AIBU to feedback to school about teachers use of glottal stops

[TalomaPaith]

Children at Dcs school are split into different groups for phonics.

Parents are sometimes invited to watch lessons. I observed a lesson by a teacher using glottal stops I.e Let'er instead of letter.

Would IBU to mention this?

It's a beautiful thing. I remember DDad and I being on holiday and trying to work out whether the waitress was from Burnley or Blackburn. Turns out she was from Accrington. DH always says he can tell when we've gone north of Birmingham as my accent gets a lot broader!

But you don't actually seem to know or understand the basics - 'hence why' and 'spelling grammar and pronunciation IS correct' being other errors. Don't tell me the minute you go on MN, you decide not to distinguish between 'effect' and 'affect' - nobody who knew the difference would do that! I just think you're going to look really silly if you email about an accent in a message that's peppered with mistakes - and also that if you want to come on here and make a point like this, you should be taking a bit more care so that nobody falls into the (apparent) error of thinking you aren't necessarily all that clued up on what's right and wrong yourself.

My education tends to stay with me wherever I go (autocorrect and typos notwithstanding). Did you leave yours under your desk last night?

What I find incredible is that there are people who don't realise that not everyone speaks the same 😅

thats entirely subjective. The identical pronunciation of paw, pour and poor is also a lack of clarity no?

when English people come to Belfast, they can be very hard to understand because of the lack of Rs. It sounds unclear in some contexts. But even those of us who don’t use a glottal stop in water and butter understand it with a glottal stop without issue. Even my 3 year old understands that mummy says “waugh-dur” and daddy says “waugh’ur” and his English aunt says “waugh-tuh” but they are the same word.

For those saying that children can’t learn to spell “letter” if it is not pronounced “let-tuh”, how do they learn to spell father and farther if with an RP accent they sound the same?

Exactly @queenmeadhbh how do they teach the ar, or, ur type sounds when they're not pronounced? "This word is spelled farm but pronounced fahm" . I'm genuinely interested.

Thankfully I never had to teach phonics in England - much easier in Scotland.

I’m not sure why this thread has riled me so much, and so I’m going to exercise some restraint and bugger off. (Or bugga off, if you are English).

I suppose my parting shot is that:

• if you want your child to speak in a certain way, then that’s your right
• you can and should reinforce your preferred way of speaking at home
• should you wish to have a more uniform experience at school, that’s also your right - you can pick a school where there is less diversity in accent, dialect and speech patterns
• but it’s entirely unacceptable to belittle someone and ask them to change how they speak when they are not teaching the child to spell incorrectly, they are just emphasising different parts of a word
• this is classist, shaming and seeks to elevate one way of speaking as the right one.

closes Mumsnet, goes on being ‘wrong’ in my Northern Irish accent

@queenmeadhbh , I think I say paw, pour, poor and pore the same way unless the following word is a vowel. It's not a lack of clarity; they are homophones.

Your 3-year old has grown up hearing “waugh-dur” and waugh’ur” so that doesn't compare with a young child of early primary school age who hasn't.

@NeverDropYourMooncup my degrees are on the wall in my study. I don't place too much value on Mumsnet unlike you. Have you heard of code switching?

@queenmeadhbh , context. They probably learn father long before learning the comparative form of far.

Wow.

Definitely complain - you don't want them growing up sounding Northern!

A person with a broad Dundonian accent would say “buh ur” and “woh ur” rather than “butter” and “water”.

that was deeply offensive OP and I feel for your students. Take some time to reflect

@MayWelland I find offensive being told I don't know the basics of English! I don't teach

How twattish of you, OP.

They work better ‘up North’ in some respects, at least.

Glass, grass - as in ass, not arse.

How do you teach glass pronounced glarse?

You showed yourself up with that comment @TalomaPaith, but at least now we know what the thread was really about.

Cheerio

It's not a lack of clarity; they are homophones.

That depends entirely on accent. Pore and pour are homophones in my Irish accent, but the others aren’t.

I do find an English accent confusing on occasion, even though I have a lot of exposure to it via tv and radio. It’s not intrinsically clearer imho.
A lot you can understand from context of course, though I only recently learned on MN that Shaun the Sheep is a pun. I’d never have got that.

None of this explains why these are not issues but different pronunciations of “letter” are.

@queenmeadhbh glottal stop is complete omission of a sound, an elongated vowel is a change in length or sound

The comments about your posts were factual.

Your attitude was utterly vile.

The standard of spelling and punctuation at my Ds's primary school was so poor that I complained. Even signs on the classroom displays were incorrect.

I confess I was once that mother who marked a school letter in red pen and returned it with a Must Try Harder comment. The headmistress phoned to apologise and things did improve.