Feeling sad that my children have different accents and we cannot move back

[Namesnamesnames13]

Does anyone struggle with bringing up children in a different area/country and their children have different accents and feel sad they don’t sound like you?

and wanting to move back but knowing you can’t now ever due to children…

I struggle with the way things are pronounced rather than the accent itself. My child has ended up saying things completely differently to how I grew up. Grass instead of grass for example.

Accent will always be slightly off as dual national with three languages but not pronouncing the word the same way I do is sad.

My DCs have a different accent to me, a different nationality to me and a different mother tongue. I never think of it beyond marvelling at how families scatter about the globe, which is my own history too. DHs father’s mother tongue was French, and only speaks English. The only common language our immediate family has us English, all spoken with different accents. I find it quite charming.

I understand this. I grew up with a different accent to my parents and it sometimes felt a bit odd. When I moved back to the part of the country I grew up in, I was pleased that it meant any future children would have the same regional accent as me and DH. It's not a huge issue but I do get it and you're not silly to feel the way you do.

OP I think, probably if you met and heard the majority of people on claim to have RP accents, you'd find they really don't. They might think they do or hope they do and they may try hard to have neutal accents but in reality they will sound very much like the area they grew up in rather than live in.

FWIW Your unhappiness with your kid's accents will stem from your unhappiness with living in Glasgow, Scotland instead of where you feel 'at home'.

Have you discussed long term plans with your partner. Your happiness is as important as his and unless work and family ties are keeping you in one particular place, you should both have an equal say. As your kids get older, it gets more and more difficult to relocate as its hard to get into decent schools etc. But i can guarantee your sadness is about their accents and is more about feeling 'stuck' with where you live.

My DH and i are northern but live down south now and its weird hearing our kids with southern accents but it doesnt bother me as such. Makes for some good arguments regarding the 'correct' pronunciation of certain words 😀

No. None whatsoever. What does it matter if your children don’t sound like you? Why should they?

Yes we do that too, but it’s the other way around for me. I think I just prefer a southern accent 🤦‍♀️

I am home and ds is here all his life! Ive a 1 Yr old now and i wonder what accent he will develop

indeed - I'm from the NE and one of my very posh (to my ears) southern children has flat "a's" in words like bath and grass. 😆

It is only very weird to me generally when we go home to visit friends and family - and they don't sound like everyone else, down here they just sound 'normal'. They can always tell when I am on the phone to people in the NE though as they say my accent gets broader automatically ....

I have a very proper public school-educated friend who lives in the Caribbean - his children all have a local accent, which doesn’t bother him at all (but his DM was not at all impressed!)

My sister very british her son scottish well to be fair his dad is scottish, dont bother her.
Both my parents are from essex i sound like im from yorkshire.

I always think it must be shit for people who move to London, have kids then split up so they can never leave London and their children have to grow up with London accents and London problems. Make him move before you split is my advice.

My children all have a very different accents from me and my DHs accent is a bit different again, although more like the children.
It has never once crossed my mind as an issue and my children and DH love doing impressions of me 😂

So you think there's a bit of snobbery there? I'm not entirely criticising you if there is, because even I go back to where I grew up (east Midlands) I'm almost glad that my children don't have that accent and that mine has become much softer through living down here in the south east for nearly 50 years! I do think it's a particularly ugly accent!

Not in London though. That’s roughly where I’ve moved from!

A step up in the world then😆

It doesn’t bother me at all .
my children have all been born and grown up in different areas and different countries .
they don’t sound like me but my youngest does use Scottish phrases .
the others have sort of difficult to place accents

You probably prefer it because it is familiar to you, you grew up with it. Dh and I lived in a different place to where we grew up. My Mum used to try to correct my toddler to saying things with her accent. It was snobbery. I told her he needs to speak the same way his peers do, with the local accent. Although he did say one word in a completely different accent to any of us which he got from a boy from school.

Does your husband have a Glaswegian accent? Are you living where he is from? If yes then is this clouding your judgement because your children have "his" accent and not yours?

My friend is northern and all her dc have a strong northern accent. We live in Essex. Her dc do get sometimes teased about sounding northern even though they are born and bred Essex.

My mum has an Irish accent my dad a Yorkshire accent. I have a north West accent and my husband is Polish so whatever accent that is 😂. My kids are being raised in the south of England. It doesn't bother me that their accent is different to mine but it does go through me when they say things 'barth' for bath. I make a conscious effort not to correct them. It does go through me but once the moments passed I'm over it 😅

My children have different accents to me and I’ve never really thought about it. Except sometimes we don’t understand each other because our pronunciation is different. Like this morning, my son was telling me, I went into the woods and there was a ball! And I was like, oh my god, A BULL?!?! 😂 But no, don’t feel the slightest bit sad.

I’ve lived in 4 countries with very different accents and languages. You can always move wherever you want. Accent has nothing to do with it. My dc are dual nationals. They could move back to my home country and live one day if they want. I hope they don’t! But their accents will not be an obstacle.

My sister and I have different accents to each other we were born and brought up together by the same English mum in the north of Scotland, when we left school she moved Glasgow way for uni and me Edinburgh then lanarkshire so our accents are very jumbled up and totally different from one another now. My kids have Stirling accents so different from me. I do say lots of words differently from my Scottish partner though, it’s different doesn’t mean it’s bad. Just part of who we care and where we have been in life I guess.

some people keep their strong accent, my brother in law still sounds very much northern (the town we come from) my friend is still really scouse and lived in Scotland over 20 years, my grandma was a geordie and never lost her accent, it did soften over the years, but I loved it. It’s really interesting hearing about the different accents, although no idea what an estuary accent is?

I'm from Liverpool but we moved to Wales when my kids were young. I still have my original accent but my kids sound like they were born here. Why are you worrying about something so minor?

My eldest had a striking accent as she went to nursery near my workplace 30 miles away! It faded after a while and she speaks like us now! My mum had a strong Liverpool accent which faded over the years since she moved. So accents can change over time.

I feel a bit like that. I was brought up round the corner from Peter Kay and if I try to speak without my accent I sound false.
I moved away. My children still sound slightly northern but much more neutral. I think it’s better for them.
My accent suits a comedian more than an academic. I know it’s other people’s problem if they don’t like it but it’s easier to have a neutral voice.