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Original poster

Moving to Scotland in a few months - will my children lose their accent

104 replies

HumanDemands · 01/08/2022 21:06

As the title says - moving to Scotland (Glasgow) in a few months from South West England with my 2 children age 8 and 3. I know my 3 year old will end up speaking with a Glaswegian accent but my 8 year old? Not bothered either way but curious to know :-)

OP posts:
HerRoyalNotness · 02/08/2022 01:27

Most likely. My eldest can put on different accents though. To my family we all sound American. To Americans I sound where I’m from.

Jenpeg · 02/08/2022 04:01

PocahontasMcGinty · 01/08/2022 21:21

Maybe not real, broad, Glaswegian. Might get the Glasgow Uni accent depending on where you are living and who they go to school with.

That's worse.

🫣jazzwegian

BigBessie · 02/08/2022 04:30

We moved from the South East to the North west when my DS was 7 and he's now a teenager with a totally Southern accent. Not a single hint of a Northern vowel

Piglet89 · 02/08/2022 07:22

@EL8888 my pal moved from Ireland to England at 8. You can mostly here London in her accent but there’s still a hint of Irish!

Accents tend to “set” around 8 so your son might keep some of the accent he has now. I also Think it depends on the person and the extent of their natural propensity to “pick up” and mimic the sounds around them.

bullywee · 02/08/2022 07:29

Depends where in Glasgow tbh. I'd argue that there are several Glaswegian accents - some better than others. I have the worst 😂

ItsDangerousInKingsmarkham · 02/08/2022 07:31

They probably will a bit but tbh my 4 year old is born and bred in Scotland and has a proper full on English accent. It's weird. Too much Peppa Pig I think 😳

FeelingwearyFeeelingsmall · 02/08/2022 07:40

Like most of us they will probably have 2 accents. The home one and the playground one. My mum was born in Ireland to Irish parents so started life with an Irish accent. When they moved to the U.K. she got a scholarship to a very posh school and soon developed an RP accent. She has lived in London ever since and the RP prevails. However as soon as she talks to an Irish family member, even on the phone, the Irish one comes back - even after over 70 years in the U.K.

WhereAreMyAirpods · 02/08/2022 07:45

There is not one Glasgow accent. We don't all speak like Rab C Nesbitt.

We live in a suburb of Glasgow where there are loads of people from all over the place. One of DD's best friends moved here from Surrey when she was 11 (8 years ago) she has a bit of a mix of Scottish and then sounds very English when she says some specific words. The school they go to has loads of children with all different accents and this is not unusual, some will change to fit in, others will retain their accent - especially when their parents are English. We have friends who are both from Northern Ireland and speak with a Belfast accent - even though both of their kids were born and brought up in Scotland, you still hear elements of Northern Ireland when they speak.

Fairislefandango · 02/08/2022 07:47

It depends on their musical and auditory ability. I'm very tone deaf and did not pick up a different accent after moving at 10.

I don't think that's necessarily a reliable indicator tbh. My ds has a really good musical ear and good hearing and is pretty good at imitating accents. He didn't change accent at all when we moved from SE England to NW 8 years ago even though he was only 6 and still sounds fully southern at 14.

TheLoftHatch · 02/08/2022 08:18

I read that if a person is more musical/creative, they tend to pick up accents more easily. That's definitely true with me! I'm a musician so I'm sort of 'tuned' to sounds around me and usually within a few hours of being with someone with a strong accent, I can hear myself stating to pick up little traits. I lived in Canada for a while and after 18 months, you'd have thought I was Canadian! 😀

neverbeenskiing · 02/08/2022 08:34

Honestly it probably depends how their new peers respond to them. When I was 10 we moved across the country and on my first day in my new school several kids (and even one of the teachers) made fun of my accent. So I 'lost' my accent and picked up the new one very quickly out of self-preservstion.

Mercurial123 · 02/08/2022 08:37

Depends my dad was born in Glasgow but moved to England 50 years ago, he lost his accent.

bullywee · 02/08/2022 08:49

WhereAreMyAirpods · 02/08/2022 07:45

There is not one Glasgow accent. We don't all speak like Rab C Nesbitt.

We live in a suburb of Glasgow where there are loads of people from all over the place. One of DD's best friends moved here from Surrey when she was 11 (8 years ago) she has a bit of a mix of Scottish and then sounds very English when she says some specific words. The school they go to has loads of children with all different accents and this is not unusual, some will change to fit in, others will retain their accent - especially when their parents are English. We have friends who are both from Northern Ireland and speak with a Belfast accent - even though both of their kids were born and brought up in Scotland, you still hear elements of Northern Ireland when they speak.

That's my accent 😐

HaveringWavering · 02/08/2022 10:12

TheLoftHatch · 02/08/2022 08:18

I read that if a person is more musical/creative, they tend to pick up accents more easily. That's definitely true with me! I'm a musician so I'm sort of 'tuned' to sounds around me and usually within a few hours of being with someone with a strong accent, I can hear myself stating to pick up little traits. I lived in Canada for a while and after 18 months, you'd have thought I was Canadian! 😀

That is interesting because I would say that I am also very attuned to the subtleties of accents and indeed one of my favourite pastimes is listening to accents on TV and working out where people have acquired them. I'm also really sensitive to actors doing bad accents for a part! (Scottish is the worst, there are some absolute shockers out there. Mel Gibson wasn't actually the worst).

