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?

"I think an accent is nice but not bad pronunciation or bad grammar."

This ^^. I am from South London, OH is from the North East and DD was born in Barnsley, so we have a mixture of accents in out house.

However, we all speak grammatically correctly and pronounce our Ts and Hs.

I love hearing the difference in regional accents and no-one should be ashamed of where they come from, but I think it is important that people should make an effort to be understood by anyone who can understand English.

Those being shocked that anyone would correct a child's speech - are you ignoring the fact that the majority are saying they would correct grammar and entirely absent letter sounds, and that quite aside from prejudice existing in wider society about very strong accents, not knowing how to form grammaticality correct sentences and how words should be pronounced makes it much harder to learn to write correctly.

Most people like a soft regional accent these days but not one that makes the speaker incomprehensible to people from other parts of the country, and most people's accent unconsciously or consciously changes subtly depending upon who they are talking to.

I notice that the people who "cannot believe what they are reading" write using standard English grammar, so surely cannot object to children being taught correct grammar by their parents?

I would.

Poster who commented on the Towie accent being fake is spot on. I lived in Southend as a teenager and I can immediately hear the genuine accent (it's very specific) and pinpoint someone from Billericay, for example. But you can have the accent and still be grammatical. I'm shocked at some of the attitudes towards accents although I agree the grammar should be correct in a job interview!
Russ Kane had a very funny and accurate routine on the difference between a Southend accent and a genuine East End one (the latter sounds friendlier the louder it gets but quite menacing if spoken quietly!)
Judging from comments on here, I had the worst of all possible worlds being from Sarf London and moving to Essex at 12 but in fact I ended up with a neutral accent (it's easier!). My Dad apparently sounded like he had an East End accent to my friends (actually an old fashioned Working-class Greenwich accent) but I couldn't hear it because like OP's DH, it was completely grammatical. He used to get mildly annoyed if I started chatting in Sarf Londonese with my mum as a joke, though!
oP's DH is spot on with calmly repeating the correct version as DD will just absorb that's how to speak away from her friends - many Children speak at least two versions of English, probably more!

Im not English so my dds dont sound like barra boys . The accent and pronunciation round here is a bit gruff so yes we corrected it sometimes personally see nothing wrong with it.

They need to be able to communicate with all sorts as they grow up so knowing how to speak properly is important im under no illusion that how they spoke with their friends was different to how they spoke to us.

My dear mum used to say that there was a difference between slang and what she called 'lazy speech' but where do you draw the line? I was brought up in the East Midlands, Mum was from London. We learnt to speak in a southern accent when very young and said things like 'barth, larf' but at school everyone used the short 'a.' Eventually we picked up their way just to fit in due to having to explain ourselves too often.

I lived down south for a while and started saying 'scone' to rhyme with 'gone' but my sister says 'scoane' to rhyme with 'groan' and she bossily corrects me which sticks in my craw - as if she speaks the Queen's English which she jolly well doesn't.

Her children say 'like what I do' in the same manner as Ernie Wise with 'my plays what I wrote.' I used to jovially correct them but they didn't understand that it wasn't correct English!

I think it sounds better if you speak reasonably nicely but you don't have to lose your regional accent - many of them are charming.

It's good if they can speak both versions! Kids can be awful if your accent isn't 'local' and it does help to be able to 'speak properly' in some situations - ie interviews or events so people don't jump to the conclusions about you, your upbringing or education. That's the truth (BBC news English, Glaswegian and 'posh jock ').

I used to teach in a secondary school on the St Helier estate in Morton a long time ago and most of the kids never went into centre London because they were afraid people would laugh at how they talked and dressed, despite being very confident indeed within their local comfort zone. Whilst it was utterly unlikely anyone would pay the slightest attention to them in the West End it was sad that inability to neutralise their accents limited them so much! They refused to be convinced that nobody would care about their accents on a shopping or cinema trip ...

What MrsDeVerw said. My parents corrected the way I spoke far too much. It grated, and once I got old enough I deliberately went against it. Then pointed out every time they slipped up themselves.
My kids have developed a nicer way of speaking than I now use. It amazes me. My brother calls it 'Cbeebies English' as they clearly didn't get it from me!

