Children repeating bad grammar they hear at nursery

[caughtinthesnow]

My little one is 2 and a half and I've noticed she repeats some grammatical errors. She definitely hasn't heard them from us..

The main one I've noticed is ' was ' instead of ' were '.

I know it hasn't come from us, because that's how the nursery teachers speak and write too...

It's not ideal is it? Has anyone had this issue with nursery or school ? I would expect a school teacher not to make grammatical mistakes like confusing was with were, but I don't know. I wouldn't have expected nursery teachers to make that kind of mistake.

Hard disagree.

I grew up on a south London council estate, single parent family, went to comps etc.

I fucking hate the misuse of 'was'. I'm not a snob, it's really grating for a lot of people.

And the facts of life are you're going to be marked using language like that, it will hold you back. It's not like an accent, like Geordie/Brummie etc.

Don't talk bollocks.

I wish it was bollocks. They were proud to only live and breathe of football, and never set foot inside a gallery / museum.

This thread is hilarious!

🙄

So all working class people have bad grammar? How fucking offensive is that?! I was born working class and my mother would never have tolerated bad grammar, regardless of how my teachers or school friends spoke. To be working class is not to be poorly educated.

Agree… I think the most offensive thing about this thread is the people equating bad grammar with the working classes!

One of my neighbours moved from London with her grandchildren. I had only ever heard the grandchildren speak with a London accent until I picked one up from a friend where she said goodbye and thanked the host in pure Yamyam.

She then got in to the car and spoke to me in her London accent.

TBH I find it fascinating how small children’s brains have clearly grasped one grammatical rule (simple past of a regular verb) and then mis-apply it to an irregular verb!

Lol I'm just going to assume this is sarcasm

DS1 hadn't got as far as grammar at 2.5. His speech delay was starting to show up and a year later he was under SALT. His main linguistic influence is me and he mainly has a diluted version of my non-local accent. DH's different non-local accent doesn't get a look in. When he started school, I could tell which words were used more frequently at home and which were used more frequently at school from the difference in northern/ southern pronunciation.

DS2 is more socially orientated and has a stronger local accent although he'll switch to mine mid-conversation and suddenly words like "grass" will switch regions.

Model good grammar and vocabulary.
Read together as much as you can.
DS2 is dyslexic and finds reading a slog, but gets a lot out of audio books.

Local accents and dialect aren't a bad thing, but it's very useful to distinguish between conversational and formal language. But that's a skill well beyond toddlers who are still picking up the basics.

@SnakesAndArrows , another lovely one I heard of recently - after a GM was urging a Gdc to ‘Be quick! Be quick!’ - ‘I AM bequicking!!’ 😂

Ha! See also “I am being have” when being told to behave. I think that was my little brother - it certainly became a family saying.

Not quite the same, since little brother was an early and avid reader, so often mispronounced words he’d only ever read.
Most ‘famous’ of which was ‘Gribble-ayter’ (as in The Rock of Gibraltar)
We still call it Gribble-ayter!’

It's part of language acquisition. They start with one word, then two and then they repeat what they have heard.

The mis applying is because they are learning the rules but some parents worry they are going backwards.

Funny thread.

Reminds me of the parents who complained the nursery was giving their child a northern accent. (The nursery was in the north of England).

My parents did not want us to have accents and picked us up on every dropped letter. I sounded like a bbc radio announcer. When I went to the local comprehensive I was singled out for my posh accent and was bullied mercilessly.

Most nurseries are staffed by young women on minimum wage working 40 hour weeks with a ratio of 8 children to 1 adult, 11 children if they have achieved a level 6 qualification. It is an exhausting, stressful and often thankless task hence high turnover. Rather than sneering at them because they "don't talk proper" maybe hire a nanny or look after your children yourself although be aware that grammatical errors are frequent and perfectly normal during speech development regardless.

Everyone has an accent. A "posh" English accent is actually really strong because it's so strongly non-rhotic compared to most native English speakers.

Something often retold in our house was how I recited the colours of the rainbow as 'blue, indigo and violent'. Apparently I also responded 'lager' when asked what came out of a volcano.

I hope that doesn't make me sound working class. We was middle class and would go museum a lot (albeit via the back door, our NE accents weren't permitted through the front despite our dialect predating many of the exhibitions by a thousand years or more).

😂

Ah wait til they move to Liverpool and say "I'm going The Asda" like us heathen lot 😆

I say Haitch too😊. As do most people in the NW city where I live.
I honestly couldn't care less how someone pronounces Haitch / Aitch.

There’s something about people saying Haitch that is like nails down a chalkboard to me.

My son speaks with a quite strong Lancashire accent and certain words and phrases that come with that- because shock horror- he lives in Lancashire!!!!

Also are very much working class and have been to at least 4 museums and one art gallery last year. We have also been to the ballet.

Hmm better keep my working class, Lancashire accent self confined to the football clubs and labour clubs. Don’t want to offend the upper classes now do we.