Pronunciation and its relation with phonics/spelling etc

[Pyrrah]

I'm going to try and word this one carefully as I am interested in answers from an educational view-point not a social view-point - if that makes sense.

DD has just started at school 5 weeks ago. She was a very early talker and has always had good pronunciation. I noticed a couple of weeks ago that she has stopped pronouncing her 't's and using definite articles - so intead of 'little girl' she was say 'li-ul girl' and 'it's on table' instead of 'it's on the table. It's driving me crazy but apparently (according to DD) it is what she is taught at school!

Her class teacher speaks with a very strong regional accent - but it sounds lovely and she pronounces all the letters and definitely uses articles and correct grammar. However, neither of the two TAs do and I imagine this is where she is picking it up from. It's not a question of a regional accent - it's just sloppy speaking.

I was wondering whether things like non-pronunciation can have an impact on learning to spell and read? How can you learn to spell 'little' for example if you pronounce it without any 't's for example? What about listening to children read? Surely it should be important for anyone teaching early years to talk in a reasonable manner - I don't mean RP, just good plain English with all the letters that should be sounded being sounded!

i'm form the north but live and work in the south. DD speaks with a southern accent and is often correcting me saying ' mum its barth not bath' and i say there is no r in bath.

then i explain that its okay to use both, depending on where you come from.

i was working for an architect and trying to be proper and was saying haitch before he blew his top and said it was aitch! I was mortified. then he flounced out saying he'll be back 'somewhen'

i think that there needs to be a bit more tolerance of regional variations. if everyone can understand the gist of what you are talking about - does it really matter?

When DS1 started nursery he actually came home and said "Mummy, we don't call it a train we call it a choo-choo." GRRRRRRRRR!
We live in Norfolk. At nursery he also had "Nooz" I used to ask him what he talked about in News and he used to say very insistently "No Mummy we don't have news. News is on the television or in the paper. We have Nooz it's different."
We have also had phases where he starts dropping his t's like bu-er but if he does I remind him not to and he usually stops. I think good pronunciation is key to good spelling and also correct use of English (pacifically is a pet hate along with would of!) I hope it will help him when it comes to writing if he doesn't have these habits to start with.

I think regional accents are a very different thing.

If a teacher said 'bath' rather than 'barth' then I can explain to DD that mummy says barth because we live in London and Mrs Smith says bath because she comes from the North of England.

Trying to explain why Mrs Smith says 'bu'er' instead of 'butter' is much harder because it's not a regional accent, it's laziness. And most children expect explanations when you tell them not to do something!

I do think that correct grammar, spelling etc should be taught everywhere even if it means ignoring a common usage in a particular area.

For example in Italy most regions have their own dialect and some are like completely separate languages. The dialect that is spoken around Florence is what is taken as classic Italian and is taught in schools throughout Italy. In a sense the children there are bilingual as they speak their regional language but use classic Italian for communicating with other people and official documents, business letters etc.

My dh taught/ as a visitor in a school in East Anglia.
The drawings on the walls were all labelled by the dc. He when he saw the title egog for Hedgehog.