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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Original poster

To correct ds when he fails to pronounce the t in water, butter etc?

96 replies

PollyParanoia · 03/09/2009 13:26

I just don't know if I'm a snob or a pedant or completely reasonable to find ds aged 5 and his missing Ts in the middle of words really irritating. Typical sentence will be:
"I've lost the bu'on in the wa'er, I'll le'er ge'it for me as she's be'er at swimming."
I correct him and I don't know if that's really bad for his self-expression and a one-way ticket to a therapist in 20 years time. And I don't know whether I'm correcting him because it's sounds common or because it's incorrect. I tell myself that it's because he won't learn to spell properly as he won't be able to sound out words (or le'ers), but am worried I do it in fact because I speak with an RP accent and he goes to an inner city school.
And I don't know whether he does it because it's an "accent" or whether he's just v lazy (which he has always been, speech wise). It might be that it's actually part of a lovely London regional accent that should be nurtured like Geordie.
Am I like horrible parents who used to pay for elocution lessons?

OP posts:
GrimmaTheNome · 03/09/2009 14:55

I doubt very much whether it will have an impact on his spelling.

I'm not so sure - my DD mixes up f- th and v- in written work as well as speech. Maybe in her case its not really an accent thing but a real issue distinguishing the sound.

more · 03/09/2009 15:00

If you are correcting an accent which is spoken by all of his piers and you actually understand what he is saying and everyone else understands it because they speak with the same accent then I think you are being unreasonable.

However if like my nephew he speaks so that my children are needing to translate what he means because I just don't understand what he is saying (he "can't" say f. He will say sun but he is actually talking about having fun, or sive instead of five etc. etc.) then you are not unreasonable and you should get him to a speech therapist to help.

stripes200 · 03/09/2009 15:09

YANBU.

I do it to DD too. Hate, hate, hate it.

None of us were born anywhere Bow.

Sheer laziness, speak properly FGS.

Niknak21 · 03/09/2009 15:14

What's an RP accent?

I also hate the th/f thing, but hope if I say it right DS1 will pick up on it and copy

Blackduck · 03/09/2009 15:18

RP - Received Pronunciation...
Unfortunately I have found their nursery/school friends and teachers have a stronger influence on their pronunciation than you do! (hence the 'a' issue in our house...)

giveloveachance · 03/09/2009 15:22

I am not alone then! I really don't like it either, and correct my DD as otherwise how will she learn? The other thing is where people make everything sound like a question even when its not, by raising the pitch of the last word - my DP does it all the time! Makes people sound very unsure, like they don't believe in what they say - is it an affectation of an Australian accent?

RP = received pronunciation = BBC used to use it.

katiestar · 03/09/2009 15:22

Yanbu.My pet hate is when my Dc pronounce 'u' in say bucket like 'oo'as in book IYKWIM

katiestar · 03/09/2009 15:24

Oh yes and my DCs have a girl in their class called Natalie. I can't abide 'Na-a-lie'

diddl · 03/09/2009 15:25

YANBU.
I also hate "of" instead of "have"!

Niknak21 · 03/09/2009 15:28

Thanks!

I also hate the Australian inflection(?!?) Blame neighbours, although I love to watch it

wasabipeas · 03/09/2009 15:30

This is fast becoming a 'what bad speech/grammar do you hate the most' thread
I also correct DH when he drops his ts or gets fewer/less the wrong way round
Am I going a bit far with this one?

SexyDomesticatedDad · 03/09/2009 15:32

DS 2 commented a couple of weeks ago that the norm around here is to drop the Ts too - but all ours know its not correct and we pick them up on it when needed.

The same DS2 who had a teacher with a strong Welsh accent and took a while to understand what she was saying.

MorrisZapp · 03/09/2009 15:35

On what planet could it possibly seen as 'snobby' to teach your kids how to speak properly?

Of course YANBU. If you don't do it, nobody else will.

EyeballsintheSky · 03/09/2009 15:39

Define properly though. Properly is different in different areas and, if you live in inner London then dropping your Ts is part of the accent. There is a world of difference between accent and correct speech, such as the 'like' and 'turned round and said'. I've got a chap starting at work on Monday from New Zealand. Shall I correct everything he says differently?

cat64 · 03/09/2009 15:39

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn

stealthsquiggle · 03/09/2009 15:42

YANBU (or at least I hope not because I correct it when my DC do it). If it is because of school then he will just learn to be 'bilingual' and will talk one way at school and another (more RP) way at home.

