To be irritated DS is 'posh' like DH?

[highlandsabroad]

Ok slightly clickbaity title but please don't flame - supposed to be (sort of) lighthearted!

I am early 40s, DH early-mid 50s. We have 1 DS, who is 13. (who we both totally adore).

I am Scottish and from a very loving, but very ordinary background. My parents were a primary school teacher and a countryside ranger / handyman / tour guide.

DH is from a v. posh part of London and from a family where his mother was basically an heiress + his father a lawyer. They can trace their family back for generations and it's all a bit ridiculous. I don't quite know how we've ended up together but we do love each other. (even though he has voted Tory in the past)

I was stunned that as soon as our DS started talking, he's just sounded exactly like DH. Despite my best efforts to teach him how to use the short 'a' in words (e.g. 'bath') out it comes as if he's been living in Surrey all his life, and as if he didn't have a Scottish bone in his body.

We live in a European country where he attends an international School, which is private but has kids from all over the world, so it's not as if he's even surrounded by little Hooray Henrys.

The other day it emerged DS knows all the distinctions in importance for various noble titles and ranks of the armed forces etc because DH has essentially taught him all this stuff 'because he just ought to know it 🤔'

• *I have taken DS back to my home several times, which he agrees under duress is beautiful, but he already seems more at home in DH's world.

There are some differences in parenting as well - DH assumed we would get a nanny, despite only living in a flat and having quite flexible jobs, and he wants to send DS to some posh boys' camp in the summer (in the UK) that he used to go to with his brothers.

I love DH and DS but I am disturbed by seeing just how strong those English public school genes are from generation to generation ... and I can't quite understand how I, a proud Scottish highlands woman, have somehow contributed to this!

Haha my kids , who are all teens, often angrily tell me it’s my fault they speak posh… and that all their friends keep mentioning it. I’m just so glad they didn’t pick up their dad’s weird cockney speak. At least now everyone can understand them.

However, on the topic that a privileged person should just suck up bullying on class grounds, what would happen in the workplace if an employee complained about being bullied for his/her accent or other aspect of poshness?
Would they be told to put up with it because if all the advantages they have or would the grievance be taken seriously?

If it brings you over, @Barbadossunset, we will have an inspectorate for just that kind of thing in glorious Winterland.

I’m from the North west, husband South East, two DC, one pronounces words like me and one pronounces words like DH 🤷‍♀️
we live in the Midlands.

A reminder for those who need it that an RP accent is not an automatic indicator of privilege. I had an RP accent from a young age because my parents’ work was very unpredictable and we moved around a huge amount. I developed an RP accent as a survival mechanism as it was a lingua franca that enabled me to make myself understood everywhere, even if it got the shit kicked out of me.

It’s upsetting to realise that, thirty years on, there are grown adults who think that I entirely deserved that treatment because of their lazy assumptions about the way I speak.

I don't want any of my team commenting on accents. Whoever it was would get a bollocking. That goes for everyone, wherever they are from.

I don't want any of my team commenting on accents. Whoever it was would get a bollocking. That goes for everyone, wherever they are from.

Thats good to hear.

Sorry to be "that person" but generally, when people say RP, they actually mean Standard English. RP is a particular accent, very rare now. Like the Royal Family used to talk. Sort of "Brein" for "brown"....

If you want to be really specific, Standard English is the dialect and RP is the accent. What you describe is more often known as ‘upper RP’. Like most accents, RP has changed over the 20th and into the 21st century. It would be perfectly accurate to describe Fiona Bruce, Keira Knightley, and the Princess of Wales as RP speakers.

Snobbery is tedious and so too is inverse snobbery. I don't want people sneering at each other rather than working together

There is nothing wrong with "posh " - I think it gets incorrectly mixed up with snobby - people assume that someone perceived as "posh" is snobby which is not true.

However reverse snobbery is just as bad.

My son went to a relatively posh school. I like the fact he can live in both worlds. I'm a bit like that except I am more comfortable with middle class and working class than middle class and upper middle class.

He never puts anyone down or talks down to people. His football team mates used to call him Waitrose boy because he had a bag from there for his football kit. He was great mates with them though.

Your son won't become an unbearable hooray Henry because he's partly you and because your DH chose you as his wife.

