Correcting Dh’s grammar in front of dd because she’s starting to pick up his way of speaking.

[CocoDeMoll]

I’m not a snob in any way, seriously!!

My dd is 5 and she now attends a little local primary where there are lots of kids from v MC backgrounds and I don’t want her being picked on in the future because she says things wrong. And for the record my own spelling and grammar is shit so I’m not judging.

She’s says ‘them’ instead of ‘those’ as in ‘can I have some of them tomatoes’ and other stuff like that because dh does. Dh doesn’t realise this isn’t correct but doesn’t jump down my throat if I say it isn’t so he’s pretty decent about it. I have no issues with accents or dialects but I feel like down the line she might get further ahead if I correct her from saying stuff like ‘so I tells him’ to ‘so I told him’. AIBU?

[GabsAlot]

i have what u would call a typical cockney accent it got worse as i got older my df used to try and make me ponounce all my words properly

grammar was always ok though -but accents lave them to it

[NataliaOsipova]

I'm sure it's because people don't read. I'm forever banging on about this to my bigger DD; when you read, you absorb the spelling and the phrasing subconsciously a lot of the time. If you know what a word looks like, it's hard to get it so badly confused with another ("specific" and "Pacific" being a very good example of this!).

[Passthecake30]

I correct my kids grammar, and my dps if he says phrases/words that I don't want the kids to repeat. Luckily he's fine with that as he doesn't want the kids to pick up his manner of speech (double negatives, "ain't", "narf" dropping letters etc).

I may be a snob but some jobs actually rely on good diction so if I can help I will.

[Aintnothingbutaheartache]

Trouble with my prostrate 😳

[NorthernSpirit]

Bad grammar drives me mad.

I’m a Northerner living in London and the term ‘I done it’ drives me potty!

Keep correcting!

[Thesearepearls]

What you have posted is very interesting from a linguistic perspective

Modern theories on linguistics are VERY serious about NOT correcting. There are many problems with correcting. It can harm confidence and it can harm and inhibit learning (and lead to speech problems) because most children will self-correct.

I corrected all the time because of course I knew what the right form of language is (my first degree is in English). So I thought I was doing the right thing by correcting. But my friend who is a professor in linguistics and my daughter who is doing english language acquisition at University both tell me that correcting is wrong and have explained it to me in depth. So I get it (now).

Which seems to me like an analogy for parenthood. Sheesh, you can't do right for doing wrong.

[NataliaOsipova]

Trouble with my prostrate 😳

Kings Cross St Pancreas always makes me smile.....

[TheFrendo]

CocoDeMoll,

Class name!

You are doing the right thing. But, once you start, you may well notice heinous grammatical crimes everywhere.

e.g.
‘Can I get a ticket.' should be 'May I have a ticket'

[colditz]

if you're not careful, she will be common to spite you

[Aintnothingbutaheartache]

It’s like saying ‘quinoa ‘
People will judge

[NataliaOsipova]

But, once you start, you may well notice heinous grammatical crimes everywhere

I'm not known as the Lynne Truss of the village for nothing, I tell you....! (I'm ashamed to say that I really liked her idea of carrying a marker pen and a bad of stickers to correct rogue apostrophes when out and about!)

[Aintnothingbutaheartache]

Ooooooh colditz you said common🤣!

[Prinkley]

If another adult repeatedly corrected my grammar, I'd think they were very rude and would probably not want to spend time with them again.

[Aintnothingbutaheartache]

thefrendo some are worse than others

[AjasLipstick]

Nothing wrong with it OP.

I have done the same over the years and my DC are 14 and 10 and both speak well now. They have bland accents now due to a move to Oz but don't say "them tomatoes" as a lot of people did in our home town. I've also explained there's nothing wrong with that accent but people...SOME people...will judge.

