standard northern English I am more than happy with bath and grass - to rhyme with ass not arse.

Don't most people in the SE in fact say barff? (Friends from Berkshire certainly do).

I would prefer my children had a clear local accent, or, even better, able to change accents as needed without sounding like a plonker, than stand out like a sore thumb as I do. Having not lost my Midwest American twang, I often undergo the 'background check' conversation with almost anyone new to the point of annoyance (the ones who felt the need to do it during the late stages of a difficult labour were particularly close to being throttled - bad timing and asked every question on the 'you're different' bingo card...).