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!

We live on the border of Oxfordshire, Warwickshire and Northamptonshire. DH & I have slight local accents. I went to the girls grammar school followed by college in Buckinghamshire. When I started work my accent was quite posh apparently. DS goes to agricultural college in Northamptonshire (10 miles east) & has a very local accent. DD goes to a good state school in Oxfordshire (10 miles SW) and sounds as if she’s from the 1930’s, her friends sound similar to her too

We are south east so DD has a very neutral accent (she is 20 months) but over Christmas we saw relatives from the midlands and she is now saying "baby" with a Brummie accent 🤣

My cousins moved from Scotland to Lincolnshire when they were young. They spoke with a Scottish accent when at home and a Lincilnshire one at school or with their friends.

To the West Country? I was born and raised there. I just spoke like my parents.

I do have an accent. You would immediately recognise that. What I find odd is that you believe I wouldn’t think you have an accent.

I didn’t say that I don’t have an accent. I described my accent using a recognised term 🤷‍♀️

Anybody with an RP accent has worked to achieve it. Most kids pick up local accents so if you don’t sound like the people you live amongst you have consciously worked on sounding different.

Of course anybody who has an RP hasn’t “worked to achieve it” 🙄 My accent comes from my parents and peers like everbody else’s accent. I sound like the “people I live amongst” and the people I grew up with. Very few people deliberately change their accent. People do sometimes subconsciously change their accent slightly to match that of the majority of speakers around them, they don’t “work at it”.

Mancunian x Welsh!

Oh you were born there? I assumed you moved as an older child as you didn’t pick up the local accent.

Interesting one. DH and I have generic posh southern English accents and we now live in Glasgow. Used to live in Shropshire until DC1 was 5.

At nursery and in reception DC picked up a strong black country accent for phrases she'd learned at nursery and had our accent for stuff she'd picked up at home. When she moved to Glasgow (lockdown) she lost the Black Country and went through a phase of reading with a Glasgow accent while speaking with a slightly more northern version of our accent, and now mostly speaks Southern British with a smattering of local dialect phrases (similar to me).

DC2 was 18 months when we moved, now 6, can't quite place his accent, probably more Glasgow than his sister, more natural use of dialect phrases. To be fair I haven't heard him at school as I suspect he code switches and blends more at school. DC1 doesn't seem to code switch yet, suspect she might when she wants to as she definitely has an ear for accents.

Your child doesn’t have a neutral accent. They have a SE accent.

Yeah sorry, you're gonna have a kid with a scouse accent if you stay there.
My friend was working in Bolton and her ds started picking up the Bolton accent in nursery, she moved him to a nursery nearer home in Cheshire 🤭

No, that's why I say not all children will have local accents even when their peers do, because some will take their parents' accents.

I know I'm in the minority but that's how it went and people on these kind of threads often say children always talk like peers rather than like family.

Ha ha. So funny. Because speaking like you’re from Cheshire makes you so much better! The land of coke dealers and lip fillers, so cultured

@JackGrealishsCalves tell your friend my gifted and talented kids who - gasp- have Bolton accents - could run rings round her Cheshire kid. Let me guess she lives in a shitty newbuild near Northwick

I've noticed more and more kids in recent years speaking with an American twang they've picked up from youtube/tiktok

Oh sorry. I didn't know that was incorrect. I saw someone upthread describe similar so thought I'd copy. In that case, I am unsure what a neutral accent even is.

Your child is a scouser and will have that accent. But, I bet, he will be able to mimic bot you and DH's accents.

What an awful thing to say.

North London. Lots of "T"s being dropped here 🙄

My family of 4 all had different accents! In rural Wiltshire. My mum was north Devon, dad west Cornish (a difference not necessarily noticeable to the untrained ear); DB at tgd local secondary spoke what you'd now maybe call 'Ampshire/Estuary, 'Wa'ah' for water, to my parents horror 😄, I spoke RP possibly because it was encouraged at my Wiltshire grammar school. We were locally mocked for being posh 😄

I have muddied the waters by marrying an Australian, an accent you never fully lose.

I sometimes mistake an Irish accent for certain American ones and vice versa. Of course I know it makes sense, given the emigration to the US.

@JacquesHarlow The voice tends to go up at the end of every sentence as well, a kind of “you will acknowledge me?” tick.

No. The rising inflection at the end of a sentence is an Australianism imported with Neighbours.

All Australians do it to an extent. I certainly picked it up after 15 years there. It took a good 5 years of being back in England to lose that, though people do occasionally detect Strine in me. DH is still quite obviously Australian but is hardly Crocodile Dundee...

I come from Northamptonshire, which actually does have its own accent but is nearly dead now. It's now more influenced by London and Home Counties accents. There are still words that I use that are from Northampton though. My accent is Mockney, I think, now. Imported cockney crossed with country bumpkin.

Grown daughter has lived in London between me and her Dad all her life. Her Dad has a very broad, South London accent, again dying out and being replaced by MLE*. He still uses the odd bit of rhyming slang and swears a lot. His Dad was unintelligible until I learnt to tune in. A bit like Danny Dyer's accent, but Danny is a bit more "geezer" than my ex.

However. DD grew up in a rather nice part of London, and most of her friends speak with a neutral accent! She learned from them. None of her teachers spoke cockney either. I've never heard her cuss like her Dad nor use his turn of phrase. She certainly doesn't have an SE London accent. Maybe slightly MLE, but not much. I'm secretly glad 😊.

*MLE Multicultural London English

@CruCru I don’t know anyone who has adopted an accent (RP or otherwise).

Kenneth Branagh?

I'm Welsh as are all my family. Went to school in Cardiff where we were given twice-weekly elocution lessons so we didn't end up with a Welsh accent. Apparently that made you sound unintelligent.

DH also has a neutral/very very mild Welsh accent and despite going to Welsh schools in a very Welsh area, DCs sound like us. We can all switch on the Welsh accent though! I used to at teacher training events as some Welsh teachers are very xenophobic and would assume I was English.

When I was a Brown Owl, I had a little 7 year odl girl start. She had a very mild Welsh accent, mostly sounded English. After a few weeks, her mum came in to chat to me and had a very, very strong Scottish accent. As did the child 😂 She'd been putting on the neutral accent the whole time. It was extremely convincing!

Interesting. I don’t know much about Kenneth Branagh. I just had a look at his Wikipedia page.