I come from somewhere that has no real accent so am often considered posh (northern posh) but my dad's side were refugee immigrants and mum is scouse working class, the problem with applying snobbery mz inverse or otherwise, is you have no way of knowing if you base it purely on perception of accents.

It is also shit to treat people like shit for any reason.

Speaking as a posho, there are ways in which some of my fellow poshos sometimes behave which means they deserve everything-and more- than they get. And this obviously applies mostly to adults- but I do have to say to children too, unpopular though that though is. Privilege means you have responsibility too.

Oriunda. Yep definitely an American influence in the accents/language of a fair number of non English speaking kids at international schools.

Don't despair! There's always the chance that your posho kid might go all mockney (like Sam Thompson, on I'm a Celebrity) when he hits his student years.

Sending your child to posh private school in France and then being disappointed your child is posh and not Scottish is…..interesting logic. He’s not getting a well rounded education in being exposed to a range of people from a variety of background. He’s not going to feel a strong Scottish identity if he doesn’t live there. How much time does he spend there?

Instead of thinking about what your husband teaches your son about his background, have a think about what you do help your son connect with your background. If he’s naturally closer to his dad, you may have to work harder. It depends how much it means to you.

I was raised by 2 very culturally different parents from different continents. (Neither were posh!) I identify with both because they made a huge effort. They didn’t keep me away from one side of my background and then criticise me when I had limited understanding and knowledge of it.

Yep. And the attempts to get it into Classics (‘Then DSIS says 'oh God, you've created a little public schoolboy' which sent shivers down both our spines... ‘) are cringe worthy.

NRTFT but I (single mum since day one) have had one boyfriend since I had my kids. I’m middle class. Slap bang in the middle. Teacher/accountant parents and I’m a teacher. My boyfriend was a working class builder. He could not let go of how my kids spoke/what they knew/what they ate etc etc. It ground me down. Mainly because provided my kids are a) happy and b) kind (which they are) I just don’t care how they speak/what they know/what they eat. We broke up, and a huge part of that was he cared way too much about our respective so-called class differences, manifested in my kids. If your kid is happy and kind then the rest is irrelevant.

Get him to watch old episodes of Rab C Nesbit & tell him that's how normal people live 😆!

Oh God - take the advantage for him! I wish I knew how to be posh, fit in & grasp opportunities afforded the posh without getting oiky and chip on shoulder about it!
My DD, now 21, was born in London (Tottenham, nowhere posh) and though we moved back oop north (Midlands) before she was three, insisted on barths and grarss (though obviously never had a "muhffin" till she was here!) And has moved back to London as soon as she could.
Your only option is to teach your DD what you consider Scots survival skills so he can blend seamlessly from metropolitan trustafarian to rufty tufty Scots crofter (or whatever) with chameleon-like skill that gets him picked up by MI6 in his first year at Cambridge.

German was my mother's first language. Neither of us grew up speaking with a German accent as no-one else we mixed with sounded like her. My dad was London born and bred so apart from my mum we all spoke with a South London accent because that was where we lived.

DH is from Northumberland and we met and live in Yorkshire. When DD was little she spoke with a strange hybrid of South London and northern accents. She would say booss instead of bus and barth for bath. Then she started school and picked up the local accent. I remember her being confused when going over the alphabet with her. I said U for umbrella, she said "mummy you are saying it wrong. It's OO for oombrella"

When she went to secondary school the other children said she had a posh northern accent. It was more to do with not using the local dialect and using proper grammar that made her sound different from the children whose parents were local born and bred. She just has a generic northern accent as does DH (because when he first went to university no-one could understand him). Even though I have lived in Yorkshire for over 40 years I still sound southern.

I was born in England but raised in Scotland. There are some fantastic books written in broad Scots, give him a book of Rabbie Burns poems for Christmas lol. Teach him about the Lochness Monster. There are fantastic gifts on a site called pureminted You need to make him interested in your heritage so pull out all the stops. Unfortunately his schooling is going to make him a posh boy. Teach him how tae gie it laldy 🤣

I lost interest in your post when you said you were trying to dictate how he should pronounce his letter ‘a’. Sounds like he speaks better than you to be honest 🤷‍♀️

Do you think regional accents aren't speaking properly then?