To correct my toddler's speech (nicely)

[glitterjellybean]

NC for this. I have a dd coming up for 2 years old. She's bright and happy and her vocabulary is coming on in leaps in bounds.

Her df and I see eye to eye on pretty much everything except one thing. Speech.

Bit of background, and as much as I hate labels, dh is very working class (as in he's a total grafter with a common accent) and I'm from an upper middle class family where I was corrected to say the full words and names not abbreviate. If my mum heard me say the word "telly" she'd come back from the dead to tell me off 🙊.

It started off when she was small with my utter refusal to the whole "say taaaaaa!" thing. She now says please and thank you anyway, so it seemed unnecessary for her to learn two ways of saying it.

Now this last week "yes" has turned into "yep" and I keep (gently) saying "no xxx we say yes".

Dh thinks I'm being stuffy but I've never been turned down for a job in my life because I speak (in his words) "posh" and I'd like to give our dc as much of a chance as possible in life.

Dh is constantly getting annoyed because people judge him on his accent and the way he speaks, and we even had an incident in a posh cafe the other week where a patron made a comment loudly about "letting anybody in now". So surely if he's had issues like this he wouldn't want his kids to go through the same.

Lol this is a bit more detailed than I was expecting but as long as I'm doing it kindly and constructively (and not in a way that's demeaning) it's not a bad thing to speak "correctly"?

Derxa true maybe but in voiceover terms I'd describe it as neutral. Not sure what you'd call it otherwise!

I correct my two (4&5) husband will say (eg) one two "free" and I'll pick them up on that as that's so hard to relearn later!

Well, if you speak as well as you write I don't think you need to worry about people thinking that you're posh. I really hope that this is a joke otherwise someone is a deluded snob.

Wendaliciois the 'th' is a really late sound to emerge and at ages 4&5 a
'f' is an acceptable substitution. I've worked with a few children who have overgeneralised the 'th' so that for example, fingers becomes thingers and it's a nightmare to
Correct. Please model rather than correct at these ages .

Model back what you want them to say. So if they say 'cor blimey I couldn't arf murder sum jellied eels guvnor' gently model back 'Gosh, I am famished. Where is cook with the tea things'
TheFirstMrsDV: thank you, that is really funny, plus you've concisely cut to the core of the matter.

What is a perfect English accent?
Patrick Stewart! (using either RP or his original Yorkshire accent). Perhaps Davis Warner.

Dh is sarf lahndan and cannot hear or speak the difference between th, f, and sometimes v.

Deaf and death genuinely sound the same to him, and he says them both the same. He is actually now incapable of saying the th sound.

So i have overemphasised the th. Anytime dc used f i's say the word back, looking straight at them, with big mouth/tongue movements so they can see how you make the different sounds. Seems to have worked

No one from an upper middle class back ground refers to any cafe as posh.

I need to know which cafe this was.

Just repeat the correct way of saying something to a child "Oh, it is a nice window isn't it"

Agreed, Lynette. Also, the chances of a genuinely UMC woman marrying a working class man whose accent she despises are vanishingly small. From what she says on this thread about her husband, "good schools", wanting the best for her children being linked to 'speaking well', accents, and 'posh' cafes, I would place her as aspirational LMC.

On a more serious note, when will you English folk get over this? And how do foreign accents fit in to this hierarchy?

I'm a resident foreigner, make, but class is still such a determinant here, it's not possible to live here and not be aware of it. Because of where I'm from, and the fact that I'm a native English speaker, I automatically get classed as WC, but I don't imagine many English people who don't speak good French and have spent time living in France, say, would be able to determine social class in a French speaker.

Haven't RTFT and am late to the party, but wanted to high five you as a fellow "say taaa" refuser. DS is just over 2yo and has been saying please and thank you properly for months. I don't see the point in teaching him to say something twice.

If you truly were upper middle class then you would definitely say 'telly'.

Using an 'f' sound instead of 'th' is a perfectly acceptable feature of accent. There is nothing wrong with it! My best friend at school did it - it is called 'th fronting' - Estuary English accent. She's a doctor. No problems with her achievement or progression there.

Well, if you speak as well as you write I don't think you need to worry about people thinking that you're posh. I really hope that this is a joke otherwise someone is a deluded snob.

Yes.

If your post was about your daughter picking up your husband's poor English, I'd have quite a lot of sympathy. As it is, your English is average and in this context raising a class issue with your husband of all people (I can't even imagine how I'd feel if my husband did this) seems terribly petty.

For those who are commenting on my written English, I am sure that I have certainly made a few grammatical mistakes whilst typing on here. Without the chance to edit and the joys of autocorrect/stream of consciousness typing it can happen sometimes.

I bet it'd shock you all to know that I'm actually a copywriter and freelance writer by trade nowadays. 😂

Anyway, I digress. I have got my answers and will make positive changes. I'll also stop teasing my husband too. Hopefully he'll also stop teasing me too.

Copywriters/writers need editors, though, don't they (tautology in your final sentence, btw )?

What a ridiculous thing to say user
Of course someone can jump from WC to MC.
MC is is probably the only class you can do that to.

If someone goes to Oxbridge, adopts the habits and mores of the people around them an works in certain professions of course they can be MC.

You can't do that with WC and you certainly can't do that with UC.

@multivac Very true!

I'm finding all this talk about 'class', as if it were an actual thing, with fixed, universal rules, quite bizarre, by the way.

Like it or not it does exist in our society.
Its obnoxious and fascinating in equal measure (IMO)

I like being WC and that seems to be seen as a lack of ambition.
But people who think that must think that being WC means being poor, stupid and unhealthy.
I don't think it does mean that so I am happy to remain WC and for my children to be WC too.

YABU

You sound twattish

TheFirstMrsDV

I struggle with 'class' to be honest.

I does exist in the minds of comfortably, born-to-it MC and upper-MC people. And the way they judge is largely by accent. I am pretty sure (although it may be my residual 'chip') that some people are quite surprised by the content of what I say because they've already decided something about me based on my accent.

It only exists for the people who want it to exist, for whatever reason. And those people define it as suits them. It's not an objective reality.

I think you've nailed it Bumwad. I could chunter on for page after page about speech and language facts but Mnetters' certainties about their innate linguistic superiority will remain. You want your children to have non-regional accents so they will do well in life. That's fine. I like the sound of the DH in the OP. He sounds like a diamond in an ocean of dullness.