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!

My children grew up in a non-English speaking country until they were 6 and 4. They both spoke English with standard southern British accents (as do both DH and I).
We then moved to NW England - DC1 didn’t change their accent, and still sounds “southern”.

DC2 swiftly acquired a strong local accent but only used it at school/with friends, and would switch back to southern at home. As the years went on the school accent became quite a bit less broad, but you can still notice the switch ten years later.

I think it will depend on how much time they spend with you.
I have a Manchester accent and DH a Welsh one and live near London Both DS’ have no accent at all (I worked when they were little), DD has more of a northern twang as I was at home more with her when she was learning to talk.

My dc were all born in the outer Hebrides, now live in Glasgow.

I'm from the East Coast in Scotland and dh is from Northern Ireland.

They are all fairly "posh weegie" sounding, though ds tends to be broader than the girls.

They all also speak Gaelic with a Harris accent as that's where they first learned it.

I have a very generic/ colourless English accent (I get called ‘posh’ a lot), I’m married to someone who has a beautiful Scots accent (think Ewan McGregor) and our child has the broadest Scottish accent, he sounds like your archetypal wee Scottish Granny, and I absolutely love it ❤️

Mine code-switch pretty effortlessly between our regional dialect (learnt at school), DP's estuary English, a fairly smooth RP which is how I learnt to speak for professional reasons when I first arrived in the UK, and my more relaxed home language accented English (they do this to take the mickey out of me), depending on who they're speaking with.
Everything changes; vocabulary, syntax, even their voices. Amazing.

Very well-spoken Scottish. Think Kirsty Young or similar.

I grew up in London (fairly RP) but my vowels shorten as I cross the Runcorn bridge as my family is in Liverpool.

One of my kids is RP but the other 2 are more MLE (multicultural London English) which i once heard described as one third Cyprus, one third Jamaica and one third Walthamstow.

My children have the same accent as at me despite living in a county with a different accent and to most classmates. However their grandparents, aunties, uncles and cousins all have the same accent as I do so that may be why

I'm always surprised when people object to their children acquiring a local accent. It's a perfectly ordinary thing to happen. For instance, I know a family in London. The mother is American, the father is Scottish, and the children have London accents. Perfectly normal IMO. The children have never lived anywhere else. Why wouldn't they speak like their peers?

We are a bilingual family so that may influence my views. But I do think that the objection to children speaking in local dialects is often due to snobbery.

Kids speak my home accent with me, local accent at school and different language (and accent) with their dad - was a shock to hear them in school - didn't sound like my kids 🤣🤣

I'm American with an Irish Husband (who honestly pretty much just sounds American and has sine before he moved here.) We live in Chicago, where I am from, and our son has a Chicago accent.

Cedilla,
Which is a bit disappointing as he is called Carson, and so he sounds a bit vinegary when he introduces himself.

We're from SE Kent and have a local accent, maybe a bit smoothed over :) but Dd has lived in Belgium since she was 2 and her peers are all French speaking. When she speaks English she speaks like us.

My grandchildren are raised in the east midlands (think going dahn tahn, bath laff, grass all with a shirt a) but inexplicably talk with a southern accent! (Barth, larf, grarss).

I have a mild welsh accent and husband is pretty neutral
we live in south Manchester and the children sound rather too manc-y for my liking !!!

I live (born and mainly bred) in a place that borders three counties. Most people pick up that it's a northern accent, but cannot place it.

My adult child was born in Liverpool and went back there (after living most of their lives in the place I live) to university, and start there for 15 or so years. Their partner is from liverpool, but we all now live in the place I was born.

Adults child is neutral northern, with a smattering of scouse. But we can all pronounce "chicken" the Scouse way. If you know, you know.

I'm Irish and live in Ireland. I have a soft South Dublin accent and my husband has a soft Clare accent. I think my daughters will end up sounding like me.

There is no such thing as a neutral accent. People who are saying this just believe theirs is the default way of sounding. Speaks volumes about the class system in this country.

Depends where in Liverpool as we don't all have the Scouse accent. I'm from somewhere closer to Southport and have a generic northern accent like my mum. People have no idea that I'm Scouse.

My dad is one of three raised closer to central Liverpool. He has a partial Scouse accent, his sister sounds Lancastrian and his brother (who lives in Devon!) is extremely Scouse 😂

Seems it's a bit of a lottery!

Usually you'll find they get the local accent but it doesn't always happen, my DH moved from Essex to Durham when he was 4, he has a weird mix of northern/southern, his sister who was 1 at the time has a proper Durham accent

💯 the local accent from school. I've Nannied for 20 years with parents from all over the world. The children may start off with their parent's accent from being mostly at home. But once at nursery and school they have the local accent.

The reason I describe myself as having a "neutral Southern accent" is because I didn't pick up the Brighton / South Coast accent (when strong it is very vowel-y with few consonants). I would not say that I have a RP accent because I think that is a specific accent (perhaps described as "properly posh" - the Princess of Wales speaks with a RP accent).

He has a Barnsley accent. Thank god!

Before mine started nursery they had my north east accent. And then the accent of their first nursery. We then moved and they picked up the new nursery accent (verrrry different to the first) Spain vs Scottish! And they picked up the latter within 3 weeks.

A neutral RP accent like me.

IME children pick up the accent of their peers at school with maybe an occasional quiek from a parent. DH and DBIL both have RP accents, as did MIL, but FIL had a Yorkshire accent, They grew up somewhere where most people had RP accents but the local rural accent pronounced bath in a similar way to Yorkshire. DBIL says bath with an a like FIL, DH says bah- th, like MIL.