To worry about DCs picking up very strong regional accent?

[honourinoneeye]

DH has been looking for a job near his elderly father for a while, and secured one last month. The in-laws live in an area that is pretty much synonymous with deprivation and poverty - their home and immediate area (street, estate) is lovely but the area as a whole is pretty dire.

I have been concerned about the effects living somewhere like this may have on children but one thing in particular I'm a bit worried about is the accent. It's very, very thick - even "well spoken" people have what I and most others would consider to be a broad accent.

At any rate, this week we have been in a premier inn to buy a house and find schools and get things sorted for September. My twins will be going into year 2 and their teacher 'mocked' my dd's accent - not nastily, but nonetheless it was there. I also noticed the TA spoke with a strong accent with numerous grammatical errors - "you was staying in a hotel?" complete with dropped 'h's'

I was a teacher pre DC and have worked in some very deprived schools but such an accent would undoubtedly hold people back, I really can't explain how strong it is! I don't mean I'm judging people for it (I do for the bad grammar) but just the same, I can't pretend I'd be happy about my children picking up such a thick accent and I do feel it would be detrimental to their future.

So - any ways around this?

As someone with a fairly strong Bolton accent I still don't think the OP is being entirely unreasonable.
Posters on here are linking the accent with not being "middle class" and educated without even being aware that they are doing it and a" posh" southern accent does get a certain reaction in places like Wigan-no use denying it.
I wish it wasn't important but it is.
You may do ok as a lawyer or university lecturer in the North West with such an accent but move elsewhere and you do have a hurdle to get over in order to be taken seriously.

YABU and a snob.

We live in an WC area with an "accent". DH has a local accent, but it's pretty mild. That's despite his mum sounding every bit local and his dad having a very strong regional dialect (he's a retired miner).

My siblings picked up strong accents from where they did most of their growing up, but I never did. DS1's accent is somewhere between DH's and mine with a few rough edges that probably won't persist. I don't particularly care, so long as he's understandable.

nit I agree.

It matters not a jot if someone says 'bath' or 'barth' or even 'baff'... But some turns of phrase do matter.

And some children/young people really don't learn to use the on/off button...

My colleague told me about an interview with an applicant who wanted a place on the course she was teaching. When discussing a particular author, the applicant said. 'Were he that one what wrote x, y and z?'

Now the fact that a 17 year old could a. identify the author and b. name three of his books was pretty darn impressive. But to not know that speaking in those terms was inappropriate in the setting was just fecking stupid!

ouryv I bet you'd care if his teacher was mocking him for his accent though - that is the bit that stands out in this situation surely. Some kids may well shrug it off, like Maid, but if, for some reason, one of them is struggling with the move anyway or isn't very outgoing, is an overthinking type by nature etc. etc. it could make them very unhappy indeed and be a barrier to settling in and making friends.

I haven't RTFT, but I am a barrister in London and I know at least one other barrister (in a far more lucrative area of law!) with a very strong Merthyr Tydfil accent; doesn't seem to have caused her any problems at all. I think things are changing, slowly.

I can't believe the utter tripe that is being posted on here.

"It is a "thing" here in the North to mock children for not having a local accent, or for being "posh" or Southern" Its absolutely not. What a sweeping generalisation. Yes there may be individuals who think that is acceptable, but to stereotype everyone 'here in the North' with the same bias / insulting behaviour is clearly wrong.

My mum was one of 3 sisters, all grew up in Wigan and then moved when they married to places with regional accents - Manchester, Newcastle and Blackburn. There are 8 children from those 3 sisters.

My sister and I are lawyers (my sister is a partner at a Top 5 firm).
2 of my cousins are lawyers (one is an equity partner in a Top 20 firm).
1 of my other cousins is an accountant.
1 is the Managing Director of a large travel company.
2 are training professionals - whose job it is to speak / direct other professionals.

I am in the North West. All of my cousins work in London / South.

It is utter rubbish to say you won't go far with an accent outside of the North West.

The OP might find this and this useful if she does move to Wigan.

Looking at it, a lot seems very Yorkshire, which is interesting, considering that we often have turns of phrases that don't travel more than a few miles, and Wigan is slap bang in the middle of Lancashire, which is usually a world away from Yorkshire, accent and dialect-wise.

Certainly the putwoodin'th'ole = Close the door and willy'eckerslike = He will not from the BBC page are commonly said and understood amongst Yorkshire natives.

On a slightly related note, it has occurred to me that my username OnIlkleyMoorBahTwat, which is a play on a popular local folk song 'On Ilkley Moor Bah Tat, which means 'On Ilkley Moor without a hat' might not actually travel that well nationally .

I have a fairly strong Bolton accent too (Bolton School notwithstanding), as does my sister. I live abroad and mine is irrelevant, but she has cultivated her accent because it has made her memorable throughout an extremely successful (London-based) career. If you're intelligent and good at your job in the first place, it can actually be an advantage.

