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.

Really grim

Accent is not the same as dialect.

Free for three, roof for Ruth, etc is an accent. It’s very common in Estuary English, which is the accent of much of the South East of London and down into Kent and Essex. It is snobbery to take issue with the accent of a teacher.

Dialect is a different issue. ‘We was’ may be a common feature of a local dialect, but it is not our place as teachers to teach local dialect. Our job (former English teacher) is to teach formal standard English. So even if you naturally use a dialect form of English in your everyday speech, you should be making it clear to your students that the dialect you use doesn’t follow the forms of standard English grammar.

There doesn’t need to be a judgement attached - there’s nothing wrong with speaking using a regional dialect - but it’s important that students know and understand the difference between regional language constructions and standard formal ones.

I would say the grammatical error that I see most frequently employed by teachers is the use of the reflexive ‘myself’ when ‘me’ is meant. I have no idea why people do it except for perhaps thinking it makes them sound more formal. It doesn’t. It makes them sound like an idiot. ‘Myself and Mr Smith will be organising this trip’ or ‘Contact myself for any more information’. It’s a reflexive ffs. It can only be used when you’re describing something you have done/are doing to your own body. ‘I washed myself’, ‘I stopped myself before I said something I’d regret.’ Every time I see it used incorrectly it sets my teeth on edge!

That would be wrong where I am. Aunt rhymes with can’t.

The way you are pronouncing it isn’t phonetic either - it would be pronounced like “au” in “fault” - so more like ont.

children's books which rhyme "scarf" with "giraffe"

Whaaaat? How?? Scaraff? Jarf?

And don’t get me started on the internal panic I have if I see the name Karl/Carl on a register!

It’s interesting, as someone not form the UK originally, how some accents here are seen as ‘common’ or lesser. Cockney/ Essex are the worst. If your accent is ‘posh’ it seems it doesn’t matter how interchangeable the vowels are in your accent, but if you use the glottal stop you must be stupid and held up for ridicule!

I know when teaching I was far to hard on my attempts at ‘h’ at the beginning of words, and I had a habit of ‘z’ instead of ‘th’ if I was lazy. I also forgot to use the definite article at times. I never had a complaint though, unlike the cockney sounding staff.

Sc-arf
gi-rarf

Its not just me, its millions of southerners. Im not saying its better. You asked how else could it be pronounced and thats the way many pronounce it so thats how else it is pronounced. No one says it with the 'au' sound like in taunt anywhere ive been. If i was doing a spelling test I would put words in a sentence if they sounded the identical otherwise its entirely reasonable to spell the wrong one. Like tail or tale.

Oh that extra "r" thing. I never understand that. (Never understarnd thart?)

Ooooh so much of all your privilege of growing up somewhere that doesn’t have a ‘common’ accent is showing.

Southern English people say

scaaaaaaaaf and giraaaaaaafe.

I know. Weird, right? Like those endless threads where they think farm and palm sound the same too. And let;s not get started on them whacking a "r" sound where there's not one, like rhyming Hannah and spanner.

The teaching assistants at DD's primary school all said "I seen" and "I done" and "what was you doing?" Thankfully DD already knew not to say any of those but the vast majority of the kids did, and still do in year 8. DD said her English teacher is still trying to drum into them that it's not "I seen/I done"!

The teaching assistants at DD's primary school all said "I seen" and "I done" and "what was you doing?"

Now, that is just lazy.

One of our copywriters says "you was", but her written English is perfect. She is just speaking with the local dialect.

It’s just sloppy and I’d expect better. Mine had a TA teach the class that accept is pronounced ass-ept the other day. But that’s what you get when you pay minimum wage and require zero qualifications. State education in the UK is dire and gets worse by the minute.

Okay, but it’s hardly worth being “appalled” over like the previous poster said, is it? Southern English accents aren’t the default, despite what the media etc make you believe.

YABVU. I'm from the South West and we all drop our Hs and pronounce Th as F. It's definitely regional - in fact, speech and language therapists are not allowed to correct it because of this. It would be the same as telling a child from Yorkshire that it's "bahth", not "bath"

No im not appalled in the slightest. I love english and its variations.