[Thesearepearls]

Hang on there are two separate things here

It is fine to correct adults in the almost entirely vain expectation that they will learn

It is NOT fine to correct children

Which brings me to the point that if you cannot correct children without harming them and if you cannot correct adults without offending them (plus they don't learn, trust me) why bother correcting at all?

[Aintnothingbutaheartache]

Because then we’d all end up talking shite 🤪

[SandyY2K]

You're right to correct her.

I get irritated with spoken grammatical errors and they can become a habit.

The double negatives seem common.

"I didn't see nothing"

And using the word borrow incorrectly.
"Can you borrow me your xxx"

[SummerIsEasy]

Better that you correct her at an early age, than that she is made to look foolish in her later years at school, then possibly uni as well.

My children speak "proper Yorkshire", but also learned to use the correct grammar at an early age. For the record I use lots of colloquialisms in my day to day speech, but know how to "write and speak proper English" when it is important.

As adults they can now distinguish easily between the local version and the correct English that they needed to use writing essays and giving presentations in front of other people.

I explained all this to my DH when the DCs were very young and he agreed totally, so long as he wasn't the one being corrected and just continued to use his own local dialect and grammar. Children can easily work out the difference.

[Prinkley]

Some people KNOW the correct grammar and use it in more formal environments like work, or in writing. But informally and in informal written communication like text messages sometimes use incorrect grammar on purpose along with slang and dialect. I know I do.

[Rebecca36]

Saying "Them" instead of "Those" is just so wrong. If you explained that to your husband you might find he stops it.

Another thing that is quite common nowadays is using 'of'' instead of 'have', eg 'couldn't of', 'wouldn't of'. There is also 'bored of' when it should be 'bored with'.

You're right to ensure your daughter uses correct grammar though I wouldn't correct her in front of anyone else. It's nothing to do with accents or dialects.

[Blackbirdblue30]

There is nothing wrong with learning how to speak your mother tongue correctly, quite the opposite. Mistakes will end up ingrained and written down. There are plenty of people in the world who don't get to become properly literate. The child is lucky someone's correcting her.

My bugbear is 'been' instead of 'being', e.g. 'He was been naughty'. It's like you don't even understand what you're saying. It sounds so thick.

(I won't date people who don't understand the importance of 'your'/'you're).

[Thesearepearls]

I don't think language acquisition works like that

But correct away if you want to. I have to say the knowledge that language acquisition doesn't work like that has given me a massive sense of freedom

I used to worry about the fact that my kids occasionally forgot the past participle. I mean why would they say such a thing as "Because I text Fred". But the thing is now they are both adult children they both would know that was grammatically incorrect and would automatically say "Because I texted Fred" They acquired that themselves.

[Maelstrop]

I corrected all the time because of course I knew what the right form of language is (my first degree is in English). So I thought I was doing the right thing by correcting. But my friend who is a professor in linguistics and my daughter who is doing english language acquisition at University both tell me that correcting is wrong and have explained it to me in depth. So I get it (now).

I think you’re right and they’re wrong. Consider how children learn: constant repetition and correction. I remember a family I knew asking that people didn’t use words such as “Ta’ and “doggy” to their child. At the time, I thought they were a bit silly, but it makes perfect sense, why teach one word then have to re-teach?

I come from somewhere with almostnotquitea dialect. Going into my first teaching job, the kids relentlessly picked up on colloquialisms/words pronounced differently to how they said them.

I was amazed at my uncle’s girlfriend saying ‘Oos her think her is?’

The OP is correct to challenge her DH, IMO, my DH does it to me. My accent is now very neutral but occasionally I’ll exaggerate a word and he’ll leap on it!

Accents are fine, poor grammar is not.

[imip]

Dh and I are Australians and live in East London. Our dcs have different accents, but they tend to use tenses wrong (the incorrect use of ‘sat’ instead of ‘sitting’ drives me wild). I also pull up on incorrect pronunciation of words - I’s do that with Australia colloquialisms also -it’s nothing to do with the local accents.