to stop my children speaking with the local accent?

[workshy]

95% of the time I accept that my dcs speak with the local accent -I'm not a fan but they fit in with their peer group, I chose to live here so it's fine

but when they pronounce their own names differently to me it drives me insane

they both have an 'a' in the middle of thier names which when I was naming them I pronounced with a short 'A', like the name of the letter
locally it's pronounced 'aaaaaaaaaa' -children in their classes are telling them they are saying their names wrong!

AIBU to insist they say their names the way I intended or do I just go with the flow?

It needs to have no Rs (for the West Country RRRRRR), no As for the AAAAAH vs A of North vs South, no Ks for the Liverpool K, no Ts or Ls for the Londoner (Pee-er for Peter and Pow for Paul).

Jim?

DB once worked with a Nic ow(as in snow) la.(Nicola)

"MrsGypsy

Sorry Pendeen - I speak from experience, though...... Personal experience......I didn't know that you didn't put "to" at the end of a question until I had it pointed out to me by a snotty very kind London person, eg. "where you gwain to?" which apparently is grammatically incorrect. So is "Pass us the paper, will 'ee?", which resulted in much merriment amongst the snotty concerned London people. "Willy? Willy? Who's Willy?"."

No, it's those Londoners that are wrong. Of course you put to on the end of the question. You go to somewhere so ask where someone is going to. Where 'ee goin' to is the only correct pronunciation of that question :o

Pendeen judging by your name I guess you are in the same county as me.

There are lots of excess 'to's in Wales.

Where to do you live?

Where to are you going?

The correct pronunciation of Erin is actually Air-in. It's a poetic form of Eireann, which is the Irish for Ireland. The name was originally used by people of Irish descent in America and eventually exported back to Ireland and then the UK. Similar with Shannon (longest river in Ireland) and Coleen, which is an anglicised spelling of cailin, the Irish word for girl.

This thread is hilarious. Who has this much time in their life to waste?

Definitely correct them everytime they say it. I was brought up in Stoke on Trent and it was all 'hey up duck' etc etc at school but my mother would correct everything I said and made sure that I spoke without a thick accent and properly - no 'dead goods' or 'like'. It drove me insane at the tome but I'm so pleased she perservered as I don't have a thick accent and it's helped me to get on in life (IMO) - sad but true.

Both my boys have suffered with the "posh" tag, because of their southern accents, when they really aren't. But you try explaining that to small northern children.
(I can be "posh", or "well-spoken" on the phone or when talking to people at work.)

workshy we are Northerners now living down south where the a is pronounced as a long vowel. My kids are 8 and 11 and have lived here for nearly 3 years now.

I'm sorry but when you move to a different location you cannot aim to fit in if you insist on sticking with your own regional variations. It's like Brits who move to France and yet insist on speaking English and eating only English food.

Dh and I still speak with Northern accents and probably always will. dd has been told at school she has a Northern accent but actually she doesn't really and ds now has a definite southern twange. Yet when we go back up North for a while, they both revert back to their original accents.

When we lived in France my ds' name was pronounced much differently. We didn't insist that they go against their normal accents and pronounce it in the English way however, that would have been rude.

The more of an issue you make of it, the more self conscious your children will become and they will pronounce their names differently just to piss you off. Kids need to fit in and you should not be trying to delay that by insisting on something so trivial. YOU pronounce their names as you like, but when kids get older they often have nicknames anyway that you may nor may not agree with. So stop being snobby and just go with the flow. If you don't like the accent, move back up North.

Christmas always shows up our local accent well (north Manchester). 150 infant children sat looking angelic singing "a weh in a mainj uh" and dropping T's & H's everyhere all at the same time

I'm scared to even try to pronounce some of my nieces/nephews names now.

Loads of vowels and they have to be spelled out constantly.

YABU sorry!

no you weren't everlong :)

other side?

of the pennines? lol

my friend is from rochdale -I love listening to her

my sis is Chorley area -she's not a fan of the accent either lol

CremeEggThief Thanks

I was going to ask if you were in Hull or surrounding Area im in Goole and im originally from Wakefield area. Actual Castleford so it very Yorkshur indeed!!

Moving to where we live now i find the accent weird. I have family over here and growing up i always noticed their accents were different to marne!! (Mine)

Everything in Hull/Surrounding area replaces their I(s) with an Ar sound.

My boys are at school/nursery and they are starting to pick up the accent. It doesnt bother me so much as we didnt noticed as much, only we started noticing it when MIL mentioned it haha

It does sound very funny cos when they spend a week with my dad they come home talking different although mys from Castleford area he sounds like hes from Barnsley! Lol But so does my DH Lol

week/weekend with my dad

My dads from castleford area*

really must learn to proof read before posting lol

I'm a transplanted Northerner living in Essex. DH is from Hampshire and talks like Liz Hurley (ie posh). DD cannot pronounce t's to save her life (wa'er, bu'er etc.) but neither does anyone else around here so although it grates, I let it pass.

HOWEVER - she has started to say 'arks' instead of 'ask' - that's nothing to do with accent, is it? More of a dialect thing? Either way, that's it, we're moving!!