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.

Moe-sher is how Irish people pronounce it. I don't ever pronounce a hard 't' in the middle of a word. I also say 'waw-sher' for water and 'lay-sher' for later. It looks weird written down (and I can't write it phonetically) but you would absolutely understand me.

You're being ridiculous. It's not the teachers job to teach your daughter to speak to a standard you want.

We're worried about a five-year-old girl's marriage prospects now? What is this, 1491?

Essex people?

I would correct relentlessly at home., but low key. It won’t be corrected by teachers - they’ve too much on. It’s sloppy speech.

I don't mind the glottal stop dropping... it's quite a nice sound in some ways.

My birth mum was a Cockney, and came from 'ackney. She had a proper good accent but I was brought up proper with a Home Counties upbringing by my adoptive parents.

So I guess I have "roots" in a kind of more "common" accent. In some ways, I think if I had sounded like an East Ender, I wouldn't have minded.

Innit. 😅

Your use of language and the way you write in order to belittle is really quite telling of the kind of person you are. Another version of snobbery in a way, accusing me of being ‘provincial’ and a social climber. It’s as if you’re telling me to get back in my box.

Theres only one of us embarrassing ourselves here, and it’s not me.

I find the idea of switching how you pronounce words so that people don't automatically judge you really repugnant.

Are you primarily thinking of people who deliberately learn RP or something similar so that they aren't judged for being "working class"?

Or are you primarily thinking of people deliberately adopting a local or working class accent so that they are not mocked, teased, bullied, or excluded for being "too posh"?

Is one of these scenarios worse than the other?

Given that it is human nature to make snap judgements of other people, I don't see anything repugnant about people just trying to fit in.

It is repugnant, and sad, but I've been attacked for being "posh" in some circles, and on my dad's side some of my family are straight-out-of-a-Jane-Austen snooty (I've literally heard the phrase "our sort of people"). Code-switching is an essential skill if you have to navigate a broad social spectrum.

@AnPiscin , if you say it as how I think you are saying it, your phonetic spelling is failing miserably.

Examples I've seen are likl and giro. Try working out what words they are.

Go figure what, exactly? Your friend has a regional accent which features th-fronting and a long a sound (I'm assuming by 'ar' you mean /ɑː/, unless your friend's regional accent is also rhotic).

I'm sounding the klaxon to say do not talk to the teacher about this. You may need to talk to them about something important later on and they will think you are a loon and discount what you say.

I was sad when my southern kids started using the long a in bath and grass but you can't do anything about it. I am now trying to stop them using the word 'aesthetic' as a noun in a US accent but I know I am powerless. However when they talk to their posh grandfather (my FIL) they sound like BBC presenters fro the 1950s so I think it's fine and is just the way humans try to fit in with each other.

@Stick0rTwist

I think the ‘Thursday’s Child’ posts are being drafted by ChatGPT or similar. I suspect she is having fun asking it to prepare insults and then posting them here. They sounds like a crazy collection of adjectives which I’ve seen AI produce before.

You mean Cambridge educated, former editor of The Independent newspaper, highly articulate, south London born Amol Rajan? How embarrassing for your friend to be married to a twat like that!? 😂

Exactly the point. It's a dialect. I'm from Yorkshire but as an adult lived and worked in London for 15 years. It affected my dialect pronunciation but I reverted over time when I returned to the north; however, when talking to friends from London, I unconsciously become "glottal" again! I never larsted, farsted, etc though - my original dialect withstood that.

She's divorcing him, thank god.

I told you I can't write it phonetically. Suffice it to say that Irish people generally pronounce a hard 't' in the middle of a word very differently to English people. My original question is whether that falls under poor enunciation or not.

The other noticeable difference is that Irish people tend not to pronounce a 'th' at the start of a word - hence the tendency to ask Irish people to say 'thirty three and a third.' An English friend of mine (who incidentally had a huge chip on his shoulder about not being posh enough for the uni he was at) had a second name that started with 'th.' I said it one day and he said, very disdainfully, 'could I have my th back please?' That really turned me off him as a person.

Oh dear, I am sorry you require Chat GPT to write comments. That's truly embarrassing for you :(

giro - that is how unemployment benefit used to be paid many decades ago, i.e. short for giro cheque.😀
Not sure what word you mean.

likl is little.

I don't know the script that linguists use, so I can't explain it, but there is to my ear a huge difference between the Irish 'soft t' and the 'sh' sound at the end of a word like 'wish'. The tongue is in a very different place for each.

Also, there’s a difference between having an accent and missing letters out of words.

I adopted a really stupid, ugly accent at school. But I did so to fit in and avoid bullying. Now I'm in my 40s I speak with a clear RP accent. Don't worry. It's a survival mechanism – like big teeth or camouflage. She'll ditch it once she has left/survived school.

It always surprises me when people object to those who change the way they speak. I love the refined RP accent. I love listening to Joanna Lumley and Stephen Fry speak. I had a bit of a West Country/Bristol accent, but I have tried to get rid of it. I don't care if people call me a snob. I can't bear the Bristol accent and was ashamed of it when I went to university. Why would I would to sound hideous when I speak?

(I don't dislike all regional accents btw. I like the Liverpool and geordie accents, for example, I just can't bear the Bristol one.)

I have been guilty of "correcting" an ex BF who used to say "Smiffy" instead of "Smithy" as one of his friend's names. I remember finding it annoying how he didn't say "th" but then I realised it was how he spoke and pronounced sounds, so who was I to correct him? I thought about how I might feel if someone told me not to speak in such a well spoken way and how i might not like being "corrected".

Neither situation is worse, both are as bad as each other.