AIBU to worry my daughter is picking up too much slang?

[DeBore]

DS16 has gone to the local grammar for sixth form rather than staying private and we’ve noticed she’s picked up rather a lot of slang. Whenever she’s on the phone to her friends her whole way of speaking changes - the wide vocabulary we’ve given her just disappears and it’s all “like”, “literally” and “innit” 🙄
We don’t want to control who she’s friends with of course, but would it be nice if she at least spends some time with girls who speak well. Speaking properly opens so many more opportunities,more hireable in good jobs, higher positions later in life. You know what teenagers sound like nowadays… it’s rather grating.

🤣
If people can switch between languages
They can surely switch between formal and slang in the same language, she hasn't 'forgotten' how to speak nice...

“Speaking properly opens so many more opportunities,more hireable in good jobs, higher positions later in life”

Your daughter is clearly being raised by a classist idiot. Thankfully she doesn’t seem affected by it.

You should have kept her in private education, innit?

Oh no, Tabitha is mixing with the local riff raff. Off with their heads!

Are “like” and “literally” really slang words?

I actually don't think you are being unreasonable, but at least you don't have a middle class white lad who says "fam" or "pagans"

I wouldn't call the word 'like' slang. And I've heard really uber posh people peppering their sentences with it. So it's not because she's now at this grammar school where she's now mixing with yobbos?!

You do sound a bit snobby I'm afraid. Have you not thought that she would speak differently to her friends than she would in a job interview or professionally? Does she have a job?

I wouldn’t worry at all. My youngest daughter (now aged 44) was terrible for this as a teenager. It didn’t last long when she went to Uni to study law. Now she lives in Ascot, I don’t recognise her way of speaking, but that’s because she’s leaned into ‘posh’!

I'd say it's more to do with her age than hanging out with the commoners at grammar school. You'd probably find all the much better private school children are speaking the same.

Nigel Farage went to Dulwich College and he sounds like a cunt.

Well if you will let her mix with the proles...

How awful. Next thing you know she'll be pronouncing her last name as "bucket". Get her away from the riff raff OP, before she's lost forever.

I didn't let my children ever say innit

Agree.

This,,

I teach university students in linguistics at one of the top rated universities for the subject in the country. I also speak with a regional accent and when I’m speaking to my friends and family chuck in copious ‘innits’ and ‘likes’ and even say ‘mun’ a lot like the Welsh woman I am. Chill out, like.

I do this. Adapt language and speech to whatever company I'm in
YABU Op

My DC only go to the local comp so their communication is solely via grunts and 2 and 3 letter incomprehensible text messages.

You mean you didn't let your children say "innit" when they were with you?

Standards!Standards!

My eldest went to full on Essex Estuary. He had been prep/senior independent in southern counties. Its irritating but they do grow out of it.

You sound like my mum ... sent me to a posh convent. Was horrified when I married a south london plumber. She'd much rather I'd have been unhappily married to a banker with a nice accent.

Is anyone else thinking about the Chalet School book where the girls adopt only Shakespearean English in a rebellion against the "no slang" edict?

It’s a grammar school darling, not Borstal.

Why? Clearly the child is able to have full conversations without using slang when talking to her parents, she can talk to her friends however she likes. She’d sound a right pratt if she was talking like an adult with her friends. We all have different vocabularies depending on the situation. My 17 year old has an extensive vocabulary, she has given talks on stage in front of conferences full of people, she can have a grown up conversation when dealing with her doctors or the bank, but she talks to her friends in an entirely different way, just as we all do.

Anyone berating kids for talking like kids needs to remove the stick from their ass.