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 ?

My DP has a West Yorkshire accent - quite soft compared to his brothers who went to school in North Yorkshire, and I have what I thought was a generic, difficult to place accent.

Southern friends think I sound northern and all my northern friends think I'm a "posh softie southerner"

Sometimes people are suprised to know I'm from the midlands because they presume we all speak like Ozzy Osbourne!

I'm looking forward to having kids with Yorkshire accents myself, but I think my parents are going to be a bit thrown by it.

(Also, awe, oar and or sound the same to me too. I can see possible difference for paw, poor and pour though )

I was going to say YABU but as a northerner I'd be gutted if ds went around saying barth for bath and cap instead of cup so I guess I'm just as bad. I think most parents would like their kids to have their accent and identify with their roots, so really YANBU, but YAB unrealistic if they are surrounded by brummies and already have flat vowels. It's crap being the one with the posh accent at school.

'Glasgow accent is hideous - I live in Scotland and find the incessant singsong wailing really grates after a while. its really really annoying to listen to. I like Highland accents and Borders. Central Fife accent and dialect is awful - its where we live and I hate hearing the DCs using it at home but accept they use it at school to survive.'

I was brought up in the south by two northerns who always corrected me if glottal stopped or similar. As a result I have quite a RP accent but with flat vowels. If you maintain the correction it'll have an effect but maybe not the one you anticipate. My whole life people have assumed I'm "posh" which is irritating but liveable with.

Your kids will probably only get picked on if they rise to it or they'll have a home voice and a school voice like my brother.

People do seem to adapt to language according to their genes or something I think. We moved to Aberdeen and I stayed southern posh but my sister went, well weird! Now we live in Wales but my two were taken out of school at 10 and 7 and home educated. Back in high school from 15 and 11 they do speak very posh even to my ears - my daughter especially and she gets teased a bit. M&D are RP I admit but my comprehensive kids talk better than their public school educated cousins (mainly because they rush and overuse silly words like 'cool' and 'yah' which we groan at listening to Siobhan in 2012!)
Those who have accents seem to change them to fit in with their peers it seems to me. It is unfair but the British do seem to make snap assumptions about people on the way they speak.

Intersting question OP, and very interesting answers you got here!
I love all (well most) British accents, but beign a foerigner who lives just outside London, I am hoping DS will end up speaking with the 'BBC' accent.
For now I am a bit worried as we're trying to raise him bilingual and he does sometimes come up with weird combinations... but he's only 3.... hope school will help!

sorry for the typos I do speak and write good English, I promise

Born a Geordie to a Dutch mother and a Dad from Bolton Lancashire. Spent early years growing up in East London (cockney/Essex accent). Joined the pony club in early teens, now Received Pronunciation circa 1960's.
Confused or what ?

My 'd'm was horrified when I spent the morning playing with another little girl in the next road who's mother was from deepest Lancashire and who's father was German. She maintained that she couldn't understand what I was saying (despite being born and growing up in a Lancashire mining/spinning village).

I can remember being asked in the local RAFA where we went to play darts at lunchtime where I was from. I was told as if I sounded as if I were from the south around Oxford. I had to disappoint, was born in Birkenhead, and over the years, could have won money if I'd bet people couldn't guess where I was born.

My uncle hardly ever paid for a drink during the war - he was a first officer in the RAF. He would bet a pint that people couldn't guess where he was born. They would all guess somewhere in Kent. Nope. Warloy-Baillon in the Somme, but his father was from Kent.

It's only when I have a cold that I'm not accused of being English. There is a very strong local accent, with a sort of Spanish twang, and I once found myself saying 'vyAnd' in place of 'viahnde' for 'viande'.

Funny, my aunt had a very soft south shields accent, but my df told me that any time he spoke with a 'local' accent he was given a clip round the ear. Obviously, it was considered important not to have an accent if you hoped to find work on leaving school.

Sorry I really meant 'whose'

I can't wait to hear my DS (5 months old now) learn to speak to see what he comes up with. I'm American, DH is Australian, and we live in Durham with it's mix of locals and posh students from the south.

I'm not concerned by what accent he picks up, but slightly more worried about what words he picks up from us that have entirely different meanings depending on which country you're in. I don't think I'll ever be able to say trousers instead of pants even though I've lived here for years and years!

'Glasgow accent is hideous - I live in Scotland and find the incessant singsong wailing really grates after a while. its really really annoying to listen to. I like Highland accents and Borders. Central Fife accent and dialect is awful - its where we live and I hate hearing the DCs using it at home but accept they use it at school to survive.'

Imagine you made such a post about skin colour. You should be ashamed of yourself.

I have a Glaswegian accent and so do all of my family - pretty strong ones.

I think prejudice and snobbery are hideous too, and you've displayed both in your post.

:(

Surely it's OK to like and dislike accents, isn't it? It's a bit like music, some stuff you'll like and other stuff you won't.

I like Doric but don't like the 50's Cholmondley-Warner accents; I like Essex but don't laik da faux Jamaican London Cockney; etc, etc. I don't consider it anything but taste. Zero to do with ignorance.

What is this reference to a "Glasgow accent"? Not just the one of them surely?

I'm from the North side of Glasgow. I briefly lived in the East End in my twenties, could hardly understand a word from anyone - and was regularly accused of being "posh"

Later, I settled in the West End - and found a completely different accent again, not so much of the "singsong wailing" so affectionately described by another poster.

So, when I hear people talk of a "Glasgow accent", I'm genuinely confused as to which one they mean.

My mother occasionally got very frustrated at being an RP-speaker bringing up two children in Yorkshire. We once had a real stand off when she was cooking something complicated and asked me to pass the batter. Cue puzzlement and me trying to hand her dozens of different things, because I couldn't work out what she wanted, only for Mother to get more and more cross.

Eventually she exploded with irritation and went to the fridge - to fetch the butter, of course... but how were two Yorkshire village children supposed to know 'batter' is 'butter'? We ended up reacting very differently to the Northern with non-Northern parents thing - I'm the parent-pleasing eldest hence speak RP-ish while my little sister is the rebel who speaks Yorkshire.

In the end kids will speak how they want, just teach them not to bother about how they or others speak! I spent a few years living in Cheltenham and then moved to Lancashire and even 10 years on was still getting the mick taken for having a "posh" accent. When I went to university, all the southerners told me I was the most northern thing they had ever heard (most of them had clearly never been north!). Has never really bothered me even when partners at the law firm I work in correct me when I saw glass not glarss!

On the other hand, my little sister grew up with a proper Lancashire accent but within 6 months of being at Bristol university spoke as if she had lived in the South all her life! Some people are happier fitting in!