picking up accents at school

[Sallyssss]

Ok, now I am know this thread wont make me the most popular person, but I need some advice/reassurance (or a kick up the back side ;-) .

My 5 yr started a new local school in a new area (where we have moved to)and has already started picking up the accent, which to put it mildly I do not like!

Hmmm - do I accept this? Will she grow out of it? Any words of wisdom?

think you will be fighting a losing battle trying to prevent her adopting this accent. If she lives in south London and attends a local school, the majority of her day she has this accent modelled to her and kids are notorious for jumping on anyone who stands out in any way.

I think you will have to live with it so long as that's your situaton. If you moved, she would probably drop it and adopt fairly quickly the next regional accent. If the local dialect includes grammatical differences to standard English, she'd probably pick those up tbh.

Sorry, maybe not what you wanted to hear. Once she is a bit older , she could change her accent if she chose to. It's actually not that difficult, people do it all over the world, UK is a bit weird about accents on the whole

Be careful Sallysss

She'll be saying 'Ta' next

After that it's a slippery (S London) slope...

If someone said that to me, Expat, I'd smile and say,
'Why thank you!'
Because surely it can only be a compliment. How could it possibly be anything else.

I grew up in Norfolk and have never heard anyone say 'I done'.

But it does sound weird, to me that my dcs have Yorkshire accents. It really isn't worth getting worked up about though.

IMHO

'I done' is nothing to do with accents (or nowt to do with as we Derbyshire folk say!) though - it is just bad grammar. I speak in a Derbyshire accent but my grammar is very good indeed, thank you!

You may be stuck with it OP!
My DD must be a bit confused - at nursery she gets West Yorks/Lancs from the staff, at home it Essex (me and my Mum) and (posh) Brummie from DH who also likes reading to her with accents - she comes out with some interesting noises. I can actually tell who she's picked up words/expressions from from how she says them.

Losing the 't' will be hard on your ears too.

I am from the south west, DH is from the North East and we live in Essex. Our DSes have Essex accents and it's fine. After all, they were born here so they're bound to speak with the local accent.

I really don't think there's a lot you could do to stop it.

Hmm, I think there are 'more neutral' accents, aren't there? not absolute neutral, but less distinguishable? for example, some people you can be pretty sure exactly where they come from, some people you have a vague idea of the general area ('Northern' as opposed to 'Yorkshire', or, probably 'Yorkshire' as opposed to 'Leeds') - then there are people who you really aren't sure much beyond the country (which I don't think makes the accent 'Home Counties', to me there are two home counties accents, a 'posh' one and a - much more normal - Southern (Estuary English?) one.)

anyway, as you get less and less specific, does the accent not get classified as more and more neutral?

My Mum was really keen that I didn't pick up the local west country accent and enforced RP at home. It only partly worked. I now have fake accent syndrome where I pick up the accent of whomever I'm talking too. Can be a bit

I always say to my dc that you should talk like your family talk: "if a child in their class sounds a word differently, that's fine because that's how their family say it".
It's worked for me, my children speak with the same accent as me and my dh.

The only problem we have had is "haitch" or "aitch" the problem being that they naturally follow what the teacher says...

Doubt you can stop kids picking up the accent from school. DH and I are both from the North West, but kids born and live in South East E and speak with South Easte accents (they sound very posh to us!!)

we get "somefink" instead of something....erghhhhh!

Oh Fuchzia I do that a bit too. Worry folk will think am taking piss.
Perhaps a result of being sent to elocution lessons as a kid as DM had aspirations
Sallysss you have been warned..

will be an uphill battle sally. The older she gets, the more she will want to sound like a Londoner (teenage years etc)

Oh FGS

Just correct her

You sound very judgey-pants to me

Move to where you want her to sound like then.

Some interesting research here:

especially "Accents are an informative indicator of socialisation, because (unlike most behaviours) they aren?t influenced by genes. When children resemble their parents in liking to read or behaving aggressively or being religious, the strands of genetic, parental and cultural influences are hard to separate. With accents we can separate them. Accents are part of a culture (or subculture) and children get their culture from their peers"

Also LOL-in at "neutral accent" - what would that be then?

I myself have an East Midlands/South Lincs accent. It's not especially pronouced as it's a while since I lived there. But I would deffo not call my speaking voice "neutral".

I have a Nottingham accent. To many from the South I sound Northern, to many in the North I sound Southern, and to many from Nottingham I sound posh.
The idea that your accent actually matters any more is depressing.

Once went to a lecture about the english language and its history and pronunciation and such like. Apparently, the 'flattest' accent is Kiwi. They officially have no accent. Then as you move around the globe, there are different ways of pronouncing the vowels and certain phenomes that make up accents. There is also apparently a major flattening of vowels across the world (over a considerable period of time, mind you!) so we will all eventually end up sounding like the kiwis!

Clary, that's an Irish term I guess. It means that you don't have a pronounced accent. You have a mild one and it's not instantly obvious what county you come from.

Fahh-kin ell, woss da pwoblem dahhhhlin? You ain't seen nuffink, awright?

Interesting..... I had no idea the adjective neutral was so derided in this context.

I guess you say Received Pronounciation. Well there is no such concept in my country; officially anyway.

I know I sound Irish but it is not obvious immediately what county I'm from, although people could figure it out, but my accent wouldn't slice off their ear. That's what I mean by neutral. Seems like the right adjective to me.