Should DH 'correct' our children's accents?

[OohMavis]

Or, rather, encourage them to speak 'properly'

Because I'm not convinced he should. He obviously thinks otherwise.

DH was raised in London, me in Kent. I have a typical Kentish accent, a tiny bit on the posher side, I pronounce my Ts in most cases for example, etc. His is similar.

We live in a small town in Kent where the accent is parodied locally for being 'rough'. It's just a bit cockney really, there's nothing wrong with it imo. Since moving here though 6yo DS has started mimicking it a bit, particularly since starting school. Small things like saying 'wha'ever' instead of 'whatever'. Lots of glottal stops and elongating of words. Hard to explain without saying it out loud.

Anyway, every time he does this, DH corrects him. Not in a shouty or cross way, but he'll repeat the word back to him and DS will usually restart his sentence using 'proper' pronunciation of his own volition. He doesn't seem to mind being corrected at the moment but I can see it really annoying him before long. It would irritate me to be constantly corrected on the way I speak.

DH thinks that speaking 'properly', as he calls it, will give him an advantage when he grows up with looking for jobs, and genuinely believes that people with our accent sound more intelligent than those with a cockney one. It's strange because he's not a snob at all, he grew up poor in South London and has no idea of himself as somehow better than anyone else. His grandmother (who raised him) just made him speak properly he says, and he is glad she did.

I think it's completely natural and fine to adopt the accent of the place you live. I don't see anything wrong with DS sounding like his friends. I also think it makes DH seem like a nitpicking bore and DS will not appreciate it at all - it's not like the local accent will change, he'll have to adapt his speech all the time he spends time around his friends.

Who is BU?

[Toadinthehole]

newtoday

This discussion is about accents, not dialects.

[TreehouseTales]

Linda and linder are the same aren't they...

[LittleBearPad]

I'm with your DH too.

My own DH is East Midlands and swings from bath ( short a) to Barth. My DD does the same and I couldn't give a monkeys. But I do correct dropped 't's and f for th.
It does matter.

[kimhp]

I'm from the south west, born and bred as is my husband and most of both our families, and very "oo arr " my son is now four and if his speech gets sloppy he gets corrected by me. My husband doesn't see the harm but personally I think if you're chatting like a commoner then people will treat you as one later in life. My accent in comparison to my brothers is very broad. He gets treated completely different to me because he "sounds posher"

[Hushabyelullaby]

An accent is fine - we all have them - but at least say the words properly

^ This!

[NinjaLeprechaun]

"Linda and linder are the same aren't they..."
Only if you think that ah and er make the same sound. To most of us they don't.
I think that most people probably don't hear their own accent - at least not in the same way people without that accent hear it.

[birdybirdywoofwoof]

All accents are not fine. I don't like my local one at all.

[alltouchedout]

I correct my children's grammar but not their pronunciation. My mum used to do it to us all the time and I hated it. She tried to do it to ds1 when he was younger and it culminated in me shouting at her in Tesco one day when he had said something perfectly correct but in a very strong local (to the fens where we lived at the time), and she kept trying to get him to repeat it back to her in a put on RP accent. My mum is a classic case of someone born and raised poor who attained middle class status in adulthood, and was also made to have elocution lessons when training to be a teacher as apparently her original Welsh valleys accent was too strong, so I understand where her accent hangups come from, but it drives me mad and that day I was really cross with her. (I suspect it's also a hangover for how difficult she made my life as a teen by sending me to a rough as fuck comp in said Fenny town then trying to insist I acted and dressed and spoke like a very middle class grammar school child, tbh).
So no, I don't think your DH should do that.

[itsonlysubterfuge]

I'm American and DH is from near Manchester. My DD has an American accent, despite being born and raised in England, with a few interesting words.

DD and DH are always arguing about how to say yogurt, she says yo-gurt and DH says yog-urt.

I also found it quite interesting when my DD insisted it was a jig-sore, I tried to tell her it was a jigsaw, but she didn't believe me.

