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?

We did the same with our now 16 and 15 year olds. They can speak slang with their friends but we expect a reasonable standard of speak when in the house. They don't have a posh accent , they have a generic Scottish accent. DH and I were brought up in different places, both rough, but learned to moderate our accent for work. We live in a different area completely. I have no issue with them having an accent, I just wanted them to be able to speak correctly, which they do.

I like different accents. So long as they can adjust according to the occasion, then they're just fine.

It's very British to confuse good (ie, easy to understand) speech with class. In fact, the reason why RP used to be considered the 'best' accent is - and this goes way beyond British shores - because it's much easier on the ear and easier to understand than most accents, particularly the weird patois that Londoners seem to affect these days.

If Prince Harry uses glottal stops then, as far as I'm concerned, he's not speaking well.

I do it to my five year old son. But tbh it is only on some words and usually they are ones like above where t is missed or other letters.

I'm in a commuter town close to London. Our accent is London-isherwood. Mine have a slight local accent as do I but I get what you mean about the exaggerating because they hear others with far stronger accents than theirs. I don't mind the accent but if they drop ts where they normally would not, I'll gently correct them, sometimes joking 'there's a time in butter t t t'

Kentish accent:

Raaahnd (round)
Raiowlway (railway)
Mewlk (milk)

DS has picked up all these. But none of the grammar mistakes "he done it" or dropping t's etc (which unfortunately even his teachers do). We correct those.

We're Northern. My accent is a hodge-podge of Lancashire-but-grammar-schooled and Lancashire-proper-Lancashire. However, I was taught not to drop Hs and Ts, to say 'where' not 'wur' and so on. I do still use the short a in bath/path. I can tone the accent up or down as I wish.

I'm doing the same with the kids. Basically there's nowt wrong with, well, a 'nowt' or a t'th, most people use those, but it's rarer to hear dropped Ts, for example, in a professional setting. You wouldn't hear 'wha'ever' in the office. One of my kids has started cutting words ending in Y short - 'silleh' instead of 'silly', and it sounds very jarring and not at all how we speak, so I correct it. Basically, they can sound like me - Northern, but not incomprehensible to others.

Or, as said above, I don't mind an accent but you can pronounce all the necessary letters.

I have an East London/Estuary accent. I'm able to speak 'correctly' (though I don't when I'm socialising with friends) but to be honest I rarely have to.

My mother does speak correctly, and I know that my 'accent' jars with her sometimes.

With regards to the "th" thfing...... I just don't hear it. 'Three' and 'Free' sound exactly the same to my ear - even when people are exaggerating it so that I can understand the difference.

I'm intrigued by those who don't think glottal stops are a feature of an accent. Presumably, then, there must be lots of people who speak with a Cockney accent but pronouncing all their Ts? Can't say I've ever heard one!

Actually there are! I do. The only time I wouldn't is if I were speaking to another Cockney.

We've a mate of ours who speaks 'correctly' all of the time - even when he's with us. God knows why as he gets totally ridiculed for it.

Interesting. Personally I couldn't add in all my Ts without also neutralising my accent at the same time.

It's the intonation though innit? And everyone has a telephone voice. You just sound like a Cockley trying to talk properly like. Everyone learns to modify their accent without thinking.

I love accents, and try to copy them. I can speak with my original accent, and I also speak with a neutral accent, should circumstances make that a sensible option.

The thing I find with the Kent/Essex accents, and some Scouse too, though not all, is the way they speak in their upper register. Interesting.

Agree with your DH. I'm a southerner living up north with my northern husband who had an extremely strong accent. (when he speaks to his friends, I struggle to understand him) I'm always correcting my children. I have many arguments about how 'scone' is pronounced ( it's not scon!) with my 5 year old! They may not like it now but they will appreciate it in the future.

Only when DC says ass instead of arse.

I hate kids and adults dropping letters on words. I'm a southerner and my husband is born and bred Yorkshire but he picks the kids up more on their dropped letters than me! I think it's better that they do pronounce words properly as to be it sound better and more cohesive so that's why we correct our children even though they are Yorkshire born and bred

I currently live in the black country (yamyams) and I do correct my DS's accent when he starts to sound a bit ermmm.....local?

