Which accent is my baby likely to have?

[QueenNeurosis]

Hope I don't go down in MN history for starting the most inane thread on record...

DP and I are both English with non-specific accents. Baby is about to be born in Wales. When my baby starts to speak, is s/he likely to have our accent or a Welsh one? Does anyone have any experience of this?

Sorry... isn't late pregnancy dull?

We live in the west of Ireland, and moved here when DS was just 4.

He had a London accent before now that he is 6 and has had a year in school he is in the very deliberate process of acquiring a 'Wesht Corrrk' accent now with much hyper-correction which makes him sound like he is from the West Country.

He has gone from 'wawtuh' for water, to a very strangled 'worrrturr' which will modify again when his ear tunes in properly here.

DD1 still has an English accent and is posher than us. She says 'carsul' instead of 'casul' and is known as 'Lola' hereabouts ...

There is no such thing as a non-specific accent btw, you just sound neutral to yourself. Land yourself here for a week and you'd start to hear your own voice pretty quickly.

My charge's parents are southerner and very well spoken and I'm a dirty common geordie, so she says something very nicely and some things like a geordie.

and sometimes she comes out saying things like a cockney.

So I think you're little one will probably have a hybrid accent lol

'Posh RP-speaking Scottish-through-and-through Lairds in your part of the world too. I think they get it from boarding school. '

Shona, I've only met one who is a laird, and a big one!, but he was not born in Scotland at all. And went to school in England. His children were all born in London, too, and his wife is English all the way.

I don't think a lot of these lairds types are Scottish through-and-through.

I think many are born in England and/or go to boarding school there, hence the accent.

It's not a bad accent, I'm not slagging it off. I am foreign, me.

I just wonder how it is that some folks have it and others don't when they actually are born in Scotland and go to state schools here, because I've heard that a lot, particularly when we lived in Edinburgh.

But I don't hear it at all through here, even when the parents are English. There's quite a few pupils at the girls' school who have English parents, but the kids always speak with a Scottish accent. And the other half-Yank kids.

So it seems to be an East of Scotland phenomenon and it never fails to be of interest to me.

I couldn't do this accent to save my life!

I can't do the o's or the u's, for starters.

Ah, I made no sense whatsoever there. Sorry.

its wahts called a pan loaf accent

there's another around here who is a laird, his wife is foreign, but the kids were brought up here and they all sound Scottish, regional Scottish, too.

they didn't go to boarding schools, though.

My DS is 2 and a half. His dad is from Berkshire and I am from Yorkshire. We now live in Birmingham. So far he comes out with bits of all accents. He until recently has attended nursery 3 days a week so must have picked up Brummie from there - he came home at one point saying "Momm-oi!" (Mummy) and "noine" (nine) but it dropped after a couple of weeks away from nursery. He sounds mostly like a very clearly speaking version of me, but sometimes he says a word that I know he copied from his dad and says it in Dp's accent . Not sure what will happen as he grows but assume he'll become a full-on Brummie or at least a bit once he starts school.

I'm from Durham but haven't lived there for 12 years and though my accent is still northern, it's not Durham anymore, I can't even fake that accent now!
DD who was born here, on the Clyde does sound Scottish, but it's a softer accent from a lot of the kids she goes to School with which is presumably the English bits she picked up from me.