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!

Hopefully it will change!

Dh and I are from the North but have lived in London for 20 years. Ds1 speaks with a local accent. Ds2 uses our flat vowels for bath and grass etc. I don't know if him being home more aged 6-8 due to covid or linked to his asd means he's been less affected by how his peers speak and more by how dh and I do?

We moved Southern England to west coast of ireland and youngest child was 1. Now 8 and she has very much a well spoken English accent though a few words ate becoming obv irish accent sounding. Older kids have picked up a bit more though still told they are very well spoken. Oldest had picked up the strongest accent but has done so with effort to try and fit in more!

I think some people just pick up accents more easily than others. My parents were from North Wales and moved to Bristol when they got married. My brother and sister had Bristolian accents but I always sounded more like a mixture between my parents and West Country. I got teased at school for sounding posh. 🤷🏼‍♀️

I moved at ages 6, 11, 13 and 16 (back and forth between different parts of Scotland and England) and have had a variety of accents in my time! Nobody would believe I used to have a Scottish accent and I can't do one on purpose, but if I spend enough time with Scottish people it comes back.

When I speak English to French people in France, my husband says, I sound like Antoine de Caunes in Eurotrash. God forbid we should ever go to Germany, maybe?

I moved to the NW from Herts when my daughter was 7. I've been here 19 years now, and neither of us have any trace of a northern accent. She lives back down south now though. I had my son a year after moving here, and he's northern through and through.

Who knows? I was 7 when my parents moved to Scotland and my brother was 1. I was instantly bullied at school for having an English accent so within a few months developed a Scottish accent which has stuck.

My brother despite not even being able to talk when we moved there has always had an English accent.

I have relatives who have very broad Yorkshire accents - never lived anywhere else and all family are the same. Apart from their 2 children, who both have very different American accents - apparently influenced by Tik Tok!!

I was chatting to a French lady in French on an SNCF train once and she said she 'knew I was Swiss' because of my accent. I hoped she meant Geneva but I suspect she was thinking of Zürich.

I was Scottish for about an hour after watching an episode of Still Game, Having fun with Two Doors Down these days.

We moved with an 8 and 5 year old from south to north.

8 year old, (now late teens), kept the southern accent totally unchanged.

5 year old, now also a teen, has a southern accent for home and extended family, (even though some extended family actually live nearby and have a northern accent themselves), but speaks in local northern accent to local friends and at school.

Will be interesting to see which accent will prevail at university!

The Black Country accent is wonderful and I doubt that's the reason he was overlooked.

You're not from the Black Country, are you?

I do think some people can change their accent exceptionally quickly. I have a pretty middle class sounding London accent but that's because I moved to a posh secondary school and took that on. If I'm with my old school friends I talk like them. I was on the phone to DDs teacher on Friday and she has a very broad cockney accent. By the end of the conversation I had to actively stop myself from talking like her. It sometimes happens so fast it looks like I'm taking the Mick out of someone.

Provably won't be as broad. My parents were from another part of country but raised in North. I always had twang but never a thick accent

I do this. So do quite a a few people. Mostly we can't help it.

Yup. It's not something that can be stopped unless you actively look out for it and try to.

What you'll find is that Northerns always think they sound posh but Southerns think they sound Northern 😂

By next week your child will be speaking like Coronation St.

Our kids spoke RP at home and fluent Glaswegian at school.

It gives you a massive advantage to be eloquent and speak with a refined accent (not a horrible posh drawl, just clear RP). People who speak in complete sentences, with a pleasant accent, are listened to. I have observed this again and again. The minute they open their mouth, they command respect. It’s incredibly important to speak well, and to teach your children to speak well. Like it or not, people don’t listen to bad speakers. Schoolchildren should be made to read aloud from good books every day. They ought to read the dialogue in Jane Austen, Oscar Wilde, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, etc.

If you want examples, watch YouTube clips of Peter Hitchens, Christopher Hitchens, Stephen Fry, Maggie Hambling, Jonathan Miller, or Martin Amis being interviewed. All are wonderfully eloquent. In particular, watch Peter Hitchens on Question Time. Although he’s controversial, and often disliked, he’s such a good speaker that even his enemies hang on every word.

I can tell you for sure, their accent will change 100%. Don't move to an area if you have children and don't like the local accent.

I brought up my daughter to speak "properly" with the correct enunciations in the area we lived in (The Midlands) and her father took on the local dialect after he left his middle class home when he went to uni (his family were poshly spoken. He and I split up when she was three and I encouraged her to use the right tone and pronunciation throughout her childhood. Her school friends had the local accent and it didn't rub off on her at all. Now she is an adult, she carries on using the same accent. So, yes, it your child can still retain their southern accent as long as you encourage them to keep on using it, although it is up to the child on whether they actively want to keep it or not. They may over time lose it if they feel the need to "integrate" in their new social settings.

My children have English accents despite living in the US since they were toddlers.

I think it really varies depending on the child and how they want to identify. You’ll just have to wait and see.