I'm from west London and have a bit of what i think sounds like a nasal whine, but it was considered a 'posh' accent to most (unless i'm with actual posh people and then i sound like i'm trying to hard, my vowels are not clipped at all). My Dad is from Sarf Lahndon and while i haven't got his accent i do speak a lot of slang which i like and would never change. I hope my boys also pick it up and carry it on. DH is from Notts so we also have some Midlands words in there too. ExH is a scouser so i picked up terms from him too as well as Irish and Scottish exes. So it's a rich melting pot of words.

Not sure if it's because it's too close, but i love most accents apart from Estuary English. Imagine my horror, now that we live near Tunbridge Wells and ds1 is starting to drop his t's I certainly didn't move here for THAT! We do gently correct him tho, but mainly because he drops them so dramatically we actually can't understand what he's saying. He doesn't use a glottal stop, just completely changes the word and we are left asking what he means (he is only 4).

I think telling them the correct version of a word if Sid incorrectly is fine but it's a totally different thing for your dh to be picking at accent and dialect all the time.

Your DS is only 6 so will just see it as nagging.
If you're planning on living there for a long time, it's only natural that your son will pick up the accent and dialect. If anything, he probably changes his accent to make it more like his friends....so he doesn't feel different.

"To give your child any chance in the world of work beyond the shop floor you must make sure they learn how to control their accent"

Rather well-paid shop floor I've been working on then...

I use glottal stops a lot of the time, and drop Gs a fair bit where there's an 'ing'. Not Hs very much, no idea why. My family are all from the East End so I have basically a very diluted version of that accent I think.

DH on the other hand speaks very 'correctly', pronouncing every letter. The DC seem to be picking up my accent rather than his, possibly because I'm with them more, and also I imagine there's quite a lot of similar accents at school.

Doesn't bother me in the slightest. I have no credibility correcting them because I do it too, so I don't bother. Never held me back and because most people don't live in the 1950s, I can't imagine it will them either.

Accents are lovely but lazy speech is not! I don't like it and I correct my dc when they say things wrongly. Sounds horrible.

I'm with your DH. With the caveat that people can and do use different accents in different circumstances.

It's easier to spell if when you speak, you don't leave out or mispronounce half the letters. It's easier to get a job if you have a fairly classless/regionless accent.

That doesn't mean one should only use RP, but a fairly neutral accent does travel better.

Maybe it was lazy speech I corrected rather than accent we still have our accents im confused now.

I was going to say you were unreasonable as I thought you would mean the north/south difference. But as it's not that kind of correction, I am with your dh on this. I do correct mine when it's the dropping of t's and h's, ff instead of th and so on.

But dh is a northerner and I'm a southerner so I have had to make a conscious effort not to 'correct' bath (dh) to bahth (me).

Your DH is correct and children quite happliy speak 2 languages, one at home and one with there mates.
It is the same as having a 'sensible' email address for job applications for example, but needs to be worked on earlier.
People do judge.

*their

I think DH should carry on but in a calm, matter of fact way and you should support him. Children learn quickly that there is a way of speaking that's appropriate with their friends and another more way of speaking that should be used in more formal situations.

I was raised in deepest Sarf London and my mum would laugh and belittle me when correcting my speech. I really resented it thinking that if she wanted me to talk like the Queen she shouldn't have sent me to the local comp. I became effectively bi-lingual speaking one way at home and completely differently at school. And I quickly learned that the home way of talking was the one that got me jobs/promotions.

When I had my own DDs I did correct their speech and grammar, but I tried to do it nicely and also made it clear that while estuary was ok for the playground at home we spoke the other way.

The people saying that this is snobbery are right but we live in the real world and in many areas of life speaking 'well' can be an advantage.

We're Cornish living in Cornwall so DD1 should have a Cornish accent. It drives me bonkers that because of Peppa Pig and CBeebies she says dahnce, fahst, etc. We use a short a down here so I expect dance and fast and am constantly correcting her. Hopefully DD2 will speak properly and not develop SE pronunciation when everyone around her speaks SW.

Well there are accents and then there is misuse of the language.

Eg the word "bath" will be pronounced differently in different regions. Fine.

However the glottal stop is just incorrect.

I'm with your dh.

Accent is different to pronunciation. My parents have quite broad typically 'Essex' accents, as do wider family and friends, but they always speak 'properly' and corrected us on dropped 'ts' etc. It's the right thing to do.

I actually think the snobbish thing is believing that having a broad regional accent means you can pronounce things properly. I know lots of well spoken people with very strong regional accents who do not mangle the language at the same time.

*can't