"No it ain't" - Does anyone else wince at the way their child speaks?

[merrygoround]

OK, I know I will sound like a terrible snob, but dd - age 3.5 - has recently started saying "ain't" instead of "it isn't"; she also has a habit of starting all her sentences with "isn't it" - not as in "isn't it a nice day", but as in "isn't it that I can't go the playground today", or "isn't it that daddy's at work?" - just about any sentence at all. I ignore it at the moment, but just wondered if anyone else would find it annoying. Neither dp nor myself use either expression. Or at least I never used to - recently I find myself starting sentences with isn't it too. Although neither expression is actually bad, I wonder what will come next, and how on earth I will deal with the inevitable swear words. While dd's very occasional use of "bugger" or "shit" (I admit, copied from me, I try to restrain myself now) doesn't worrry me I don't think I'm too keen to hear her using the f word quite yet.

They become bilingual, merrygoround, which is a highly desirable attribute. They are now perfectly qualified for the socially-confused 21st century; viz. they can read PPE at Oxford and attend posh drinks parties without being patronised by people who think they're yokels, but can also get a Saturday job in Tescos without making all the full-time staff despise them.

What's not to like?

I know, but it was funny cos she was so innocent! We didn't reinforce though and now she seems to have forgotton it now thank god.

Funny enough, Irish people are usually good at learning foreign languages but most of us after 13-14 years of school are still cr*p at Irish!

My sister at 3 used to tell dirty jokes to nuns and elderly ladies! She didn't know they were dirty jokes though!

lol thats a bit like my dd CM. I drop lots of Irish words into my speech out of habit like leaba and bainne. Poor dd was about 14 mnths and whinging for bain. I didnt know what she was on about for ages till it occured to me that she wanted milk.

Dss talks with a sarf London accent with loads of Americanisms dropped in too. He was talking the other day about some car'oon on Tv and about the 'arry Po'er movie. I just look at him blankly and pretend I cant understand him. TBH when I first came to London I wouldnt have been abale to either so I think its very important that he is able to see why ebing able to speak properly is important even if he doesnt most of the time.

dd(5) says "f" instead of "th" all the time. She just can't seem to get her tongue round it sometimes. I set about trying to teach her one day that she should say three, not free. Finally she got it and was so pleased with herself she proceeded to count ... one, two, three, thour, thive ...

Mumonamission !
Tarantula, I do that too! I go around saying "We'll put the baba in his leaba!" and other stuff like that.

Mumonamission that reminds me of a little boy I read about who counted like this:
One, two, three, four, five, seven, whataboutsix, eight, nine.....

Frogs my DD has been like that this summer. She was in school language mode when she broke up and over the summer we've had some laughs with the phrases she's acquired at school, in the US (dude, maaaan, wipeout, maytag - we've been on the beach in California!) and from us.

It's funny to watch the way she practises all this stuff and then to see that she's already changing her what and how she says things according to her audience.

I never thought of the positive way of looking at dd as becoming bi-lingual! That makes me feel a lot less bothered.

But I will draw a line at the nasty swearing that is commonplace around where we live. Dp is not a swearer, and as I said when I started the thread I am trying to curb myself too. Even our lovely next door neighbour peppers every sentence with the f word, in front of her own children and my dd. Can't stop her of course, but not too happy about it.

I winced when a nursery assistant told me proudly 'your ds is really good at saying ta.' Too embarrassed to tell her I didn't want him to say ta, thanks very much! But he seemed to be adapting to the 'one spoken language at home, one at school' thing at an astonishingly young age (1) because he never said it at home.

Now trying to teach him that it's aeroplane, not airplane...

Ours do it to wind us up. They're 5 and 3 and both perfectly aware of the effect it has on certain members of the family when they drop their t's or use words like toilet. The three year old in particular likes going up to his grandfather and saying, "Hello, Grandpa, do you like 'Arry Potter?" with no t's in Potter.

I figure that as long as they are aware of differences in pronunciation and vocabulary they can then choose the most appropriate way of talking in any situation. Like other people have said, it seems a bonus to me even if it makes me cringe sometimes.

Edam, my ds used to say "aeroport". Used to drive me nuts!