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?

Standard English refers to grammar, syntax and vocabulary. And there is no one standard. Dictionaries reflect current most common spellings and usages.

Yes, there's clearly a need for chidren to have a register and articulation which crosses regional boundaries and ensures mutual comprehension, but that doesn't mean that there is a standard pronunciation.

Just to be clear, I speak entirely Standard English (I have to, now I'm a magazine editor - clearly my boss doesn't think there's anything suspect about my grasp of the language!), I just do it with an Irish accent. I don't think a lot of people on this thread understand what Standard English is.

I would have a problem if I started saying "I'm after washing the delph for the bold garsun," because that is dialect, and English people would understand me. Accent is not dialect.

Gymboy - should English children be encouraged to say "r"? That would surely help with spelling...

"Thought" is composed of three phonemes:

/th/
/or/
/t/

using three standard GPCs:

th

ough

t

It is profoundly ignorant to believe that there is a "proper" way of pronouncing English. And the phonetic argument is bobbins, for well-rehearsed reasons. The teacher is just hung up on some 1950s conception of what "proper English" is and needs somebody to challenge them on it. Wouldn't most basic English Language GCSE/A-Level texts cover this kind of thing? I know I covered this at A-level.

As for those saying people with regional accents get bullied/don't do well at interview - if that's true, I think we're probably better off getting rid of that ignorance and bigotry rather than pandering to it, no?

No, standard English also refers to pronunciation. If you had EFL training you would know this!

Sorry that should say English people wouldn't understand me.

bonsoir - so?

You do understand that 'g' on its own, and 'h' on its own, sound different from the way they sound when blended? And that phonics is a way of systematizing and explaining how to cope with this? Yes?

But once upon a time, people actually said 'th-ou-g-ht'. That is why the spelling is the way it is.

It's not because someone in 1450 looked ahead in their time machine to 2012 and thought 'wow, in the future, they'll all want English spelling to bear little resemblance to pronunciation, brilliant!'

Standard English pronunciation in the context of EFL bonsoir is to help non-native English speakers to get consistent training on how to pronounce a new language. It's to prevent a confusion situation where one year a teacher says "cahh" and the next a teacher says "carrr." Irish people already speak English, they don't actually need to be taught to speak it, thank you.

Tony Blair & Ed Milliband have adopted 'Estuary English' in order to ingratiate themselves with ordinary people because a 'posh accent' is an excuse to be despised in a lot of places, MN included. Snobbery (and inverted snobbery), ignorance and bigotry runs deep and, rather than waiting for the world to change, maybe Tony & Ed's approach of modifying your own speech pattern a little is easier to achieve in the short-term.

I do call it twattery, and if you are assuming someones intelligence based on them not sounding english enough, I also call it racist and offensive.
Might be the way your world turns, but some of us don't stand for that kind of bollox.

Very interesting posts LRDtheFeministDragon. I didn't know that about the history of 'ght'.

You are confusing the history of spelling (an interesting topic) with phonics (an interesting topic). They are not intrinsically linked, however.

Thanks lady.

I know a lot of Irish, Indian and French people and none of them have ever found their accent to be a problem in getting a job. In fact my Irish friends and I are known for being quite "jammy" when it comes to jobs - I've actually never once failed to be offered a job I interviewed for. I find my Irish accent is a huge advantage in England.

Phonics isn't intrinsically linked to spelling?

Ok, then.

Phonics isn't intrinsically linked to the history of spelling. You have a few issues with grammar, too, I see.

Cogito The obvious problem is that if you take the short-term approach every time you will never get around to tackling the bigotry. (I'm not sure this is working for Miliband as well as it did for Blair, by the way; I suspect it was a trick only the first politician who tried it would benefit from. We're too cynical now.)

I also put the conditional IF in there because I'd like to know where the up-to-date data is that supports the idea that regional accents cause their bearers to suffer in life. The only data I know about will be 15 years old now, and AFAIR it was more along the lines of surveying people to ask what they thought about particular accents, which is a very different thing from evidence that people with accents actually do badly.

In the survey I can recall, incidentally, the highland Scottish accent was found to be the most appealing, and make the listener think best of the speaker - it was associated with friendliness, competence, trustworthiness etc. So maybe, following your logic, we should all be taught that accent to get on in life.

Yes, bonsoir. I do apologize. I am very stupid and ignorant, and really should never be allowed to teach or communicate in words ever again.

It could be worse, though.

I could be ignorant and smug with it.

My DH, Northern Irish, ended up at a posh London school age 8 where his accent was regarded as a speech impediment. Ended up with a very BBC accent after a few years of elocution lessons. TBH it's opened a lot of doors career wise, like it or not people do get judged on their accents and the ability to speak the queen's english will help you get on.

It's not fair but it's something to consider when deciding whether or not to go ahead with the lessons.

Gracie, how do you know it was his accent that helped him?

I'm also wondering if, Gracie, someone told you you would get ahead by speaking English with a French accent, would you go ahead and have some lessons? Or would you be insulted?

Gracie's example actually highlights the problem that usually exists with collecting this kind of data - we don't know what the counterfactual would have been. It's just an assertion to say the acquired accent "opened a lot of doors" - you have no idea whether those doors would have been opened or closed with the old accent. It's also a potential attribution error - attributing to the accent what may be attributable to other (arguably more obvious) factors - eg the fact that he attended a posh school!

Accents are great, but if they are a bar to being widely understood outside your original community, then it is not unreasonable to consider whether it is appropriate to modify them.

There is a difference between being understood and being judged.

So Goosey, if you moved to Ireland would you adopt an Irish accent in order to be better understood?