Teacher dialect

[MaverickGooseGoose]

No doubt I'll make a mistake on this, Sod's Law and all that...

All the SLT and from what I've heard a lot of the teachers speak is sard east London dialect.

Free / three / roof / ruth / we was etc.

It's grating on me, if Roof was on the roof and needed free pounds to get off but her mum was coming to get her where was she going?

I understand dialect / colloquialisms but some of what they say/write doesn't make sense.

Anyone else as irritated as me? It's the same
on the radio now, the guy on capital is giving away free fousand pounds for free. Argh.

Absolutely

Also the th/f thing makes learning to spell significantly harder - my daughter keeps writing “f” instead of “th” for many words, and then asks me “is it F with a T and a H or F with a F” when spelling words like think.

"We was" is a dialectic variation if enough people use it though, I would argue. It's hardly new. I remember hearing it on Grange Hill in the 1970s : "but miss, we was only necking" etc.

Does it hinder your understanding other than a slight delay from jarring? If not, I wouldn't sweat it.

It’s a regional accent and is perfectly acceptable in spoken language. I’d expect teachers to model standard English grammar, with any accent in their spoken language, and to use standard English in written communication.

I think you’re being disingenuous to suggest you don’t understand what someone with a British regional accent is saying (unless it’s a very strong variety spoken by a very small rural minority for example) - and it makes you sound like a snob.

F for Th is accent. 'We was' etc is dialect. It is what makes this country even slightly interesting, these differences over a small area.

Stop being snobs about it. Your children will learn to converse with a variety of people without expiring.

It's rarely confused me, just because it is not often an uncommon name like Ruth get mentioned in the same sentence as roof. Same for three and Free- they just aren't words that are commonly used together in in a similar enough context for there to be actual confusion.
There aren't many words where pronouncing the Th as F makes a seperate word that is contextually similar- like Thought does sound the same as Fought but within a sentence its pretty easy to know what someone is saying.

I feel the same about posh southern accents and Spa the relaxing place and Spar the corner shop.

I love the different dialects in the UK, and nobody should be ashamed of where they come from. I just sometime cringe at grammatical incorrectnes:

You was
Should of
Haitch

I'm a teacher with an accent but I pronounce all the letters phonetically.

Then you must sound deranged, because English is not a phonetic language.

Quite possibly failure to appreciate the ramifications of this and build them into teaching accounts for a large part of why our literacy rates are relatively low for a country well into its technological industrial wave.

I assume that this massively snobby post refers to a school? It's just that it doesn't actually say so ...

London has a variety of accents, I'm from West London where we speak with the "Middlesex Drawl" which incudes glottal stops. I now live in Birmingham where they have islands and buzzes. Stop judging accents/dialects

🤣I just took S1 for their jags on Monday. The drama 🙈.

Splinter is pish. As is drain - it's a stank FGS.

I read a fabulous article about the use of the c-word (too many sensibilities on here to offend!) in Scots as a term of endearment.

“We was” there’s no excuse for I agree “We was” or “we wor” is part of the local dialect round here, as well as things like “i’ll be out from 2 while 3”. It might be part of Received Pronunciation (King’s English) if a different region of the UK had been in the ascendant at the critical time in history.

F for th isn’t regional, it’s just lazy speech.

Or English as a second language! I need to consciously say "three" and not "free" etc.

Different people speak in different accents.

Shocker 😳😳😳

What a snob.

I think there is a great difference between spoken language , written language and grammar & dialect.

So saying f for th but knowing how to write it down - or "Would of" in everyday language but knowing it is "would have" writing it down I don't think dialect is the same as an accent - so friends of mine used to refer to going on a message - for which I would say - going on an errand, but that was how they referred to it. That to me is dialect - different from accent.

I think accents can be lovely , being able to write properly is a basic life skill I think ( ha ha Ernie Wise - this play what I wrote )

I was going to say the same. 🤣

@RiktheButler I was also confused as to what on earth the OP is talking about. All teachers? The ones in her kids' schools? It was the odd use of determiners in the OP. Ironic really.

Just a few musings here...

Why is "free" unacceptable from south Londoners but "tree" from Irish/french/whatever is ok?
And rhotic/non rhotic? I mean I'm Scottish and I don't look baffled every time someone from England fails to pronounce the letter R like me.

I can't get massively worked up about people (even teachers) speaking in a regional accent/dialect as long as they are discussing and modelling standard English where appropriate. I teach English as a foreign language so this comes up all the time! I love teaching regional expressions, discussing the equivalent in the students native language and then going over appropriate usage. It's living a language!

My parents made sure I didn't use 'f' instead of 'th' and I'm grateful that they corrected me each time.

I'm partial to the glottal stop, but since I had my child I make sure to pronounce my 't's properly in the hope of modelling the language correctly.

I might be a snob, but I am relieved that I've never had to worry about my accent.

Because that's your accent @Girlswithgoodbodieslikeboyswithferarris. I'm referring to a London accent though, where it isn't an 'immaturity', it's part of an accent. Similarly to th for s being considered an impediment with British accents but is part of an accent for Spanish people.

But you are worrying about your accent, because you're worrying enough to pronounce t 'properly'...

Regional accents are just as proper, they are just different.

I do know some Irish people who weren't allowed to say 'tree' instead of 'three' when they were growing up. Apparently it was perceived as 'common' in those circles.

A Geordie friend of mine was highly critical of Cheryl Cole's accent. I'm a Londoner and I don't dislike Cole's accent, but again my friend seemed to perceive it as a 'common' accent.

Possibly the same way that they learn to spell all the other words that don’t sound the way they are spelled.

I think I read the same one - after I highly offended an American by calling my partner a “cunny funt”

Most people can code switch though , if they want to be understood in some exchange with officialdom. Pronunciation can bleed over into writing too however.

I remember seeing something called 'Quta Panda' on a menu in Homerton. Not an endangered species of bear but a large burger. Hardly the cafe guy's fault. He was Cyriot and that's how he always heard it said. Variety is the spice of life I guess.

It’s only part of the accent because the immaturity wasn’t corrected in many people, so it became the norm.

I suppose the equivalent is Scottish (or maybe just Glaswegians- other Scottish people feel free to correct me here!) using “how?” instead of “why?”

We lived in east london for ages and the children picked up ‘we was’ etc from nursery. Sometimes the staff would say to the child ‘what was you doing?’. Once out of earshot I used to correct them and say ‘what were you doing etc.’