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.

How dare people with working class accents be in leadership positions! Without even disguising themselves!

On the contrary, employing the glottal stop is a bad habit I picked up with my friends. I grew up with an RP accent, thanks to my parents.

I always use RP in a professional environment. I just need to avoid lazy speech at home (and yes, I know that glottal stops apparently take more effort than just saying the 't' - to me it still feels like lazy speech.)

Are you actually serious? What an absolutely disingenuous post. If I was a betting woman, I would put money on the fact that the vast majority of people who mispronounce th as far, do so as a bad habit and not a speech impediment. Furthermore, while many other languages don't have the 'th' sound as we have it in English, they are generally able to put their tongue between their teeth and make the sound when they have to. Just as many Brits and Irish learn to roll their 'r's when speaking certain foreign languages. I think this is the silliest thing I have read in a long time.

I believe it can be both! Children don’t usually acquire the ‘th’ sound until a bit later, after the ‘f’ sound. But for some children this may be part of a speech delay/disorder, but for some children that’s just the accent their parents speak in 😊

Correcting regional variations leads to depletion of language, ultimately.

Check out YouTube videos of the old buddies talking eg Yorkshire or lowland Scots dialect. None of us even know what those words mean now, because we've lost them. They used to exist and we had the benefit of them, but now they don't, because words don't exist if people don't use them. They especially don't exist if people are told to stop using them on pain of being economically/financially penalised.

So I am wary of attempts to make us all sound the same.

🤣😅😅

Best wishes for your daughter, I empathise greatly with the long wait lists!

I get quite wound up about the f for th argument - I don't use f myself, but I know its origin goes way back. I did a place name course once, and it had an example. In East Kent there was a local lord, known in Old English as a "thengel". That is, received Old English pronunciation. However, after Hastings, the posh speakers of OE had disappeared, eaving only the common folk to tell the scribes of Domesday the name of his place, Thengelsham, so it got recorded as "Finglesham". (Look to see what one thengel lost. Iwww.danegeld.co.uk/uploads/6/5/6/2/65621811/s749518301978605088_p220_i2_w640.jpeg)
So the Kentish accent was doing the "f" for "th" back in the 11th century. And if it had become the default accent, "f" would be standard, and folk would be nit-picking about "th" instead.

You're an RP speaker? One of the 2%?

www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2022/05/25/received-pronunciation-old-new/

Not even the younger generation of royals are RP speakers now.

Fir crying out loud, I don't think people can help their accents

I can remember coming home saying "ta" as that's what my teacher used to say. My dad was not impressed.

Where do people say "we done"? I've never heard that before.

It's nothing to do with their accent, it's mispronunciation and/or grammatically incorrect. Teachers (I am one) should be modelling correct grammar. YANBU.

OP , you're a snob.

But we DON'T want to all sound the same! I'm very, very proud of my language and the dialect of it that I speak. I don't want to lose the words my mammy spoke that I now teach my children. I also don't want to lose accent. What I do want is my children to be able to speak their language and dialect as WELL as Standard English. I also want this for the kids I teach who will be disadvantaged if they don't learn Standard English: they don't learn it at home, so it's my/ the wider school's role to teach them this.

I'm a Scot who speaks with a very middle class accent southern Englisjh accent at work as I work only with foreigners. They understand me and all is well. If I am speaking with Scots I sound completely different. To communicate according to what the listener needs to hear and understand is very important. Always. I don't think it undermines me or my colleagues. Nevertheless there is a difference between accent/dialect and grammar. Some grammar is just plain bad and in schools children should be taught, for their sake, correct grammar.

When I worked in teacher training I would highlight it whenever I observed a lesson. It's basic subject knowledge. Nothing to do with accents.

ODFOD

I agree with OP. How can I be a snob when I want to furnish my pupils with the ability to communicate with everyone/ not be disadvantaged by not being able to speak in Standard English? I can assure you you wouldn't understand a word of the Scots my pupils speak in the East End of Glasgow. It's not snobbish for me to want to give them every opportunity I can.

Go check your privilege.

Hear hear!

I don't think OP is questioning ehat us being said. If children hear that, and write like that, the school is failing them!

My 5 year old was referred to speech therapy when she started school because she still wasn't able to make several sounds, th being one of the most challenging sounds for her (she would say free for three). She needs speech therapy because it is fundamentally incorrect and a mispronunciation of a standard English sound. It isn't an accent!

Is saying " we done good work" etc accent it just pooor grammar?.. Surely Someone educated wouldn't say that

This!
absolute snobbery.

@WhatTrophy "

We get that also lots of" we was going " etc.

I've lived all over UK and never experienced that we was thing... Is it rylan on the radio?

But they're teachers! They're supposed to be teaching you how to pronounce words correctly.

And accent is predominantly vowel sounds. Dialect is different words for things eg bread roll/bun/