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?

Threads like this have my pulling my judgey pants right up me crack.

It's nothing short of ill educated pig ignorance of any understanding of what accent and dialect are, to have any qualitative based opinion on them. Fools fools fools!!!!

AND EVERY SPEAKER IN THE WHOLE WORLD HAS A FUCKING ACCENT!!!

Arrgghhhhh fucking "proper"???

Oh god I'll have to have a lie down.

red lie down

I have a Geordie, yorkshire, Irish mix up accent. Mainly yorkshire and other two come out while pissed or angry. Odd words day to day sound irosh or Geordie

katjavm we lived in Lancashire when DD was small. She used to switch as she crossed the threshold, from broad Lancashire to Standard English and back again, because that's how we spoke at home.
Now we're in the south again, she speaks with a standard English accent verging on posh.

I was always impressed by ex-NDN's 2 boys. They lived on Peckham borders with their mum but had a very middle class background. When they were talking to their friends on the phone, they spoke with a typical London street accent and when talking to their dad or his friends, they spoke posh/standard English. I believe it's called code switching and seems to me to be a very useful ability.

Yup, as I said, DD did it all the time. The area we lived in was very rough and many had a prejudice against Southerners. My Deputy head used to hang up if my OH rang, because she thought he was a posh, rich, patronising southerner. Purely because his only voice was Oxbridge.
It's a survival skill, verbal camouflage

I generally wouldn't mind as I love most accents however I was watching a TV show about kids in the East End and I was horrified snobby at their accents. They sounded like Vickkie Pollard type characatures (sorry can't spell that word) It sounded really fake and a bit ridiculous possibly because I'm not used to it.

My DCs have various accents and my accent is changeable. I've noticed that some people are far more 'suseptable' to new accents than others. I met a British couple who had lived in Austrailia for years and years. The woman sounded very Home Counties -posh- and the man sounded as Australian as can be.

My kids were broad brummies at age 3-4 esp dd2. They aren't anymore and dd1 is more RP than the public school kids she mixes with at uni, I guess that what an overdose of radio 7 during your formative years does to you - it being stuffed full of dodgy round the Horne type comedies and Paul temple dramas!

My mum sent me for 'elocution' lessons back in the '60's to try and drum out my West London accent (i.e. like my dad). She was very Hyacinth Bucket

I wish she hadn't.

It didn't really work, and I just had a bit of a complex about the way I spoke until I couldn't care less .

YABU.

I was brought up in Lancashire by parents who didn't have the local accent, and they named me "Claire" which in the local accent was pronounced "clurrr." I was bullied consistently for not having the accent or pronouncing my name as they did. When I started to acquire the accent and pronunciation I came home and got bollocked by my mum. It was miserable; I couldn't do right for doing wrong.

I don't want to be rude, but get over this prejudice against wherever you've chosen to live, and its accent. If you don't like the names as pronounced by people where you live, then why choose those names?

yes, people trying to fake posh are on to a total loser. when i lived in london i used to hear it and I felt like saying 'look if i'm hearing the fakeness, and I'm foreign, then it isn't working'. One girl I worked with did it and her long drawn out fake ahahahahhs used to make me want to tap my fingers with impatience. Her dad rang up once and he was so friendly and nice but he had an accent of some sort (not sure, 'west country' perhaps) and she grabbed the phone from me with such speed. I knew I should not say "so, where's your dad from? cornwall, devon, exeter?'. Her dad sounded REAL though. I was surrounded by that bullshit in london.

My 3 go to a (state school) in Cheshire and have a ridiculously R.P. accent.

Sorry for the pedantry, but there is no such thing as a Standard English accent, nor is it possible to be accent-less. I'm guessing both posters mean they have RP accents. Soz, as you were.

Grrr it's a Zombie thread with extra awwwws because I thought GetOrf was back.

That would be me that said my children speak using Standard English.
It's the Southern accent which reflects the written form, rather than any variant of Estuary English. Yes, it is RP, but back when I was learning about this stuff, RP was that mangled version of excrutiating posh spoken by certain BBC presenters and the Royal family. Which is now known as heightened RP I think?
Anyway, we have a range of accents in my extended family, and none are preferred or criticised. Bad grammar OTOH...

My mother (who was from Goole but didn't have a strong accent other than being 'northern' I suppose) was absolutely determined that my sister and I would not speak with a Sheffield accent. Of course, I spoke without much of an accent when at home, but was broad as owt when out wi' mi' mates... Interestingly though, within about a fortnight of being at uni I had completely lost the accent forever. I've had lots of people say that other than being obviously not southern by the way I say bath/barth type words, I don't really have an accent. Now, my mother sounds really Yorkshire to me. My sister has such a broad accent I struggle to understand her sometimes!

My oldest DS has grown up in Lancashire, and though I don't notice it so much friends have that he has a Lancashire accent. I do notice he says his 'oo' sounds in a Peter Kay type manner sometimes. I do correct glottal stops and dropped aitches sometimes, purely because I recall a childhood friend who as a teenager was utterly unable to say words that started with 'h' correctly, despite trying until she was blue in the face! This was because she had never ever pronounced the H, and just didn't seem to be able to form her mouth to do it, weird. I don't want my kids to be unable to say words 'correctly' if they need to, probably snobbish of me I know.

My mother (who was from Goole but didn't have a strong accent other than being 'northern' I suppose) was absolutely determined that my sister and I would not speak with a Sheffield accent. Of course, I spoke without much of an accent when at home, but was broad as owt when out wi' mi' mates... Interestingly though, within about a fortnight of being at uni I had completely lost the accent forever. I've had lots of people say that other than being obviously not southern by the way I say bath/barth type words, I don't really have an accent. Now, my mother sounds really Yorkshire to me. My sister has such a broad accent I struggle to understand her sometimes!

My oldest DS has grown up in Lancashire, and though I don't notice it so much friends have that he has a Lancashire accent. I do notice he says his 'oo' sounds in a Peter Kay type manner sometimes. I do correct glottal stops and dropped aitches sometimes, purely because I recall a childhood friend who as a teenager was utterly unable to say words that started with 'h' correctly, despite trying until she was blue in the face! This was because she had never ever pronounced the H, and just didn't seem to be able to form her mouth to do it, weird. I don't want my kids to be unable to say words 'correctly' if they need to, probably snobbish of me I know.

Oh bloody hell, not only have I double posted, but it is a ZOMBIE thread...

I can remember my dad hitting the roof when I came home from school having learned the word "ta". Your children have lives outside the home and their speech will reflect that.

My mum and dad encouraged me not to have local (west midlands) accent. Very glad. Very very glad. Makes me hard to place now (i'm 'northern' now i live down south as i say dance rather than darrnce etc.) Daughter sounds southern, which i'm fine with, i like this local accent.

Not to be horrible, but hanging round a park near my parents house, the accents were shocking, makes me relieved that we didn't end up moving home, but that would not have been a decider if it had been viable.