Child's accent

[thatstheviewfromhere]

Just moved from down south to way up north where the accent is very broad. 8 year old currently speaks in a posh southern accent - will that stay the same or will their accent change over time? I know nobody can say for sure, but fun to know other people's experiences!

I think sometimes it depends on the child. My son moved to Cambridge from Yorkshire when he was 2 but still speaks with soft vowels like us whereas his older sister sounds v posh like a local now! She is a lot more interested in fitting in and adaptable socially whereas my son is more take it or leave it

Moved up north from London when I was five and my sister was two. My accent is way more southern than hers.

The Black Country accent is wonderful and I doubt that's the reason he was overlooked. He would be better off learning some confidence and resilience to cope with anyone he thought was putting him down. He needs to do that for his children too instead of making them feel ashamed for picking up a local accent and not having enough money to live anywhere else.
I absolutely love the variety of accents we have in the UK and find them a talking point . I have had lovely conversations with total strangers who have heard my accent and want to tell me their memories of my area. One particular conversation was with an elderly man on a train going to Croydon who turned out to have been sent for rehabilitation to a stately home very near to my home town in the North during the war. He was over the moon to talk about it so many years later. Accents are connections 👌

It will change. I used to spend every summer holiday on my granny's farm in Ireland. I would come back with an Irish accent every year.

I was SO posh when I was younger it was unreal. My mum went to a grammar in a deprived area and the nuns had a big thing about them sound RP, so I spoke similarly. As I got older, like a PPs kid I watched a lot of American Tv and got some touches of a US accent.
When I went to secondary school I learnt the local accent to avoid bullying but honestly I wasn’t very good and it didn’t help much so I didn’t stick at it.
As an adult I’m ‘well spoken’ with occasional Americanisms and occasional local accent phrases.

Most likely change, at least to some extent. Which indicates a good ear for languages :)

We moved to kent when DD was 3, from Hampshire. Her accent is definitely turning gradually more "kent" (she's almost 10), but not as much as some of her "born and raised" friends - or her kent born brother!

@Sluj accent discrimination is a real thing, I think that poster knows her husbands own experience a bit more than you do!

Im from the north west and was told I need to watch my accent at work as people from down south can struggle to understand it 🤨

Mine changed. Moved from Oxford to Bolton age 10

My children's stayed pretty much the same but took on elements of the local accent. Even mine has changed a bit, though I already had an accent no-one could pick due to my own childhood move and how that affected my accent.

But it's how you deal with it! I have my own Northern accent and been living in the Home Counties for nearly 40 years now. You need to laugh it off and prove any misconceptions wrong. Maybe first impressions play a part but it's up to you to show the real you.

Also the OP had been very disparaging about the place she lives and their accent, this will be rubbing off on the child and reinforcing these stereotypes she says she hates so much.

Moved from Birmingham to the SW at age 6 and lost brummy accent but did not pick up the local one. Defaulted to a sort of bland accent. Strangers assume I’m from London.

My cousins moved to Australia at around the same age and they sound like born Aussies now.

Looks like it can go all ways though, from the anecdotal evidence in this thread.

Congratulations on your move!!

Probably ,I was speaking to.a boy Ds1 used to be friends with last week they go to the same school but have different friendship groups now.,they used to be friends when they were much younger ( they are 16 now) his family are polish,and they e!migrated when he.was 4_or 5 he used to have a very strong Polish accent ,now he sounds like a Boltonian through and through.😂

My aunty is from stoke and lives in Scotland. All 3 of my cousins born in Scotland, and stay I. Quite a common rough area. Eldest 2 18/16 completely Scottish the youngest is 6 and has the most English accent I've ever heard and it's not like it's a stoke accent lol!

Mine changed - I moved from the south to the north age 9. But it only temporarily changed. I moved back down south in my 20s (London) and I have no northern accent anymore (beyond bath/grass - I don’t say barth/ graaass). Feels a shame, I like the northern accent where I half grew up. But it doesn’t feel like “mine” and I almost feel like I’m faking it when I talk in it.

Yes I did exactly this! I switched as soon as I got home from school - not all the way, but mostly.

It's such an odd thing , but my 3 have my accent. It's not a pronounced accent. Just a bit northern.
None of them have picked up the local accent which I would not mind at all. We are now in the Midlands.
Their Dad has a northern specific place accent and they don't use any of his dialect.
No idea why it has happened.

My children were “bilingual” when young and we first moved away from the south east, then reverted to more or less RP as they got older.

I moved areas quite a bit as a child and now I quite often have people telling me they cant place my accent (its quite a mix). I also find it changes depending on who I'm talking to, and I have an embarrassing habit of unconsciously copying the accent of the person I'm having a conversation with (I really don't notice when I'm doing this). I also know people who have kept their original accent despite being fairly young when they moved areas though so it's all individual.

& it sounds like her DH has done well so I don’t get what your point is? His pov is that it’s an extra barrier that he doesn’t want his child to actually need to break down if they don’t have to. It’s fair enough.

Although it’s funny, my dads Irish but doesn’t have an Irish accent. An Irish woman told me some words I say give me an Irish twang and I do use some words that I didn’t realise were only used in Ireland.

There's lots of reasons accents change. Sometimes it's because of an unconscious need to fit in/not stand out and sometimes it can be because a person is musical/creative and again unconsciously mimic what they hear.

I'm from the UK and we moved to the US when I was a pre-teen. Within 6 months you'd have never known I was from England. When we returned to the UK, I was treated like some kind of glamorous celebrity at sixth form (due to the perception that everyone who was 'American' must be in Hollywood! 😂) and I hung on to that accent for as long as I could!

Interestingly all these years later, people tell me I still have a 'twang'.

It will change,my children were born in Wales and we moved towards Bristol, my eldest has quite a Bristolian accent, my middle one lives in a northern city and sounds like the local accent to us, but south western to his wife, family and friends. My third has a local accent but with Welsh intonation.

I was brought up in South Wales and now have blended accent which is almost but not quite RP.

I have a friend from Edinburgh with what seems to us southerners, quite a Scottish accent. She's not lived in Scotland for over 20 years. However I always know when she's had visitors from Scotland because her accent changes after a weekend nattering.

We have a friend who is from the South, she moved to Birmingham and had children who have only lived in Birmingham but corrects the children to make sure they don't get brummy accents (tells them to say grarse instead of grass). Seems a bit of a weird thing to fuss about to me!

We lived in a non-English speaking country and my DS had that sort of ‘mid-Atlantic’ English accent. We moved to northern England when he was 8 and he now has the local accent.