To ask what accent your kids have?

[BackDownSouth]

Just curious to hear from other families where the children are exposed to a range of different accents from birth. I’m from Manchester (have a very strong Manchester accent, like a female Liam Gallagher), my partner is from Eastern Europe, and we’ll be raising our baby in Liverpool.

Is the baby likely to pick up a mixture of me and my partner’s accent, or will they pick up the Scouse accent from nursery/school and their friends? I’d rather they picked up the local accent just for the sake of fitting in. Me and my partner both find the “Oooh, you’re not from ‘round ‘ere, are ya?” exhausting 😂

Maternity leave has me bored so I’m thinking about this a lot!

And the odds realistically when 3% of the population have a RP accent?

People (sadly in my opinion) want to claim they have a RP accent because they seem regional accents as less desirable.
It’s the same as their perceived ‘neutral’ accent. Their accents may not be as strong but they absolutely still have an accent.

Actually, there has been a lot of discussion of RP but I am not sure that that many posters have described their accent as purely RP, although some have used it as one of multiple descriptors eg RP with some Wigan vowels. It would be interesting to count up how many have described their accent as purely RP but not interesting enough that I can be bothered to do it 😂

I would expect there to be more MN users with RP accents than 3% because the MN demographic is slightly skewed, it doesn’t represent the general population. I also wouldn’t expect any thread to be representative of the general population because there are multiple factors that will influence who will choose to post. It is not a random selection of the population. I mean I’m pretty sure if I posted a question about interpreting statistics, nearly all the posters would get it right. A bit like how 99% of MNer’s DC get 12 9s at GCSE and 1% fail pretty much everything that may be a slight exaggeration. It doesn’t mean that those posters aren’t telling the truth, it’s just that those that choose to post are more likely to be those whose DC have done well or need advice because their DC haven’t made their grades.

I said something along the lines of "modified RP", because I don't know how else to describe it. I'm not even totally sure what an RP accent is—is it how the King talks, or an old-school BBC newsreader voice? Because those are very different from each other.

Where I'm from, my accent was considered sort-of posh, but when I went to university and encountered actual posh people, from That London, they thought I was Welsh.

A lot of people now have quite diluted regional accents, because people are growing up with so many audio sources beyond their local area. At the same time, actors and broadcasters are not trained to use RP anymore, because it's fine to have a regional accent and be on the telly / stage.

It's very rare to encounter younger people who speak in a "clean" RP, probably because speaking "correctly" isn't a thing most people care about anymore.

You also need to take into account that not everyone on here is from the UK.
Very little chance of finding someone with an RP accent where I live, or with a GCSE for that matter 😁

One kid has lived in the UK, California and Costa Rica. The other has only lived in California and Costa Rica. Both parents are British. Our kids sound sort of British/sort of US. When they are at home with us, they have stronger British accents. When they are with their friends, their accents are closer to US accents. They sound like local Costa Ricans when they speak Spanish. They both have British senses of humour though!