to not want school to teach my kids how to speak in the way the teachers wants?

[bellabreeze]

Having irish accents the teacher of some of my kids has told me they would do little speech classes so they speak different.. its not the accent but its things like saying 'ting' not 'thing' and dat not that and stuff like that really.. I think.. I don't think it is important enough to waste time doing? But maybe I am wrong?

I've never had any issues with children not understanding me Goosey. Plus I don't teach any more, so it's not really an issue now.

This is my opinion but I'd be pleased if dd was offered this kind of thing at school. There is a regional dialect where we live which I don't want her to pick up.

I think so, lady. As you can see, others disagree, and I don't teach primary school.

But basically:

everyone who learns to read English has to learn that there are lots of ways to combine the 26 letters to produce a huge number of sounds. It's helpful to learn the rules, because if you meet a word you don't know - eg., the (nonsense word) 'jough', you'd know how to say it - you'd expect to pronounce it to rhyme with 'rough'. It's really helpful to learn how to do this sort of decoding, because that way you don't have to try to memorize every single word.

It doesn't much matter whether one person's accent differs from another's - they will still use consistent rules. So, in the OP's accent, 'th' will always sound like 'd'. Once the children have learned that sound is spelled 'th', it's not an issue. In my accent 'th' is RP 'th', and I also know not to say it 'tuh-huh'. We've both learned how to associate those two letters with a specific sound, and we will always know how to decode them, in whatever new words we learn subsequently. That's phonics.

Children the length and breadth of Ireland manage to learn to spell and read properly and still have their accents. They are also, as a mass, far more literate and numerate than their UK counterparts, and have a much higher rate of higher education.
Perhaps you should be teaching your children to be more like them, rather than the other way around. If, of course, the intention is to do better and get ahead?

This thread is a bit mad. My DH says 'dat', 'tink', 'tought', 'heighth' etc. I can't say as I've noticed it holding him back. Most people just swoon at the brogue, tbh. I'm from Essex. I was schooled in Essex. My teachers were mostly from Essex. We all dropped our 'th's and spoke in slang. Didn't stop us writing correctly, though. I'd find a teacher trying to correct my accent bloody rude. Sounds snidey to me. I now live in the Midlands. They say 'buzz' for bus here, and 'Ay up' for hello. Perhaps I should start correcting them all and see how long it takes for me to lose a tooth

Thanks, LRD!

I think this comes down to snobbery, in this teacher/school's case anyway.

Ahhhh, a good Midlands accent.

Ok, to put my cards on the table, I moved to the Midlands when I was 6, and my teacher insisted I needed speech therapy. I found it upsetting and embarrassing, and I had to miss an hour of school every week, which made me conspicious. I got bullied for the way I pronounced one of my vowels, and the teacher - who was honestly trying to be kind, I think - used to try to persuade me to say it 'correctly' by telling me all of my work that involved saying that sound couldn't be marked right until I could read it aloud 'correctly'.

I was 12 and in secondary school before I discovered it was just the RP way of saying that vowel!

lady - me too, TBH!

He was in the army for a long time and a strong Northern Irish accent in the nineties would of held him back. Although that particular example has hopefully moved on.

Apparently no one left his school with an accent, the other kids in elocution classes from his year were an Indian and a Scot!

I probably could get ahead by speaking English with a French accent given that I'm living in Canada but then someone would speak to me in French and I'd be scuppered :). Seriously though I've travelled a lot and my accent has changed, I'm originally from the East coast so not that strong an accent but at full speed and with a burr the Ozzies were mystified. So you talk slower and more concisely in order to communicate effectively. When I was living in Amsterdam I met loads of Irish people who sounded like they had just about lost their accents which resurfaced when with their peers.

You tend to mirror the speech patterns of the people your with just like body language so I'd use more Scottish words/ expressions when I'm talking with other Brits than I would with an American because, although it's the same language, it doesn't necessarily translate. There's loads of colloquialisms which are unique to different places which don't really make sense to others, for me a bucket is where you put your rubbish, for, very nearly, everyone else I know it's a bin. Teaching a child different pronunciations or even different words for things just gives them another option.

I have a broad estuary accent. DH is a Dubliner. DS1 speaks with a generic southern twang. DS2 has gone native and 'Ay up, duck's all over the place. None of us have a problem being understood (Except when DH forgets himself and starts banging on about 'delph' and 'presses' and 'yoke's ).

'yoke' just makes me think of Marian Keyes' books!

I know it means 'thing' (right?), but where does the word come from?

YY Gracie. DH had to change some of his words to make himself understood, but I think that can apply to most regions, too. The first time someone called me 'duck' I did do a double take. I also puzzled over 'mardy' for a good while.

No idea, LRD. It's something said in frustration, usually 'Where's dat feckin' yoke?' type affair That may be just my DH, though.

Love it.

Would of??
I speak with a Northern Irish accent but my grammar is very good. I wouldn't change my accent for anyone. Suggesting that some accents are acceptable e.g posh English ones but others, such as Irish accents, aren't correct sounds like awful snobbery. Would they offer speech classes to children who spoke English with a Jamaicn accent?

the (nonsense word) 'jough', you'd know how to say it - you'd expect to pronounce it to rhyme with 'rough'.

Irrelevant, but I just had to pedantically pick this up, LRD. When I read it, I mentally pronounced it to rhyme with 'cough'!

It's a wonderful thing, the English language. Or, as some might say, a strange ghoti.

Wow.

For the first time in Mumsnet history we have a sensible debate based on a query about the travelling community. We are able to debate linguistics, phonics and etymology without a bunfight.

Until this I thought we were doing really well:

"This teacher is an ignorant eejit and is trying to both obliterate the national identity of your children and undermine their confidence in who they are. Has the teacher never heard Irish speech before? Amazing how the rest of us manage to spell (In English and in Irish!) even though the -th sound doesn't form part of spoken language. This teacher sounds both arrogant and ignorant. I know what I'd be saying if some racist twat came out with this to any of mine. And that IS what this is. If I were in your shoes, OP, I'd be having someone's guts for garters. As a starter."

Never before have I read people on here being so open and tolerant about this subject. AngusOgg you are doing no-one any favours.

Fair point garlic. It's ambiguous. But you wouldn't have no idea how to say it, and you wouldn't know that there's no way the 'g' is to be said like g in 'gin'. Right?

(I like 'ghoti' ).

Too many negatives in my last post, but I hope you get my point.

LRD - why do you like wandering off your own topic and area of expertise so much, and displaying your prejudices and ignorance in the process?

It's only the D4 and Dart-liners that sound like Jedward, don't tar us all with that yoke!

Going back to the OP, if they are in fact travellers (which would surprise me but its possible) the school could find themselves in a whole heap of shit, since travellers are a recognised in British law as a distinct ethnic group, which would give the OP a very good basis for a racial discrimination complaint. Which she would win.

Because I am very, very stupid and deeply, deeply prejudiced, bonsoir.

It's the cross I have to bear.

Sorry, not 'uneducated' 'gets marked down to lower grades'. That is a fact which sounds less rude.