AIBU to correct my cockney husband?!

[user1465725037]

My husband is probably what you would describe as an 'East London cockney!' We have two young children. He will often say 'done' instead of 'did'. For example, 'I done the washing yesterday'. Kids have started to repeat this now. Whenever he says it now I am correcting him, no big deal, just saying 'did' when he says done. He is not taking it well and is getting really cross with me. Equally I am getting really cross with him when he says it as I now don't feel like I can say anything to him about it without having my head bitten off. I do appreciate that I am probably totally annoying him but I don't think it is fair on the children that they are getting confused over the English language because of him. So, AIBU? Maybe I should forget about correcting him and just focus on correcting the kids when they get it wrong? When I've read up on this though the advice seems to be that we should model the correct use of language to our kids rather than 'correcting' them. Any helpful advice would be appreciated! Thank you

My first class in Saaf Lahndan asked me where I came from. I told them the name of my city. I spoke RP at the time.
'Nah, miss, wot CAHNTRY?? We can't understand wot you say!'
This country, I explained, and asked whether they could understand Mr Jones upstairs. Of course they could 'E torks lahk. Us!'
Mr J was a Kiwi from the west coast of South Island!

Why can't I get my iPad to leave my spelling alone? Can I switch the check off? I have great difficulty trying to post people's board names accurately and any other unusual letter combinations. 'He talks like us' just wouldn't have conveyed the Camberwell scorn in their voices! Lovely kids, taught me a lot!

The poster who said her kids have never met a cockney lawyer, how on earth do you know that, do they report back to you about every accent they hear day to day in their chosen field? I doubt that.

"I spoke RP at the time" I'm not surprised they asked you what country you came from. What does at the time mean, do you flit between RP and a regional accent/ dialogue?

Don't be snotty 2nds.

I also started off RP and knocked the edges off when it was expedient. It doesn't make me Rory Bremner. She just means she modified her accent.

It's not me being snotty, if I was working in a school in South London I wouldn't expect them to be used to RP and I'd have expected that it would have been commented on.

Of course it does depend on the school, I'm sure there are South London schools where RP is the norm.

" I'm sure there are South London schools where RP is the norm."
yes elitist private ones that have moved out to Kent..:)

Oh sorry.

I'm guessing beexies harking back a bit, actually. Plenty of RP in Sarf London now.

" I'm sure there are South London schools where RP is the norm."
yes elitist private ones that have moved out to Kent..:)

And the rest.

I drove the entire length of Trinity Rd this morning (Wandsworth bridge to Streatham ) and then a bit further into the Croydon fringes, looking at the sheer wealth on display at the Wandsworth end and the ripples out; the creep of gentrification-plus.

I was trying to imagine great swathes of it as it formerly was - working class suburbs and trying to work out where the mass working classes of London will end up.

" trying to work out where the mass working classes of London will end up."

Wales, Jaywick....

(I was driving it anyway, I didn't drive it just to ponder this )

Wales sounds likely. No working person with any fight left in them would go to Jaywick.

OP - my husband also has a SE London accent (although it's much weaker now than it was when we were younger) He's very concious of it and has really tried to 'correct' himself over the years. He's very aware that the way that he is perceived as a result of his speech is not necessarily positive, particularly in the work environment. Whilst it shouldn't be the case, people do make sub-conscious decisions about you because of the way that you talk and the language that you use.

We both correct our kids on their grammar and pronunciation and my husband really does wish that someone had done this for him when he was growing up. I suppose what I'm saying is that I can understand why you don't want your kids to grow up with a strong regional accent.

I hated that bloody "Ribenary" advert too! I remember being very confused as a small child in Scotland at all the people on Blue Peter talking about "drawring"!

Laughing a lot at the Kiwi guy being more intelligible to the Sarf Lahndan schoolkids than RP. My god daughter has a crazy strong kiwi accent and, when she came to visit, my English nieces were utterly flummoxed by it.

One of the things that annoyed me about the last school I worked at was the fact that the teachers didn't model standard English. It was in an area with its own local and quite famous accent but still ...

Correct your children, not him. You knew what his accent/grammar etc was like when you married him. My children occasionally take on a dropped 't' or say ain't. I tell them that it's incorrect - they then say it properly. The end.

Drawring is also a Yorkshire thing. He works with drawings so he says that every day and one day I swear I will say "Sorry, do you mean drawing or drawer ring?" I think that might help put a stop to him correcting me when he is just as bad as I am lol.

Yes Jessie it was always said on Blue Peter, also Art Attack lol.

Yes Jessie it was always said on Blue Peter, also Art Attack lol. Yes same here. It was a world us wee Scottish children were excluded from somehow.

Yes but we and the other regions had our moments when they filmed Why Don't You? in NI, Wales and Scotland .

My mother constantly corrected my father when I was growing up, even when I was a teenager, despite having known what he sounded like when they got married....

Neither did she like it when I went to university and starting sounding a bit 'too posh' as it was 'put on'.

For a while this gave me a bit of a complex Nowaday I know which register to use and when: whether that be taking my pronunciation closer to RP and avoiding colloquialisms because I'm dealing with colleagues in Chennai (just good manners IMO) or delivering a well-time 'aye right, so it is' sometimes in the office too.

I now OP has already taken comments on board, but just wanted to add to the others who have said children can be exposed to different styles of speaking and still learn 'proper English'.

Ironically being able to tailor my register made me feel a lot less self-conscious in different company than my 'consistent' DM. I'd also add that the more exposure I've had to different groups and the more I've progressed in my field, the less I feel I have to tailor my register when interacting with other native English speakers.

People from different parts of the uk speak with different accents, use different phrases, drop certain letters and exaggerate others, albeit under the banners of Posh or not. We are not living in the 1950s where BBC English THE way forward. Your DC have the balance of you and your DH and I do think YABU to pull him up on the way he speaks, would you do this if he came from Wales or Liverpool etc ?

To Olivia - I think you just summed up what is wrong with some employers in this country. Do you realise you have discriminated interviewees based on the colour of their skin and how they spoke? As part of your selection process, did you actually consider whether a candidate was the best person to do the job based on there skills and experience, or was it simply based on skin colour and speech and dialect?
I think this thread/post has just highlighted the glass ceiling that black and ethnic minority groups face when trying to get a job. If you're not, white, middle class and talk posh, "you're not coming in".

Fortunately there are some employers who see beyond this, and give many black and ethnic minority individuals the opportunity to prove they can do the job, and do it well! Thankfully I've found an employer who does that.

That's coming from a black Yorkshire lass, who says innit instead of isn't it!