As for people being unkind or unwelcoming in Wigan - that seems very odd, as usually they are very warm and friendly. I wonder how much the OP's attitude affected her reception?

I don't think you're at all unreasonable to worry about a regional accent. I have an RP accent (Welsh parents, mum with accent, dad RP) and was bullied a lot for it in school in the Midlands - people would take against me immediately because of it, despite not knowing a thing about me. My dh has a mild Birmingham accent (his parents and siblings are very broad - I do wonder whether I have softened his out a bit over the years, I have certainly picked up a bit of a brummie twang!) and has done very well in a profession largely populated by privately educated, RP types, but in Birmingham - it may have been different if he'd been in a different area iyswim? I do think accents make a difference and it can work both ways - inverted snobbery is just as rife and awful as standard snobbery in my experience.

Surely what matters most is that children learn to speak in a way that is appropriate for the situation. You wouldn't use the same language/style in a formal situation as you would with your friends.

You can pretend that accents don't make any difference to how people perceive you but it's not true unfortunately.

I am originally from Birmingham and never had a particularly strong Brummie accent but it was there. I went to university (left 5 years ago) where there were a LOT of southern people who thought it was funny to mock my accent and they would imitate what I said in tutorials rather than responding to the point I was making. I quickly lost my accent in order to be taken seriously.

Since starting work I've had people mock me for being posh but have also had people comment about how colleagues from other offices with regional accents "just sound so thick - you can't take them seriously".

Schools and teachers who refuse to acknowledge this happens are just holding kids back imo - you can wish all you like for a different world but until it changes I'd be wanting to help my kids succeed by ensuring they have a neutral accent.

I think you do need to look at a different school for your kids, btw. That teacher was being extremely rude and unprofessional.

Sorry Mandy In my experience and that of many other people on this thread is IS a thing here in the North to mock people, or make comments for being southern or posh.
Maybe you do have the local accent, and so have never been made to feel that level of discomfort for not being Local?

And it is true that many on here are unconsciously making the correlation between "regional accent" and "working class", and that this correlation is stronger depending on where the accent is from . Scottish can still be perceived as middle class, Black Country, not so much.
When my now Lawyer brother went to Oxford with his soft Yorkshire accent no-one he met thought it was possible to be from the North without being dirt poor and keeping pigeons.

I think it would be unusual for the children of a mother (presumably from the South East) who seems to be ambitious and aspirational in a conventionally middle class way to - as a result of a move to the North West - then become only able to speak and write in a way that was widely regarded as inappropriate and which would severely restrict their future opportunities.

"I think you do need to look at a different school for your kids, btw. That teacher was being extremely rude and unprofessional."

Right. This.
But it wasn't one teacher, it was a whole culture of intrusive policing of conformity that the OP experienced on that day.

she is articulating her unease with that culture by focusing on the accent and getting flak for that. The accent is a red herring. The issue is that this is an environment in which children with apparently middle class, or intellectual, aspirations will be considered uppity and weird and everyone - peers and adults - will consider it their job to knock them down a peg or two.

Just don't live there. I am sure there are places 20 minutes away that are less awful than this.

Unfortunately a lot of small communities with little intrusion from outside are very conformist! This is true all over the UK. So the large cities in the north will be far more accommodating of small ex-mining villages. And the more deprived an area, the more marginalised, the more conformist.

Ifnotnowthenwhen you now qualify your earlier statement by saying in my experience. That is exactly the point - YOUR experience. Don't lump everyone into the same boat. Its definitely not the experience of me, my friends, my colleagues or my family. Please be clear that it is your experience, not a general, unfair put-down to everyone in the North. If you have encountered that, then that is wrong, but as I said before it is not a "thing" in the North to mock children's accents.

I reiterate - Wigan is a huge town, certainly not a 'mining village'! I think the OP has found herself in an unfortunate part of it. I've never experienced the attitudes or deprivation she's alluding to, and I think my generations-of-Wiganers in-laws would be equally mystified by this belief.

MrTumblesBavarianFanbase you are correct. I moved around a fair bit and was the subject of mocking by other kids for my accent. I mostly took that on the chin (and privately thought the boy who thought that my vaguely Hull accent was Scottish was stupid), but the one (middle school) teacher who did it to me really pissed me off.

And what I am puzzling over is why, when the OP seems to be moving to a rough part of Wigan, despite there being (like every town) better areas in and around the town, is she so preoccupied with how her children's accents would work for lawyers etc?

When discussing a particular author, the applicant said. 'Were he that one what wrote x, y and z?' Now the fact that a 17 year old could a. identify the author and b. name three of his books was pretty darn impressive. But to not know that speaking in those terms was inappropriate in the setting was just fecking stupid

So, no demonstration of intelligence is sufficient to counterbalance the perceived stupidity associated with speaking in a particular way/with a particular accent?

Ah pies! Who wouldn't want to move to the home of the annual world pie eating championship .

But not everyone can afford to live in the best part of town ouryve. And it is still possible for children of a low income family to become a lawyer or any other professional, even with a non RP accent.