AIBU to find it odd my children sound English?

[brawst]

Neither of my kids have Scottish accents. Both DH and I have Scottish accents and have never lived outside of Scotland. I have a Glaswegian accent and DH has a very soft Edinburgh accent.

We live and the kids grew up in Fife, but both of them sound English. They both moved to England at 18 for studies (over a decade ago now) and people will ask them if they have Scottish family or links because they’ve very Scottish names, like Angus McLeod etc.

They only used to have a very slight accent, but DD said she put this on so she wouldn’t get teased at School

I was a PT English at one point. We had some primary teachers posted to us on secondment to 'raise attainment'.

One erse eejit had the temerity to complain to me that one of our boys had been 'disrespectful'. His terrible crime?

He'd said 'Aye.'

I pointed her to the 5-14 Guidelines in place at the time. The appendix instructed teachers to value the language that the children brought from home.

Someone obviously had not kept up with her CPD.

Last time we visited England and DH asked for a fish supper in the chippy they didn't have a clue what it meant. "Supper" just means "with chips" for the uninitiated.

Aye pickin!

That's interesting, I didn't know that. That would explain why ds3 sounds like King Charles despite living in the west country all his life!

Dh and I are from the home counties but have lived in the west country since before the dc were born. Dc mainly sound similar to us. However dc1 is at uni in the north and everyone comments on his west country accent that he didn't know he had!

I can’t quite believe that just watching a TV programme a lot would on its own change a child’s accent for good. I’d have an Australian accent if that were the case.

She got teased for not having a Scottish accent.

I was also brought up by people not from the WC in the WC, and did not notice my accent until I moved away as an adult. I was considered ‘posh’ by everyone I went to school with!

Kirkcaldy is very variable indeed.

Some children now sound as though they're from Edinburgh or even England. Others have been heavily influenced by the travellers who are semi-settled in the town - examples would be the use of "barry" instead of "braw" and the use of "chav" or "chavvie".

The accent and dialect are different from how they were in the '60s and '70s - I was shocked when I discovered that some children didn't know what a "dub" was - in spite of the proximity of Puddledub!

There are some children who now have a pseudo-Glasgow accent - they all attend the same school.

My parents are both scousers but I don't sound scouse and never have (unless I've had a lot to drink 🤣). I now live in Essex and my husband says I sometimes sound "Essex" now

My kids sound English. I am English but my husband is Irish and we live in Ireland.
We thought when my son started school he'd lose the English accent but its been months now!
My husband banned cbeebies in a last ditch effort😄

I’m RP but spent four years in Fife and I agree with PPs that I can’t fathom how you can grow up there and not have the accent, however faint.

The only way I can say “Kirkcaldy” and “Burntisland” is with the accent. Admittedly, I can never remember how to say “Wynd” though…

ETA: I will anonymously admit that I thought it was “Burnt island” for a good few stops on the train before it clicked

I was born and raised in the rural American south but moved to the UK for uni (then never went home) and my accent definitely shifted dramatically. I don't actually sound British to a Brit, but my family back home claim I do and used to tease me a lot about it. Here people still spot me as North American but rarely pick up on the region unless they spent time there themselves.

I will say that I actually drifted back some as I got further into adulthood. I think that subconscious drive to fit in and even create a new me went away and I became comfortable using whichever colloquialisms and pronunciation come easiest in the moment. I eventually stopped trying to force British spelling and grammar as well.

My youngest DC have a Scottish father, American mother, Norfolker nanny, and have grown up in the home counties... their accents are an often hilarious, ever-changing mess right now. But I expect they'll end up sounding like their school mates before secondary.

As a 70s child we were not permitted to speak Doric in school.

We have a local Doric group who come into school every year to do a poetry competition. They're finding that very few know mucb Doric and are more likely to use American words 🙄.

Mare diapers than hippins

My cousin went to Fettes and has an English accent. His mum was English (SE) and dad Scottish (Paisley).

My husband was brought up on Abergeldie, when it was still leased to the Crown. (His dad worked in what was then the kitchen garden for Balmoral.)

DH later worked at Balmoral (for the basic agricultural wage 'plus sixpence from the Queen') but decided that he didn't want to wait for 'dead men's shoes', so studied for his Highers at night school at the Commercial College in Aberdeen and sat the uni entrance exam.

He told me that once he got into the uni, he joined the uni Scot Lit society. At one soiree he heard someone saying "Oh! We've got an authentic one here!"

P.S. Apart from hearing DH speaking, this is the first time I've ever met anyone who kent fit hippens were.

Also see: Tony Blair.

DF was from Hull, DM was from Norfolk, I grew up in the Fens and attended bog standard state schools but have always had a slightly 'posh' accent. I've been called accentless more than once. If I deliberately avoided a regional accent, it certainly wasn't done consciously.
I've met several Scottish people who sound more English than I do. All from money.

People in Scotland thought that Dad spoke with a foreign accent; folk in his home country told me that he had a Scottish accent.

To me, he just sounded like Dad. Only when I was older could I hear the mixture - but he definitely spoke Fife Scots.

I’m southern, DH is Scottish, our children have grown up in the north west. Two of them sound completely north-western and fit in properly in the village. The youngest sounds more southern than I do! Nobody knows why

What am I saying! Yes, you hear 'chavvie', but I meant to write 'gadge' and 'gadgie' as my examples.

What a horribly snobbish attitude, targeted at your own son!

"Sort his accent out"?! Awful.

"Speaking well" is such a loaded, snobbish phrase. You don't speak well just because you have a certain accent.

I grew up, 50+ years ago, in rural south west Scotland, and went to a 3-teacher primary. Secondary was in a town of 20,000 population. I quickly discovered that I could distinguish people from the other feeder primaries just by their accent. I'm thinking that would be much harder today.

DH moved to Bristol 40 years ago from the Glasgow area. If he's talking to Bristolians he sounds Bristolian, but he only needs to speak to someone else from Glasgow for s few minutes and the Glasgow accent is back.

@brawst , my husband and I both have very working class London accents. Our boys went to an independent school and don’t sound like they belong to us at all! 😂🤷🏼‍♀️