regional accents

[amateurmum]

OK am quite prepared to be lynched here but ...

Does anyone else feel a slight pang when dcs pick up an accent which is different from the way that they (ie parents) speak?

Mine have picked up elements of local accent from school and I would REALLY like not to mind but it does make me cringe a little.

Don't think I have any difficulties with local accent in others, but would quite like my children to sound like dh and me.

I think strong accents on small children are outright cute!

My DS has developed a good Lancashire accent since we moved here 3 years ago. I don't really have an accent even though I'm from Gloucestershire. Sometimes DS comes out with some really strange pronounciations of words, I guess he tries too hard to speak the same as his classmates, it can be pretty funny.

alreet lass 'ow are yer?

My dh is from Belfast, I'm E Coast Scottish, but we live in Glasgow adn our children go to the gaelic school after having grown up till last yr in the outer hebrides.

Dd1 (7) is sort of soft nondesvript scottish, but the younger 2 have really picked up the Glasgow twang - so funny when ds says he wants 'chups' for tea, or dd2 asks for a 'drinka muulk'

I like it. When I was at primary school we lived in Kent and I was bullied for having a scottish accent. My Dad said I had a choice - to talk like they did, or to rise above it and be proud of who I was and where I was from - and I am.

Ds picks up the local accent wherever we go avter a couple of days. So funny when we are with MIL in Belfast - ds saysing he's going 'up tha staiurs' in a broad NI voice!

dd has an increasingly strong Surrey/"Estuary" accent, which is different to both mine and dh.

When I think about my feelings about her accent, it throws up the following mixed bag of emotions.

1. If I detested the accent round here, then it would be very odd, as I live here. Am i constantly looking down on and judging the local people for their accent??? (Answer: no I find the accent very pleasant round here)

2. dd having a strong local accent highlights to me that I now live in a different place to that in which I grew up. (Answer: kind of, although I judge my accent to be a handicap anyway)

3. Class. At the end of the day I have spent my life running away from the assumptions people have made about me based on my accent. I would love dd to have a 'posher' accent, simply because after 10 years 'down south' I find it so tiresome to still be judged on my accent.

My dc are completely trilingual - switching effortlessly between Estuary at school, posh at home and Yorkshire with dp's family. I think it's particularly important that they develop effective "protective colouration" at school so I never correct the Estuary.

I am Scottish, DH German and we live in Germany. Our kids speak English with a Scottish accent, (DS complains if his hands are "durty", sounds hilarious) They speak German with a mixture of the region where we now live (near Düsseldorf) and my husband's hometown (Franconia).

I am careful that they don't pick up too much of my husband's familys accent as it can be very strong.

I don't mind them having a slight accent, it is a part of them after all. But I wouldn't like them to have a very stong accent. Maybe that makes me a snob, but so what?

Amateurmum; YES!!! I am canadian, and I say zeebra, and tom ay to. My kids roll their eyes and say zebra and tom ah to. All the folks back home love their "cute little English accents". I also feel I get judged by my accents. People will American bash in front of me, then look guiltily at me, as if they have slagged me off. Hello!!! Different country!!! Rant over!!

We live in Germany. Noticed the other day that dd was saying "Fersch" and "Tersch" instead of Fisch and Tisch which I wondered about but apparently that's just the Berliner dialect. I quite like the way Berliners speak German so it doesn't bother me although I don't personally speak German with that kind of accent. No idea what accent she has in English TBH. Think it's probably a weird mish-mash

LOL she sounds amazing!

My 2 dc have got my accent (Cumbrian) even though they have never lived there and in German they speak "pure" hochdeutsch even though they learned in the deep south where they have quite a strong swabian accent. Recently they have picked up a few Berlin style words like yut instead of gut - must be from school.
When ds was very small he had an indian-cumbrian accent it was so funny. His dad speaks english with him but he's indian so ds picked up alot of funny ways of saying things! He dropped it as he got older and speant less time with his dad I suppose.