Due to moving around a lot I don't really have any accent at all and I would much prefer him to be like that.

Christ alive, I've never heard such tripe.

There's no such thing as speaking 'correctly', or a 'proper' accent FFS. The Geordie accent is just as 'nice' as a Home Counties accent. I've never not got a job I've applied for, and I speak with a reet good Lancahsire accent. I say things like 'wur' for where and drop my Hs and Ts at work in my professional job and I live 200 miles south of Lancashire and have done for 20 years.

Dropping letters is a part of an accent. You can't separate pronunciation and accents because they are so interlinked.

This kind of snobbery is something I just don't come across in real life. If people are secretly judging me then, TBH, they can fuck right off back to Kensington.

WankersHacks, what is "a reasonable standard of speak" in your neck of the woods ?

My parents never corrected my pronunciation of th when I was younger. Mainly because DM was Irish and naturally pronounced it somewhere in between a t and a d, but also because by DF (home counties) worked away a lot. Subsequently I never picked up how to differentiate between free and three.

When I was 16 I ran into someone who realised I wasn't lazy but didn't know how. They'd been through speech therapy themselves and basically said 'touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth as you start to say three''. Penny dropped.

I wish my DF, who could pronounce it th had picked me up on it when he was home.

That was meant to say "speech" :o

I just mean without adding in slang and extraneous words and remembering to use all the letters in the word. Water is water, not wah ur.

Once they were at school and talking with friends they could speak how they liked, but they needed to know how to speak so they can be understood by everyone. As I say, they don't have a posh accent, they just speak generically Scottish without any particular regional variation. They can still speak as they like amongst friends but tbh they mostly just stick to their now normal pattern of speech which is fine for anything in life. I don't want them to be accentless but it's of no benefit to anyone for them to have a "local" accent which isn't mine or DHs and they probably won't stay here forever either.

I try to moderate the extreme bits of DS's accent. He will not necessarily live here all his life', and I feel he's likely to be taken more seriously as an adult without dropping letters, and mistakes in grammar.

Well, having just asked my 18yo DD about this she has the following to say.

"IMO I don't think it's being picky to be corrected as I have been corrected for my Leicester (Lestahhh) accent and grammar from the earliest possible time. I am now at the age where I appreciate the input from my parents as I believe people will take me more seriously being able to converse correctly. It also has made me feel more confident within myself. I actually pull myself up on it when I say the wrong words or say them incorrectly. Sometimes, when I hear my friends talking I think to myself, God, do I sound like that too?? I would do the same to my kids too!"

There is nothing wrong with talking correctly. If I heard her saying something wrong I would say the correct word and she would repeat it, willingly. One of my pet hates is when the locals say 'I'm going town'. No, you're not going town, you're going IN TO town. Lazy, lazy, lazy.

BTW, we're not middle class, but working class and proud, I just want the best for my DD and this is one way I felt I could offer her an edge over her peers for her future.

Toadinthehol "In fact, the reason why RP used to be considered the 'best' accent is - and this goes way beyond British shores - because it's much easier on the ear and easier to understand than most accents, particularly the weird patois that Londoners seem to affect these days."

Exactly, I am a proud Lutonian, a movement of people to Luton from London a couple of generations ago has left an accent similar to the one the OP describes but my family has long roots here so we don't share that accent. I have found it works well for me now as I work with children who have English as an additional language so it is important my speech is clear and understandable.

I correct my children when they are with me, they know I don't mind how they speak with their friends but I want them to be able to speak clearly if they need to.

I teach in a very rural area in the east of England. I do correct my own children's pronunciation and that of my class. I actually love the accent, but I've found that it's the colloquialisms that impact on their spelling and grammar ability. It's common here to speak "Fen" and so verb / tense agreement is often wonky ("I done that yesterdee") and words often misspelt as a result of speaking that way - I regularly get wunt for want, ent for isn't and sentences like "I gives her it yesterdee". In the past alternate spellings were embraced, pre-Johnson the language was a joy, but the poor kids have to pass the SPAG test whatever.