However, for me, this means that I am hyper-conscious of my own accent and never succumb to subconscious mimicking if the accents around me. My Granny used to say even after 20 years that I sounded like I had never left the town where I grew up, and my English husband will testify that I don't get more Scottish when speaking to relatives.

HaveringWavering · 02/08/2022 10:16

It helps that my Dad was a radio newsreader so my brother and I were drilled in speaking with clear diction and correct grammar, while my Mum was a bit of a snob so we were discouraged from using lots of slang. That means that I speak naturally in a way that non-Scots can understand, albeit with an instantly recognisable Scottish accent.

wonkylegs · 02/08/2022 10:22

Possibly but it might also be a consequence of age.
When we lived in Newcastle DS had a strong Geordie accent (we don't) because of the people he spent time with at nursery & school when we moved to Darlington he lost it, and doesn't have a particularly 'local' accent now it's fairly neutral. DS2 has the odd darlo twang but it's not that distinctive of an accent and we don't speak with it at home.
I think it's easier to lose it if parents don't have a strong accent. DH has a generally neutral accent with a touch of Yorkshire (where he grew up but also where lots of his patients come from)
I am very neutral although when I'm drunk or with my family there is a touch of Bristol and my family say some of my pronunciation is definitely more northern now.

PinkPair · 02/08/2022 10:27

HaveringWavering · 02/08/2022 10:16

It helps that my Dad was a radio newsreader so my brother and I were drilled in speaking with clear diction and correct grammar, while my Mum was a bit of a snob so we were discouraged from using lots of slang. That means that I speak naturally in a way that non-Scots can understand, albeit with an instantly recognisable Scottish accent.

I can identify with a lot of this @HaveringWavering
My mum was brought up in Glasgow to non-Glaswegian parents. She and her siblings were sent to elocution lessons their entire childhood!
You can imagine how she spoke and how we were "allowed" to pronounce words growing upGrin

Jules0702 · 02/08/2022 10:32

Maybe not. We moved to the UK from Canada about 9 years ago when my dd was 5 and she still has her Canadian accent.

CraneVille · 02/08/2022 10:33

Not necessarily. My 6yo has lived ten miles outside Glasgow all her life, Scottish Mum, Irish Dad. She doesn't have a Scottish accent, it's very neutral but verging on English.

We blame too much cBeebies and YouTube during lockdown.

It also depends where they will go to school in Glasgow, especially in the West End where some of the schools are quite multi cultural.

Krapom · 02/08/2022 10:38

I moved to greater Glasgow aged 12, never left. In my 40s now and still have my English accent. My Irish mum left Ireland as a child - in her 70s now and still has her accent. Interestingly, neither of us are particularly musical and don’t have a musical ear. My siblings and hers (who are musical) all picked up the accent of the area they moved to. I do wonder if there is a link.

Shgytfgtf111 · 02/08/2022 10:40

Other way round but my grandma moved from Motherwell when she was 18 and lived in England until she passed away in her 90s, she never lost her scottish accent.

LadybirdDaphne · 02/08/2022 11:13

I moved from southern England to the northwest aged 7 and became bi-dialectical: bath (short a) at school and baaarth at home. Now I've sort of settled at a mixed accent that no one can quite place. It's definitely baaarth all the time now but I'll do a short quick northern 'a' in words like jam, bag, man. I'm quite a good mimic in general and drift towards accents I hear around me.

My daughter is 5 and we moved to New Zealand just over a year ago, she still sounds mostly English but 'this' is definitely 'thus' now Grin

RufusthefIoraImissingreindeer · 02/08/2022 11:19

We moved south from Scotland when I was 8 and my brother was 5, neither of us have a Scottish accent any more

Both my parents were from Liverpool so I don't know if that's one of the reasons we lost it so quickly, though my mum pickwd up a few Scottish words

I do have a wee bit of my parents accent though....or maybe it's a holdover from Scotland 🤔

Ciela · 02/08/2022 12:07

My DH DGM moved from Barton on Humber, Lincolnshire to London for general nursing and then midwifery training when she was 16. She lost her Lincolnshire accent and ended up speaking with a nondescript southern accent.

DGM ended up living all over the world as her DH was in the army. After 23 years DH retired from the army and they moved to West Lothian as that is where DH was from with their two teenage children. They lived in West Lothian from the early 1960s to 2016 when DGM then a widow moved to Windsor. Both DC still spoke with Hampshire accents they gained after their DF had a posting there when they were 6 and 8 years old. DF spoke very properly though with an obvious Scottish accent unless he had been drinking when he slipped back to the Whitburn accent of his youth. DGM was the same and always spoke with a nondescript southern English accent unless she had been drinking when the Lincolnshire accent would become pronounced.

CannibalQueen · 02/08/2022 12:48

Probably not. Loads of English folk live round here.....how do I know they are English? They might moderate their accent to fit in a little better at school but revert at home. It's not something to get worried about.