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.

Well, this is interesting.

clearly English words do have a “wrong” pronunciation.

for example if I see the word “water” and I say “fish” this is wrong.

beyond that, the usual argument is that as long as enough people pronounce it that way it counts as a dialect and is therefore “right” for that dialect.

water with t’s dropped is a pronunciation used by many people and therefore on one sense of the word it is “right”.

however you clearly don’t want your daughter using that pronunciation.

i think the chances she’s got it from her teacher are low to nil so she’s probably picking it up from
her fellow students in which case the teacher is not going to correct them.

if you want her to speak “proper” (god knows what that is these days as RP is considered “posh” and off-putting) then you’ll need to
correct her yourself.

it won’t work, she’ll just learn to code switch.

I didn’t mention class.

You didn't have to.

I’m of a similar background to Amol Rajan and I find his south London twang annoying. It’s the way he just rolls into it.

To the OP, I would watch the Bluey episode about the dunny with your child and discuss it with your own examples. I wouldn’t worry about it too much though.

Possibly arbitrary. People have their own standards don’t they 🤷‍♀️

@AnPiscin ,some Scottish accents and some east London accents.

An English friend of DH's said, with a totally straight face, 'Of course I don't have an accent' - as in, she speaks in totally accentless English. Had she been a friend of mine I'd have said something, as it was I just nodded and noted that she was quite a stupid person.

You clever sausage!

Well, for a certain type of English person, all Irish accents are 'sloppy speech', whether they're Roy Foster or characters on Mrs Brown's Boys.

You said having an accident is different from dropping letters.

That's a nice way of sliding out of it and avoiding actually discussing what you mean. Well done.

It comes up on here all the time. I tend to think 'Bless! Do you not ever travel?'

Gosh, people are so touchy. Honestly, if you would prefer your daughter to pronounce her T’s, it is entirely your right to have that preference.

wheres the celebrating difference, if we all have to speak the same?! The amount of name calling here against wanting to pronounce T’s is very ugly.

My eldest has autism and he picks up people’s accents. We’re in NI and his closest friend in P6/P7 had a Yorkshire accent, so DS started talking with a similar accent - not completely, but certain vowel sounds and certainly his intonation. It’s a lovely accent though. He’s a teenager now and about a year ago he started to speak with a really broad Belfast accent. If you heard me speak you would be in little doubt that I’m from Belfast, but this was something else. It was like a dodgy drama school version of the strongest Belfast accent you can imagine. I actually ended up asking him about it because it was honestly making me wince. It sounded so fake coming from him. He said he was probably unconsciously mimicking some of the people he had started hanging around with (I doubt they sounded quite like him!) This went on for a few months, while I tried to ignore it, then sort of petered out. He told me a while ago that when he said goodbye to a Scottish boy he had bonded with at some event or other, he did it with a full on Glaswegian accent. He said he walked away feeling totally mortified, thinking that he must have come across as really offensive🤣

I’m a pro hun.

There’s never going to be a rational discussion about this subject on here. It’s going the same way as the shoes on/off inside threads.

Why? She wants her daughter to speak properly

Yes, not dropping Tees, is important when speaking to to non native speakers. Your daughter can learn to switch accents from home to school.

My Scottish (w. coast) relatives would say girl like that - almost ‘gearo’ because the final ‘l’ sound isn’t formed with the tongue touching the front palate, but much further back, so almost lost.

You are being very rude.

I was brought up to speak correctly.

I rebelled against it all at 13 and started speaking with a much more local accent. I still speak like that now.

@Stick0rTwistI don’t know whether this has been pointed out to you already, but the correct pronunciation is Yes, not Yep

YANBU - switch schools as quickly as possible. No point in trying to make any naysayers see your way of thinking. Do what is right for you (and your daughter).

Quite, we should all be speaking properly. As a Scot, I can't stand people dropping their 'r's. If I ever hear anyone saying 'cah' rather than 'car' or 'doah' rather than 'door', I make sure to pull them up on it - I won't stand by and hear incorrect pronunciation!

Do all the kids in the school speak like this, is it an area / location thing?