Elocution lessons for our American daughter?

[VintageRainBoots]

Our five year old daughter will soon start school in the UK. She was born in US, has only lived in the US, and has so far been educated in the US. As a result, she speaks with an American accent.

My concern is that there are a few sounds that she still needs to work on, and moving to a different country with different speech patterns may complicate things for her. For example, she cannot pronounce the "r", as in "star" or "very." Could elocution lessons in the UK help her pronounce words the American way? That is, can a British speech therapist help her learn to say the American "star" or will she be taught the British version (which sounds a lot like "stah" to our uncivilized American ears)?

In addition, she's only recently mastered the "th" sound (before, she was approximated "th" with a "d" so that "them" was pronounced "dem"). However, I hear a lot of folks around town (and more often in London) pronouncing "th" with an "f" or "v" rather than the American "th". We spent a fair amount of time helping her with her "th" sounds; I would hate to see all that work amount to naught if she's in a class with students who use "v" or "f" instead.

So, will elocution lessons help her?

Along those same lines, does anyone have a recommendation for a speech therapist or elocution coach near Guildford?

I want to scream every time I hear a BBC news reader say "Las Angeleeze".

How about LAS (as in gas) Vegas. Correct (American) pronunciation is LOS. For me that's worse than Las Angeleze" (which is also Los, actually).

Hahaha at there being a "standard" American accent! There isn't. My (American) linguistics professor at university pointed out to us that, exactly as in Britain, no one speaks this elusive "standard" English/American English we all harp on about, we all have regionalisms/accents to some degree.

I've never heard any English-speaker pronounce a double 't' in letter any differently from a single 't'. That sounds more like Italian pronunciation or something .

I did have voice coaching lessons as a university student and found them very useful. It wasn't at all about teaching a particular accent though. More about breathing and projecting your voice, and speaking clearly and at the appropriate pace. It gave me more confidence for presentations and interviews etc.

For a 5 year old 'at risk' of picking up the local accent though . I don't really get it.

I thought Guildford was posh, anyway?

"Las" is the Spanish female plural pronoun. It's always pronounced like "loss". So, we say "loss vay gus" for Las Vegas and "loss ange el us" for "Los Angeles".

As far as Wimbledon is concerned, I don't know anyone who pronounces it with a t. Of course, I play tennis, so I've always known how it was pronounced.

lljkk: My internalized reflex would be "Yikes, that's painful to hear!" but I would do my best to not display my discomfort. I may not like to hear those accents, but I'm not a rude person.

AS a native Southern Californian I beg to differ, we say "Las" Angeles & Las Vegas in same way. Which sometimes bothers me as a Spanish speaker, but then I'd have to get het up about saying it "Las Bay-gus" if I were being perfectionist (which my California self would never be).

This difference of opinion just goes to prove the lack of "standard" American English.

Ha ha ha.

Guildford.

Ha ha ha.

That is all. This has to be a wind up.

Okay, so what does "wind up" mean? This is the second time I've read it today.

...And then I'd have to refer to LA as "El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula", with proper Spanish pronunciations, which is a bit of a mouthful, you have to admit.

How much time have you spent in UK, vintage?

lljkk, are you saying that as a Californian you saw "las" instead of "loss"? are you kidding?

Have to agree completely lljkk, and I'm not entirely sure a native Spanish speaker would agree with the commonly accepted American pronunciations of place names like those and others, so the whole genuine pronunciation argument (e.g. 'erbs) falls down there too.

There is nothing wrong with a regional accent of any kind, American, British or otherwise.

lljkk: I think most Angelenos are fine with just Los Angeles (with the pronounced g).

We're very new to the UK. We're back in the US right now, spending the week with family during Thanksgiving. We were in Guildford last week, though, looking at apartments, checking out schools, etc.

wind up - "pulling someone's leg" humour

I'm confused - isn't it Los Angeles i.e. masculine and Las Vegas - feminine, so they shouldn't be pronounced the same way?

However, Latin American Spanish does differ from Peninsular Spanish - I often wonder if the differences are as great as those between British English and American English. (Trying to keep the thread vaguely on topic.)

looking at apartments
flats .

A 'wind up' is what makes some people on MN tick ...sorry, not helpful...it means 'spoof'.

Place names are a minefield. I once was chatting to an American on a London-bound flight who had sorted out Gloucester (there' a Gloster in MA, easy...though locally it may be Glosturr, no R droppers they) so was moving on to try to figure out Cirencester. He may have thought I was winding him up when I told him.

Wind up means we don't know whether to believe a single word you wrote is true or not, Vintage.

But thank you for the thread, it's been good entertainment.

Thanks, RichTeas, for explaining that.

We lazy Americans say "loss" for both "Los Angeles" as well as "Las Vegas." However, in Spanish, "los" and "las" are pronounced differently.

Grimma: I thought flats were apartments where the entire unit is all on one level? Oh, and what the flying spaghetti monster is a "maisonette"? My French tells me "little house" but pictures I've seen of "maisonetters" on RightMove or Zoopla do not looks like small houses.

Actually, we're less interested in flats than terraced houses. Our daughter wants a place with stairs.

Did you try him out on Towcester and Bicester?

(Toaster and Bister for the uninitiated.)

oh, and thanks for the tip about Thanksgiving, means I can expect my dad to phone Thursday. Maybe I'll surprise & phone him first, even.

Maisonette is estate agent jargon for a flat on more than one floor. If you lived in one, your dd would have her stairs

How does one put a t in Wimbledon?

Ooh, had a university friend from Gloucester who swore blind that Cirencester was pronounced Sissiter, and we were all very , assumed it was a wind-up. Especially as I'd been there several times, and everyone I met there called it Siren-sester.

I looked it up recently, and what do you know? She was (partly) right. It used to be pronounced Sissiter by locals as an abbreviation. Not many people use it now though, so I have no idea where she got the idea that it was prevalent there.

Interesting that the OP doesn't want her dd to fit in to her new environment. But had a long S&B thread about doing just that herself clothes-wise...