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 think picking up accents is a natural talent LRD, some people have it, some don't. Your accent changes because you're able to change it, you hear other people's accents in a way that a lot of people don't. DH moved from England to Ireland at the age of 10 and lived there for 14 years, yet he never picked up the accent, not even a little bit. His accent is entirely English. He does us plenty of Irishisms (which sound unbelievably cute in the English accent :)) but not even a hint of an Irish twang. He just has no ear for accents whatsoever and can't ever tell where a person is from upon hearing them speak.

Oh, no, you've not heard how badly my accent changes, cailin!

I envy people who have a solid natural accent.

I think it would make it easier to learn languages. When DH is trying to tell me how to pronounce a sound in his language, it is hard for him, because although I mostly speak RP, I have lost the ability to hear differences between dialects very acutely (like the OP's teacher).

my dd (who has lived overseas for all but one year and is 12 and currently overseas) wants to speak English with a strong regional accent. I don't know why really. This is a painful business because she has a go at various accents and they don't work. Atm when she is reading aloud, she pauses a bit and then swings into what she thinks is a Scottish accent. No one in Scotland would recognise it as such. I am hoping it is a phase that will pass or we will move to an English speaking country soon and she can pick up some kind of authentic regional accent.

Oh, dear. That's a shame but also a little funny for you, maybe. Is it you or her dad who is English-speaking originally?

What accent does she use normally ZZZen?

Btw, my big brother decided he had to have a French accent when he was ten or so ... no good reasons for that, none of us is French ... but we tried not to tease him too much!

Aww that's weird but sweet LRD. In my family he would be mocked daily for his entire life for such behaviour.

she just sounds like me I suppose, I don't know. I have lived abroad so long I may have a weird accent

I'm British , her father is Russian but she was born in Germany and we live in the Czech Republic

Oh, wow! What an exciting mixture of things.

I bet when she is a bit older she will be excited by all of that, actually.

Chances are she sounds like a mixture of you and your DH. She'll probably have a lovely soft mixture of European accents once she's an adult.

Yes, and Russian accents are absolutely gorgeous.

Habbibu - yes I'm Irish but my daughter is not a Londoner - we're based in the Home Counties. Some but by no means all of her friends say caa and faam but she definitely pronounces the r.

Just as an aside, whereas generally I'd agree that people would understand regardless of the accent, I do remember a game of Articulate where my sister (Irish) was trying to get my DH (public school English accent) to guess the word "island". She said "Body of water surrounded by water - Ireland is one", to which he replied "Island", but because of his accent she heard "Ireland" so said "No, Ireland is one" and he replied again "Island", which she heard again as "Ireland" and so on for their entire turn with increasing frustrtation on both sides (and much to my amusement as I could see, or hear exactly what was going on).

LOL LRD the term is plurilingual. Your ideas (all of them) are about 20 years out of date.

bonsoir, children who have not yet 'mastered' their languages cannot be 'plurilingual'.

If you look up the term on wiki, it will explain.

This would seem to be yet another situation where you imagine that the desire to have knowledge equates to knowledge.

It does not.

LRD I think you're right that not having a strong accent or losing one as a child makes you more likely to mirror.

I sound mad half the time, mostly NI as I said, but a very strong RP when I'm trying to get a point across or scare people and quite a lot of London (having spent years there) when I'm speaking to people from there, also West Country (from the first 3 years of my life!) and the occasional Scouse (from my mum!) On the plus side, no-one can place me, but I do think it affects your sense of identity - an accent can mean you "fit in" immediately.

Ah, that's interesting you've got the same sort of experience.

I do love a Scouse accent, though, and can't do it at all, even to put it on.

It is about identity, definitely.

I don't use wikipedia to learn terminology - I get it from the lectures and academic conferences I attend, and the reading I do.

Just to fill in the gaps in your knowledge: a plurilingual person is someone who speaks more than one language fluently (but not necessarily to MT standard).

Really?

I don't think so.

If so, you need to complain about the 'academic' conferences. Perhaps you are going to the grad school ones?

A plurilingual person cannot be a child who has not mastered a langage, bonsoir.

That child might live in a multilingual society.

You need to think about the difference between the two. The one is not just a fancier word for the other - just as 'linguist' is not a fancy term for 'person who has done an EFL course and misunderstood it a bit'.

No of course not. You can be plurilingual and not have full mastery (to MT standard) of all your languages.

And I'm not sure why you think you need to repeat to me the lesson I just gave you . But I'm glad if you have grasped the difference between plurilingual and multilingual which was causing you so much trouble further down the thread .

By the way, I haven't done an EFL course (as you seem to be implying) - not sure where you dreamed that one up. But I suspect I am rather more qualified than you seem to think (and probably rather a lot more than you) in Modern Languages and Linguistics.

bonsoir, 'plurilinguaity' has to do with how you employ your languages.

Look it up.

It is not just a fancy word for 'multilingual'.

If you have a child who is failing to learn a language and cannot master the phonics of that language, you simply have a child who is struggling to cope with their multilingual context.

You haven't even done an EFL course?!

So why did you claim to be knowledgeable in that context?

Evidently, you know next to nothing about linguistics.

After all, if you did, you would understand phonics, and the fact English doesn't have a 'standard accent', wouldn't you?

Perhaps a quick set of evening classes would help.