Every one of those things rhyme.

Rubbish,
Neither my DH nor my DD 25 can pronounce TH. We have spent lots of time teacher DD to pronounce TH and still can't do it
DH is a south Londoner, I'm North London and now live Herts borders. DD and she speaks well apart from the TH.
It's a speech impediment and also London Dialect that has spread to Essex as the Cokneys moved out of East End.
There is an interesting chapter on East End dialects in the Call The Midwife book

The F/th thing (fing?) is just a local accent. Hardly anything to be irate about. Loads of accents pronounce things "wrong" to my ears. Thank goodness we've moved away from RP being the only way to speak!

Grammatical differences are slightly different although spoken English does different significantly throughout the country in that respect. Written English should always be correct unless it's representing speech.

They do in some accents, but not in others. That's the point.

Well it was not really a fair comparison then was it?
As not everyone in South East London knows how to speak standard English, for many reason, as I have already stated.
Perhaps many of the people on here have the privilege of not understanding the anxiety one can feel when they do not know the correct terminology and pronunciation of words when speaking to somebody more educated than themselves.
It is not helped by being mocked, scorned and judged.
I had to teach myself how to speak ‘correctly’ and always have such anxiety when speaking to teachers, doctors etc , panicking that I am making myself look stupid.
I am pretty well read and spend a lot of time around well educated professionals, so learnt (and continue to learn) from reading and listening to others over many years.
But it is always something I have to think about and does not come naturally to me.
So it is very triggering when people make ignorant remarks.

www.researchgate.net/publication/331381007_Chapter_22_Fings_to_Come_Standard_British_Pronunciation_Today

"In recent years, the replacement of /θ/ and /ð/ with /f/, /v/ and /d/ has become common among younger speakers across Britain, and it may occasionally be heard from television presenters. It’s not yet considered a standard feature, but this may change in future."

It's not "lazy" speech, it's learned speech, if that's what you're exposed to as a child. Language changes. The variety of English pronunciation that so many of you are so sure is correct wouldn't have been thought correct 25 years ago, and won't be thought correct in 25 years time.

Scarf rhymes with giraffe in my accent (non-rhotic r and long a). This is because I am a 50-something southern English Standard English speaker. My Scottish friends use a rhotic r and a short a sound on giraffe so the words would not rhyme.

Hannah and spanner rhyme in my accent but not theirs.

Neither of us are wrong or right. We just have different accents.

F/v for th (as in thing)/th(as in this) is developmentally typical at age five, and this would not likely need treatment by a speech therapist. Some have mastered the sound, many have not. This is totally normal and accepted in speech therapy, though it may not be widely known by general population. It's like someone complaining a 2yo has said "dat" for "that" - it's part of typical development.

Many wouldn't treat f/v for th at older ages as it's considered by some as an acceptable variation, thought some might if it was interfering with life or causing distress

Also, standard southern English isn't the same as RP, and northern vowel forms are valid variations.

A teacher should model correct sentences, so writing "Johnny done good" in a book isn't ideal. And if the "ant/aunt" anecdote isn't made up, the only thing the teacher did wrong was not indicate which word she meant as the kids were then set up to fail and inevitably went for the obvious spelling, and certainly the teacher shouldn't have been annoyed.

Saying haitch instead of aitch isn't an example of incorrect grammar though, is it?

Aitch is considered correct in many English dialects but this is not universal. In Ireland haitch is the version used. Children are taught haitch in school and if a child speaking in the local accent said aitch they would be corrected. This is not an error on the part of teachers as haitch is the correct form here.
The teaching of phonics is a bit different too - the rhotic accent means the r is pronounced in 'er', 'ar' etc.
However, I'd expect an Irish teacher who moved to, say, London, to be aware of these differences and to adjust their teaching accordingly. Likewise, I'd expect someone with an English accent to be aware of these differences when teaching in Ireland.