We do correct the mistakes she makes, I forget my t's and DH is always putting r's where they don't belong.

[flowery]

"I also found it quite interesting when my DD insisted it was a jig-sore, I tried to tell her it was a jigsaw, but she didn't believe me"

Sore and saw might be pronounced differently with an American accent, but in my (English) accent they sound exactly the same. So it's not a 'mistake' to say jig-sore, it's just different.

[AVY1]

Is he correcting the accent or mispronunciation? Nothing wrong with making sure they know how words should sound. Also nothing wrong with having an accent. But I find that knowing how words do sound helps with reading, spelling etc.

[TotallyOuting]

My mum had an American friend (we live in the US) years ago who used to Joke that Mum called her "Linder" instead of Linda.

Was this not a mislabelling of the schwa as a sound containing an 'r' due to imagined orthography, rather than there actually being any r sound?

[flowery]

Yes exactly TotallyOuting. 'Linder' and 'Linda' sound exactly the same when I say them.

Too often you see on these threads people who are so narrow-minded/lacking in imagination that they cannot comprehend that difference accents pronounce things differently and it's not people getting it 'wrong'.

[Notmuchtosay1]

I think it's important to speak correctly. Our regional accent seems to have faded from this area. More and more people with other accents coming in to the area has made it disappear. I'm not from this area either and only the older folk have the accent now. The local people say thins like "oh yes...Peter do that" instead of "does" I hate it and think it makes (or make as the locals say) them found un educated. But the kids don't pick it up, my OH does. I've always correcting him. If the children do say something wrong I try to pick them up. But I'm not perfect.

[rockcake]

OohMavis, I think your DH is right.There's a massive difference between a charming regional accent and sloppy speech, which makes the speaker sound less intelligent or just lazy. Kids sometimes adopt a local accent to fit in and self correct when they're older and wiser- one of mind did this .... phew :)

[rockcake]

I meant "one of mine"!

[Notmuchtosay1]

Sound not found. Ha ha. I was reading through and hit post BT accident.

[Notmuchtosay1]

I give up. Where did BT come from??

[lizzieoak]

Totally, to most North American ears Linda and Linder (the second being Linda as pronounced by some English accents) sound very different. And the second sounds, to us, like an under-articulated "r" rather than a schwa (as most N American "r"'s tend to be quite strong). So I can see why the American mother perceived her friend as saying Linder (though it was rude of her to point it out).

I grew up around a lot of Brits, married one, lived there, but my ear still hears that sound and has to translate it back out again (on unfamiliar words like names, not on common words of course or my brain would be even more worn out than it already is).

[lizzieoak]

Just recalled an example: I had a flatmate who told me about her trip to Barley. Took me ages to work out she was saying Bali. I'd been playing along hoping all would be revealed, but it was occasionally mystifying to young me. I think the fish in my ear has gotten better at its job as I've gotten older. (I'm Canadian).

[MCMLXVII]

My DD1 goes to a cor blimey school in SE London, she tawks wiv er mates a bit like tha but we correct her at home. Her mother is North London, I'm more Home Counties RP.

Loads of people have a different pronunciation and even different vocabulary in different situations.. peers, formal, work. Children in particular can easily handle it.. it's like being bilingual.

[MCMLXVII]

Just remembered the very first day DD1 went to local school (at nursery age). After introductions DD1 was invited to "cam in the aaass". I was baffled until the TA took her off to play in a Wendy HOUSE.

[Riversiderunner]

Haven't RTFT but YABU - I correct our children's accents when they get a bit Lahndahn... They are free to ignore me but at least they know RP so they can use it in later life should they wish to stop sounding like barrow boys eg for a job interview...

[clarehhh]

Agree husband is right, particularly where the grammar not correct, or ends of words missing etc.

[PortiaCastis]

www.gov.uk/government/news/avoid-regional-accent-discrimination-when-recruiting