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 ?

Boohoo, wouldn't your daughter have said "Oh, deah, it is raining, please put up your hood".

See what I don't get is the juxtaposition swapping over of sounds. It seems to me that many people who chuck an "r" in grass and then drop that r from, for example, hear.

Maybe everyone only has a certain number of "r"s and if they use an extra one and say graarss and baarth, then they have to say "Come heah, deah".

My Mum is a northerner living in the south, my Dad was from India and spoke beautiful English. I speak well, pronouncing my t's and I think, I don't fink. I was bullied at school as was my brother; I was 'a snob' apparently and at the time, I didn't even notice that I spoke any differently to my peers...I chose to ignore it and speak the way I did/do and my brother didn't...yeah, 'e's a right geezer is me bruv! I hate it and I also dislike the idea of my Dc's speaking with an accent that isn't like my own. This has stopped me from moving to another county over the last few years .

My cousin moved his family to Yorkshire and his Dc's suddenly became right little Yorkies!! but they quickly changed back on return to the south.

I also don't think it's so much 'barth' as it is 'baath.' Anyway, it makes perfect sense to me

I love some accents on other people. Scots and Geordie make me weak at the knees for instance, but I still don't want my family speaking that way.

I'm from the NE of England, OH from the NW. Our children were born in Cumbria, but have lived in Scotland for the past eleven years (eldest being nine when we moved, the youngest three). They make fun of me saying things like 'plaster' and 'cook' and of OH saying 'hair'.

The eldest two have no accent at all, just English. The younger two have very faint Scottish twangs on occasion, though to their friends they sound English.

They can however, all do a very mean Glaswegian accent.

YABU.

My DSS was horribly bullied for having the 'wrong' accent.

yes MaryZed she would. I had a terrible time teaching her to read! I went to her school and asked them for advice. they said 'there is no r in bath' so there never was in our house.

I say 'come hee-ah' (two sylables)
she says ' come heer' (one sylable)

but she says duck like i do (with a flat uck)

This is all so complicated.

I am going to take a list into work tomorrow and make them all have a go - I shall report back!

Come heah, deah - to me sounds Rhodesian ..... because I pull vowels like that. Im not Rhodesian BTW but I get mistaken occassionally.

kids at my DD school laugh at me, for my accent, but i have taught DD to be tolerant. she used to try and correct me, but i used to say, i say bath and you say barth, thats okay because we both come from different places, but you do know what i mean so lets go....its bathtime!

KK

poor
pour
paw

DH apparently (pour) - poo-ers
then he (paw) - poo-rrrs
but (poor) he poh-rahs

mean while, back in sanity me and DS just poo-r

YANBU

I'm pained to hear the accents of my colleagues who come from: Newcastle, Coventry, Bristol, (the wrong parts of) Kent etc.

If I were you I would take pains to teach my children the RP. Why is everyone so fixated on whether they will feel different at school - what about when they leave school? A nice way of speaking will set them apart when they are grown up.

I recently visited some friends who had to relocate to Newcastle from London for work. They live in a very nice part of Newcastle and in their parish everyone has the SP.

RP even.

Some of us just live on the wrong side of the tracks

MaryZed If my dog steps on a thorn he has a poor poor. Or even a paw paw.

I cannot hear the difference. I've been 45 years and an English degree (admittedly literature and admittedly I had a lot of fun made of my accent) just assuming the different spelling was a quirk of the English Language.

musicposy thank the lord! you are normal, just like me .... there is no differnce is there?

My mind is boggling at how some of you learned to spell if you pronounce words all the same!

If you enunciate, you will hear the difference between, for example:

poor (r at the end and oo sound in middle)
pour (r at the end and oh sound in middle)
paw (aw sound and no r at end)

Try it and you will have a nice Scottish accent like I do

A reading book was banned from my DCs' primary school because it suggested rhyming saw with door.

What MsBazinga said (but poor is like pour)

No wonder teaching English is so difficult in, erm England. Not to mention Scotland, Wales and NornIron.

It's really multiple accents isn't it . Let's hope they never give in to the regular suggestions of making spelling more phonetic - none of us would have a fecking clue what anyone else was talking about.

I remember our next door neighbours chanting "Come hyah dah" (as in come here, dear) at my Mum when she first came to Ireland with her English public school accent. She sounds normal now .

It does rhyme gulp

MaryZed

No MsBazinga if you enunciate in your accent

Christ the snobbery on this thread is unbe-bloody-lievable

Not read the thread, but my 3 are irn and bread brummies. DH and I are not. They had brummie accents at nursery and early primary as their carers were pretty brummie. Now they are at secondary/ uni and I think you'd have a challenge placing their accents at all. Dd1 thinks she sunds " quite posh" compared to her uni mates- many of whom were privately educated ( ours were/ are at state selective schools).

I think ds probably speaks pure radio 7 as that's all he listens to! ( he refuses to call it r4 extra too lol!)

I'm Scottish (Edinburgh) and I think I speak beautifully albeit a bit "miss jean Brodie"
But I think bath is said bath and not baarth to me baarth is as bad as baff.

Oh and pour does not sound like poor it sounds like pore!

head melt<

poor
paw
poor
and now .... pore ???

sobs and thashes wildly