Dropping her T’s

[Stick0rTwist]

My daughter has just gone into Yr1 and is an articulate child, relatively smart with a love for reading.

We moved her to a new school in the new year and have noticed since then she has started dropping her t’s when saying many of her words, like water, better, bottle, little etc.

This gets corrected consistently at home as although we don’t speak the queens English (and are not snobbish by any stretch of the imagination) we would prefer her to speak properly and not get into bad habits speech wise.

Over the summer holidays she was fine, but I’ve noticed in the two days she’s been back her speech has reverted back.

So here’s the AIBU - would I be unreasonable to mention this to her teacher? Or would I sound like a massive snob 🙈

Sounds dramatic but it’s even making me want to move her school again as this was not a problem at her old school at all. Its been a direct result of moving school as it started the week we moved.

My mum constantly corrected our speech, and still does! I learned to code switch early just to stop the constant correction. Just speak to her normally at home and leave her to it.

Interesting Aussies are mentioned here. Most Australians you meet or hear on tv are probably middle or upper middle class Aussies and probably come from cities. You would rarely hear a broad rural working class Aussie accent in a professional setting. This doesn’t mean that no Australians from rural working class settings are successful in business- plenty are - but the very broad accents will be refined through whatever life experience pushes them towards success. The Aussies you meet also probably have very clear speech and it translates really well internationally- but not so a broad outback accent!

In light of this post, I should add that my DN who reverted to RP have done very well. Perhaps it is because this is how they spoke as young children?

I agree that sounding unnatural is sad, though I understand why someone would try.

Shes 5 so she's picking up the language of who she speaks to the most, simple as that.
As you were around her more over the holidays she adapted to talking like you, now all she hears is no t's so she's picking that up.
The only thing a teacher can do is try and change the accents of everyone who is speaking like this which is ridiculous and wouldn't work so it would be silly to ask the teacher to do this. If your constantly correcting her you're going to affect her self confidence and she will be apprehensive to talk.

I wouldn't like this OP, and that has nothing to do with being snobby.

the kid will easily be able to switch as needed when they're older. My accent goes all over the place depending on which friends and family I'm with, and I can go full RP when I want to.

@Stick0rTwist this is what you are aiming for: when she is older it will stand your DD in good stead if she can code-switch at will (i.e. adopt different styles of speech and vocabulary), depending on the situation.
So she can speak in fluent RP when at a job interview for a "posh" company, but speak in a working class code when e.g. down at the pub to fit in with the people around her.

However, as she is only 5, her 'home' accent is not yet settled. Keep correcting her at home and when talking to you, but let her speak differently to her friends and at school.
Don't contact the school.
View it in a similar way to children who grow up bi-lingual. They soon learn which language to speak in each situation.

This is really interesting. You consider rhoticity to be a valid regional feature but not th-fronting or t-glottalization?

Yes, but someone made sure you have the ability to code switch, as you say, it's very useful. Was it your mum?

😂😂 you’re hilarious. As if you think I’m sat here in utter rage. More like bemusement. Gotta love Mumsnet 😆

It’s funny how quick people are to call someone ‘posh’ or ‘snobbish’ based on their accent, while the same people would take offence if you called them ‘rough’ or ‘common’ based on theirs.

I wonder whether it comes from jealousy, or some kind of inferiority complex. Unfortunately, I think this often happens in state schools, which is why some kids feel the need to change their accent.

I’d just help her with her reading and mention it occasionally. It is a hard habit to break later on but I agree with others who say model it at home, then she has a choice.

It's not interesting, it's pure and utter snobbery with a sprinkling of racism. Guess who tends to use th-fronting and t-glottalization the most?

Poor little girl 💔

Leave her alone she’s in year 1 and this should literally be the least of your concerns.

I hope this isn’t a glimpse of what sort of parent you are because else I feel very sorry for her.

No, it was my dad, as I said in my first post on the thread. He nagged about it all the time (because he was a raging snob), but it didn't change how I spoke elsewhere. My point is, OP's kid doesn't need everyone in her life to speak the same way and be constantly correcting her. She'll pick up a variety of accents and use them as necessary to fit in, the same way bilingual kids do.

Don’t speak to the teacher. It’s perfectly natural, but I’d say it’s also perfectly fine for you to correct her at home - learning to speak differently in different places is a good skill. She’ll be doing it to fit in with friends at school. I did the same at around 8 when we moved - probably drove my parents mad. Then when I went to secondary my friends didn’t speak that way so neither did I. Don’t stress about it!

I went to a primary school that had lots of kids from the "rough" part of a fairly rough city. When I was 7 years old, a boy had to read aloud from a book and he pronounced "cafe" "caff". The teacher was scathing in her correction (I remember the words "this isn't EastEnders") and I remember seeing him look confused and humiliated to the point where I said "miss, he doesn't know" in order to stop her. That's stayed with me for 35 years. I don't ever want a teacher correcting my child's accent or pronunciation.

Yes, your repeated teenage attempts at an own, and desperate use of emojis in lieu of managing a pithy comment certainly inspires confidence in your bemusement.

So anyway, now that you know you are 100 percent completely in the wrong, hopefully you will no longer gibber ignorant claptrap in public - at least on this subject.

Yeah, I remember my grandmother doing this to me. I'm from the South East. It IS "regional" whether you want to admit that or not, OP. It's pure snobbery on your part - you think that anyone who drops their Ts is an uneducated, lower class peasant.

Sadly, lots of people do think the same way that you do, so it is indeed likely that having a regional accent that's widely deemed "working class uneducated' will prejudice people against your daughter. I have two degrees but still have had more middle class people treating me as if I'm whatever they imagine an "Essex girl" is. It happened at university (including when I got far higher grades than they did). And my accent's really pretty light in comparison with most of those I grew up with ( I don't think I generally drop my ts, for instance, but even a hint of the South-East London seems to do it for some people. )

Everyone naturally changes the way they talk - language, tone, topic - when switching between work and friends and such. But I find the idea of switching how you pronounce words so that people don't automatically judge you really repugnant.

Is there any reason why you say it that way?
If you said My moe-sher is outside, I wouldn't know what you meant. The standard pronunciation is [ˈməʊtə].

He’s never spoken as clearly as Paxman. He doesn’t e - nunc- i- ate as well as he might.

Nothing to add but my dd(6) is autistic and only has a few words

One of them is 'wawtahh', very exaggerated cockney, which she definitely got from a particular one of her teachers 😭🥰 makes me laugh whenever I hear it

Just speak normally at home op, she will grow out of it

Give it a rest @Thursdayschild2025. MN doesn't allow personal attacks.

A friend says bath as barf. Go figure.