EyeballsintheSky · 03/09/2009 15:43

The glottal stop is characteristic of a London accent and not lazy speech, whatever the hell that means. So yes, you are being a snob.

Niknak21 · 03/09/2009 15:45

YANBU IMO

stealthsquiggle · 03/09/2009 15:46

So in your opinion, Eyeballs, am I BU when I correct exactly the same thing in my DC, given that we live nowhere near London ?

MorrisZapp · 03/09/2009 15:48

It's perfectly possible to speak properly and with a regional accent.

I do it, all my colleagues do it.

I must admit, to me 'nuffing' and 'bu'er' sound lazy regardless of accent. I'd expect my London colleagues to be able to say 'nothing' and 'butter' in their own accent without sounding like Del Boy.

Kids in the playground will always resort to the most local idiom - that's natural and normal. But kids, like adults, need to be able to switch according to who they're speaking to.

I love gossiping with old schoolfriends and using all the daft old words of the playground. But I'd be out of a job if I spoke to clients like that. They shouldn't have to strain to understand me.

EyeballsintheSky · 03/09/2009 15:50

I don't know, as I don't know what your accent is or what the characteristics are. But I do know what a London accent is and that's what we're talking about.

"in phonetics, a momentary check on the airstream caused by closing the glottis (the space between the vocal cords) and thereby stopping the vibration of the vocal cords. Upon release, there is a slight choke, or coughlike explosive sound. The glottal stop is not a separate phoneme (or distinctive sound) in English, though it is one of the allophones of the t phoneme in some dialects (as in Cockney or Brooklynese ?bo?l? for ?bottle?). It functions as a phoneme in numerous other languages, however, such as Arabic and many American Indian languages. The process of momentary partial or complete closure of the glottis is known as glottalization. The closure may occur slightly before the primary articulation, simultaneously with it, or slightly after it. Several African and American Indian languages have glottalized stops and sibilants, and many languages also have glottalized vowels."

Encylopaedia Britannica.

Habbibu · 03/09/2009 15:55

Agree with mellowdrummer and others - it may sound lazy, but a glottal plosive isn't "dropping a t" - it's a form of pronouncing t. So technically, it's not incorrect. That said, many people don't like it, and I guess it's like any form of behaviour you don't like - you try to change it.

But it really isn't laziness. The f/v thing is interesting - they're voiceless/voiced versions of the same consonants, and I don't know when children crack distinctions between voiced/voiceless sounds.

CantThinkofFunnyName · 03/09/2009 15:56

Absolute bollocks re the glottal stop and London accents. I was brought up in Essex/East London. I have an accent from this region BUT I know how to spell and pronounce words correctly, because my parents corrected me when I was growing up.

Posters on this thread are also commenting that they correct their children for the same thing and they live nowhere near London, or South East. It is LAZY and if allowed to continue, children DO believe words are spelled incorrectly because they are taught to spell things out phonetically (ie FINK).

If we want our children to develop well, we have to educate at home, as well as at school. Whilst I have a "common" accent, I have had to tone it for work over the years and I would not be caught dead dropping t's etc - in the pub, however, after a few tipples, is another story entirely

MorrisZapp · 03/09/2009 15:56

My accent is Edinburgh.

At school, we used to say 'ah dinny ken' to mean I don't know.

I love all that language but I'm well able to say 'I don't know'. If the only way I could speak was in broad Edinburgh then I'd be no use in my current job, and would sound odd amongst my friends, all of whom are also Scottish and who also speak like me, ie with Scottish accent but intelligible to all.

stealthsquiggle · 03/09/2009 15:57

I still maintain that a child can be whatever the equivalent of bilingual is for accents. I have known children who can speak in broad regional accents at school and are perfectly RP at home.

(FWIW, I guess I am more-or-less RP - what is termed 'Oxford English' - and the accent my DD would acquire at the local community nursery would be very different to the one DS would acquire at the equally local prep school - I have no intention of 'squashing' either, but don't let them drop letters - 't' or 'h' being the most frequent - without picking them up on it)