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?

No? I thought you were transplanted ones. But you can change it to suit yourself, the concept is much the same.

"just not correct"

What is "correct" English? In the north of Scotland, a "purer" English is spoken, a lot of the time words that the English would only find in historical texts are used. The accent is rhotic, once also a feature in the whole of England. People who don't speak English as their first language often say it is easier to understand than RP.

So who is speaking correctly? "I am going to my caa" would be unintelligible to someone in England 500 years ago, where they might stand a chance of understanding "I'm gaan t' ma car."

Ha ha ha.

You display your own ignorance if you think that only white middle class middle Englanders would defend standard pronunciation.

No, all kinds of fools defend such things that don't exist. There is no standard pronounciation. Anyone with the first clue about language understands that.

Côte d'Azur and I are both plurilingual and well-travelled, with plurilingual children and families. We both know quite a bit about language.

Evidently not, though.

Sad, isn't it?

I'm plurilingual with plurilingual family too, but I also understand what I'm talking about, and don't generalize from EFL to linguistics.

Then you should know better than most. In my house we have 5 languages between us, and understand this instinctively. How odd that you don't.

I'm fascinated by this idea you can't be white, middle-class, or English if you speak several languages (multilingual?). I'm wondering which of those three categories is so incompatible with it all.

Still, off to tell Russian DH, German SIL, and dear little niece who's speaking Portuguese at the moment that my brother and I may no longer count ourselves as 'white middle-class Englanders'.

I do hope it doesn't kibosh DH's citizenship app.

What languages do you have, go? (nosy, ignore me if it's too nosy).

I havent read all of this thread but I spent a lot of time when I was a child arguing with my Dad as he constantly corrected how I spoke - we lived in the West Country and he didnt want us to have the accent. Much as it did cause stress at the time, and it galls me to say it, he was right - my speaking voice was instrumental in getting me one job and that job was instrumental in me getting the next one!

I love the irish accent but just because your children are taught the correct way to say something doesnt mean they will lose that identity - it just means they can influence peoples perception of them if they choose to, it is wrong but our intelligence is initially judged partly on how we speak.

"I'm fascinated by this idea you can't be white, middle-class, or English if you speak several languages (multilingual?)"

Bonsoir and I are just not white middle-class English. It doesn't have anything to do with the number of languages we speak.

Fair enough, cote.

"and understand this instinctively."

This is your problem: instinct is misinforming you.

"There is no standard pronounciation [sic]"

There is a standard pronunciation of "th". And it is not "d".

We can go over this as many times as you like. It is not going to change to suit anyone's regional pride or PC sensibilities.

Have any of you come across the Mourne accent? My DSs' childminder has a very pronounced accent from that area (mine is anglicised posh South Down) and DS2 has picked up quite a lot of the intonation.

I know people who use words like "thon," and "amn't I," both standard English several hundred years ago but now not really heard in England.

And another spanner in the works, aside from DS1's APD, he has a perfect English accent, despite having living in NI. I have a friend who has AS who has a perfect American accent, despite never having set foot there. It's not simple, language and dialect is not stagnant and in unchanging, so there can never be a definitve 100% accurate "standard" in any living language.

I say 'amn't'. Standar Hiberno-English. I do get some strange looks for it though.

I would be unhappy with the teacher's suggestion.

cotedazur said "There is a standard pronunciation of "th". And it is not "d". "

It is not as simple as that though. One could argue that there is a standard pronunciation of the consonants h and t but they are rarely heard in South East London. For example: "I've 'urt me 'ead" or "I would like a glass of wa'er"

Ds1 was accused of sounding posh with his Canadian accent but nobody ever suggested that he should conform to the local accent.

It doesn't matter one jot that some sorts of regional or social accents don't or rarely include initial "h" sounds. The initial "h" is standard pronunciation of have, has, heard, hurt etc etc etc

Bonsoir There is no Standard Pronunciation of English, your repeated assertions that there are just show your confusion between English the language and the syllabus of TEFL qualifications.

Maybe this will help those of you who don't yet know about standard English.

No, Bonsoir.

That is a dictionary. It describes how to pronounce the word.

You are trying to pretend that is the only valid way.

Back to school again, I think.

It's a dictionary that allows you to listen to standard pronunciation of British English.

Goodness, I must have missed the invisible bit where it tells you there's such a thing as 'standard' punctuation and this is it.

I think you will find it is giving you one pronunciation, not turning the discipline of linguistics on its head by suggesting standard pronunciation exists.

This may help. You can follow all the nice links to the big books about linguistics (not, note, EFL teaching booklets):

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Received_Pronunciation

Note especially the explanation 'Standard Southern British (where 'Standard' should not be taken as implying a value judgment of 'correctness') is the modern equivalent of what has been called 'Received Pronunciation' ('RP'). It is an accent of the south east of England which operates as a prestige norm there and (to varying degrees) in other parts of the British Isles and beyond.'