Do your children have a different accent from you?

[UnquietDad]

I get the feeling this has been discussed before - apologies if it is old ground for anyone.

Have you moved to an area which is not your "home", or settled with a partner who is from a different part of the country, and found that you've, almost to your astonishment, raised children who speak totally differently from you? (i.e. from your personally, or from both of you?)

I suppose it's inevitable that children will pick things up from school. In our house I still find it odd and slightly jarring that my children have the "short Northern A" - DD will say "classe" and "grasse", and talking about going "oop" to school. And all three of them (DW, DD, DS) will take the piss out me for my Southern RP. (That is a "slightly irritated" face, not really "angry". Another new MN icon needed.)

I do know some fellow "southerners" at the school and some of their kids speak more like their parents than like their peers. I often mean to ask them how they do it!

I'm not mocking anyone's accent or making it appear less than valid. But I do know people who have children who grew up in certain areas without being "from" there and have maintained the accent of their parents rather than of the area, which I think is just as valid.

I don't necessarily think I want my children to be saying that things are "raaaat good" or "ah ent doonit" just because some of their classmates do. Any more than I'd want them to be saying "leave it aaaahhhhhht" if we still lived daaahn saaahf.

I suppose that, with phonetic spelling, it depends what is your default setting. If I read "class" or "bath" I don't need to add another letter to hear them in my head in RP. It's also the pronunciation foreigners are usually taught and the one given in the dictionaries. (The same way I don't need to see "through" written down as "threw" to hear it that way.) Of course there are regional variants, as there are in all languages. I need to write it the "other" way to demonstrate the "other" spelling, e.g. "classe", "grasse."

Message withdrawn

dd1 speaks with a Somerset accent,despite the fact that dh is from Lancashire & I come from Leicestershire,where we still live.She has never been further south than Leicester & we know no one from the southwest,so it is a bit of a mystery.

dd2 says 'mam' which is a word neither of us ever use.The only person I've ever heard use that word was my gran,who died before dd2 was born.

Dh has a (moderately RP) West Country accent. Mine's originally fairly Southern & RP but with Brummie overtones when I'm pissed (apparently - I did live in Brum in my teens). My mum says I've developed a Yorkshire accent.

Ds speaks broad Yorkshire, with an occasional Pakistani inflection courtesy of his CM!

It's all good. Can't think why people lose sleep over it tbh.

I am a southerner living in Yorkshire and my 2 year old dd has picked up a lovely Yorkshire accent from nursery and I find it adorable - it emphasises the fact that she is an independent person with her own life.

Mind you, my dad is from Yorkshire and we grew up laughing at him for saying 'bath' and 'grass' with a short 'a' so I hope she's going to be rather politer about the difference than we were....