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?

And, several posts on, I'm not dissing regional accents, but non-standard usage of language. I don't think it has to be a full-on dialect before English becomes less coherent to another (different) non-standard English speaker.

I'm very fond of the various Irish accents (and the one that Irish Travellers who live locally is very distinctive and wholly different from say a Dún na nGall or Maigh Eo one)

It's not about the ££ later in life. Are you suggesting that everyone needs to sound like a middle class white Londoner to get a decent job?

Sound more English or be a wee Irish jockey....anymore stereotypes you got for us? How about some comments on us all being too drunk to pronounce our H's properly?

Me too, LRD!

I do think the teacher in the OP is being a snob, btw. Received pronunciation can't possibly be justified via spelling/phonetics, unless words like 'bath' and 'grass' have gained an R while I wasn't looking.

Pointless anecdote: I grew up in a short-A region; the first time I heard someone talking about "catching a bass into town" I thought she meant the fish!

It's true, bonsoir.

You, too, know what it is like to hear well-meaning suggestions and to fail utterly to take them on board, so I hope you will have some sympathy for my plight.

ting instead of thing is not a non-standard use of language, its an accent. And if you are too stupid to understand ting rather than thing, or tree for 3, then really thats your problem, not a kid with a perfectly normal accent's.

Oops, pointless anecdote wrongly told. My short As go with long Us - the speaker meant bus.

I'll get me coat

Indeed, Sunny. It isn't slang, it's the way an entire country speaks English. They can't all be wrong.

'Twould be interesting to see whether the same teacher would put an American child into remedial elocution.

I think part of the issue may be that not pronouncing 'th' is a common error for children with English accents. As this discussion has shown, deciding what is error and what is accent is full of difficulties.

N-no, Abitwobbly, not true at all. Have you read the thread? The OP's children aren't spelling what they hear. They can spell correctly. They just have an accent.

How do you think the millions of Irish people with this same accent get on in life? They do manage, you know! As CailinDana has illustrated already.

Difficulties? A teacher can't hear the Irish accent and realise that its totally normal for them to speak that way?

I'm starting to realise why you are doing so badly on the league tables if your teachers are flummoxed by a Dublin twang. Perhaps its they that need some remedial lessons?

Short people suffer discrimination in jobs - should we give the short kids growth hormones to make them taller? Various hair colours suffer discrimination in jobs - should we dye the kids hair to remove it?

Fight the discrimination, do not try to remove the regional differences as wasting time teaching that will mean time lost teaching more productive things.

And don't forget that women earn less than men, we should give them all penises, you know its all about the ££ later in life.

I'd quite like a penis of my very own

chickens, for some reason your post made me imagine you as the lady in this picture (don't worry, it's work safe, just funny):

www.gotmedieval.com/2010/02/just-a-fruit-tree-i-swear-innocent-whistle.html

Has anyone listened to Alan Joyce, CEO of Qantas Australia?

Sounds absolutely magic with his "tings" and "dats".

I'm a little worried to weigh into this as a furriner with an accent of my own, knowing how fraught this subject is, and I think my point has also been made by trixy, Goosey and Cogito above.

I just wanted to respond to MrSunshine's point about how it's your problem and you must be stupid if you are flummoxed by an Irish accent. DH and I, both native English speakers, were watching a programme about Irish Travellers the other night and there was a significant amount of what they were saying that neither of us could understand (as a result of their accents rather than the film making). So it is quite possible for a "mere" accent to actually impede understanding and communication.

I work in a job where we spend a lot of time on the phone with clients in other countries who are non-native English speakers. Two of my colleagues - one with a heavy Darlington accent and one with a Glaswegian accent - have modified their spoken English accents significantly to make themselves understood, and even then I sometimes have to repeat things for them on a conference call to get the point across. And a French colleague who works here in the UK has such a strong accent and speaks so quickly that many of us cannot understand her and sadly she gets somewhat marginalized, since it's quite difficult for her to communicate (her English is grammatically perfect and she can write absolutely idiomatically, it's just her accent). She has been told in performance reviews that it's a problem.

Xiao, just to clarify: I'm Irish and I don't understand the language that Irish Travellers speak either. It isn't an accent thing, it's that it's a different kind of language/English. I don't know enough about its internal codes and grammar to be able to say more.

We haven't yet established whether or not the OP is from the travelling community. It sounds very unlikely to me that she is - the 'dis' and 'dat' prononciations are, as has been said, just part of a very regular, very common Irish accent.

I get what you're saying about the accent situation in your job, and I think it's one that every workplace handles differently. My mode of working is very similar to yours, but accented English of all kinds is so common that it's simply not an issue: in communicating by phone, you're expected to just get on with it; via e-mail, of course, you MUST be able to spell and communicate correctly and effectively. I really think that an accent won't be an issue at all by the time the OP's (perfectly literate) children are of a working age.

Xiao, with travellers you are talking dialect as well as accents, but thats a different matter.
OP is not talking about an impenetrable accent, she's talking about ting instead of thing. And I stand by point, if as a teacher (or anyone else) this simple difference confuses you, that is entirely your own problem.

Actually, Curtsey, op confirmed they are Travellers quite a bit unthread. As Xia sad, the accent goes way beyond the usual soft Irish brogue, and really does need tempering.
As to it not being an issue in their quest for future employment? I'd like to be proved wrong, but sadly, I very much doubt it - there is a huge stigma attached.

Curtsey that's comforting that even Irish people can't understand travellers! They were definitely speaking English though, from the bits I could understand. I know we don't know about the OP being a traveller or not - I was responding to comments that have been made on this thread about if they do have such accents, such as:

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.

and

If you are a travelling family (or even if you are not) have a word with the Gypsy Traveller liaison officer at your LEA. This teacher needs to back off - and fast. They are the one in need of some language education, not your children. Understanding there are four countries that make up the UK, each with their own accents and national identities, would be an excellent place for this thickfeck to start.

When you say "in communicating by phone, you're expected to just get on with it" - I read that as meaning that the onus is on the person with the accent to make themselves understood and modify that accent if necessary, with which I completely agree (and I have to do the same - if someone doesn't understand me, it's my responsibility to say it more clearly and slowly, rather than get on my high horse about my native accent being a part of my identity). Many comments on this thread imply that it's the responsibility of the other person to understand all regional accents, and if they can't then they're being intolerant, racist or discriminatory.

Oh, apologies, OP, all, I missed that. In that case, you're right about there being a stigma attached, Floggingmolly, there is also a stigma here in Ireland. I'm not sure what the answer is, but I think that the pp (sorry no time to name-check) who mentioned that any attempt to change the accent ultimately won't work because it is an identity think (I'm paraphrasing terribly) is probably also correct.

*think = issue

Can I just point out that there is a huge difference between being expected to pronounce your second language properly in professional situation and being told the accent you use to speak your native language isn't acceptable. What's your native language Xiao? Would you be ok with someone from another region coming along while you were speaking it and telling you the way you've been speaking the language you've spoken all your life is "wrong"? I think everyone is happy to be corrected on how they speak French or German, because you're a learner in that language, but the OP's children are not learning English, they are native speakers who happen to speak with an accent - that's an entirely different thing.