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.

I doubt it will stick. You just have to keep correcting it. But they shouldn’t employ staff without basic grammar skills, imo.

My children were trilingual very early on. Yorkshire, posh English and Estuary. It can be useful protective colouration.

It’s not snobbery to not want your children learning to speak incorrectly.

The nursery where my DD went was classed as outstanding but one area of development from ofsted was to make sure they were modelling correct grammar when speaking to the children. They were a wonderful nursery so unless you have further concerns I wouldn't worry too much. My DH is a teacher and he is still correcting the was/were grammatical errors in year 6. Plenty of time for children to learn proper grammar!!

@LetsNCagain I don't look down on them.. but isn't that bad grammar ? Surely educators should have better grammar than ' pass me them scissors ? ' ... again, I'm not saying my grammar is absolutely amazing, but ' pass me them scissors ' isn't good grammar..? Or is it ?

If was Vs were is normal speech where you live, then the staff who are normal people who live there will speak like that.

It's not Queen's (King's?) English, no. But I'm pretty confident in my and dh's ability to confer Queen's English to my kids.

What I need from nursery is attention, care, school readiness.

I think if you are worried that working-class will somehow rub off on your kids, you aren't confident in your own class markers.

This really is about class. People are trying to insist it's not, but it is

I agree.

It was very noticeable in dds nursery that we had a teacher from a different area the best one was when they all sang a song "when santa got stuck up the CHIMBLEY EEEEE BEGAN TA SHOUT" a lot of parents were put out I quietly pissed myself laughing

Nursery workers absolutely aren’t required to have perfect grammar, and most don’t.

Just keep gently correcting mistakes when you hear your daughter make them. You won’t be able to resolve this at all with the nursery because there just isn’t a solution there. But you are more of an influence on your child than her nursery teachers, so be consistent in correcting her and she will learn.

Wait till they get to secondary school!

Not to be a pedant, but since this is a thread about grammar, why do you put spaces around all of your punctuation marks? It makes your posts harder to read!

You never know, the cockmey plebs may pick up some RP stuff from your kid??

Works both ways

Couldn’t care less if you wanted to call me a snob - I don’t want my child saying pass me them scissors

😭😭😭😭😭

The nursery workers will come from the local area so will speak the local dialect with a local accent. Elocution lessons are not part of the training.

Move them to a pre-prep. You still get the free hours.

The local accent of the area you live in? Why would that be an issue?

I work for a call centre and a customer has said "hospickle" today. It makes me die inside a little every time I hear it.

Is is that deep? In that sentence it really doesn't matter surely?

Sadly, I don’t think elocution lessons are part of the entry requirements to earn minimum wage entertaining people’s young children.

Whilst it’s not ideal, I think if it’s a genuine problem from you then you’ll have to pull them from the nursery and/or put your hand in your pocket to send them somewhere more expensive/a prep school environment

Don't worry about it. It's not ungrammatical, to be picky about this. There's a historical difference that comes from earlier forms of English. Some of these forms had different grammatical structures, and the verb 'to be', being massively irregular to start with, has a range of different forms in the different dialects. You'll find this with pronouns as well. (Us books vs. our books, for example)

As far as your DC go, they will quickly learn what's appropriate for home/family/formal situations, ie what's standard English, and what's for use in the playground or with their friends, ie regional English. All children do this - it's a language skill known as code switching.

If the centre of power in the UK had remained in, for example, Northumbria, we'd all be speaking Geordie, and 'Hinny' would be the formal and polite form of address.

What’s a NED? I only know that as a non exec director, and they generally talk pretty well!

It’s often area dependent. I am quite well educated and was a young adult before I realised I said ‘them’ rather than ‘those’. Of course, I’d have never written it but was just completely used to saying & hearing it.

My granddaughter had the most awful glottal stop from nursery! My daughter didn't worry about it, but I encouraged DGD to lose it, and made a game out of it whenever she was with me. Now it's much better, and she even emphasises the medial 't' sometimes when she talks to me ("grandma, I went to a party yesterday. A PAR-TEE!") because it's fun now!