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?

yes but the point is that people who think they have no accent always have one - it's just local to them so they don't hear it!

It's blardy obvious to anyone from South Lincs where I am from.

A lot of people prefer RP - but that in itself is a home counties accent ie Berkshire/Bucks.

If you have an Irish accent megalyzyx I don't think anyone would call it neutral (in England anyway) - gorgeous maybe, bt never neutral!

Kids (and adults, for that matter) are most strongly influenced by their 'speech community' - so that means the kids she's at school with, who she'll spend most of the day with. So yes, she will pick up the accent, inevitably. Learn to live with it or put her into a different environment where the accent of her speech community is different.

When i moved to Suffolk I was told I didn't have an accent I just sounded posh. I'm from Herts so just sound like I'm from herts, theres no plummy sound or anything.

I know I have an accent Clary!, it's just not so local that people can pinpoint exactly where I come from.

I like that cut glass so posh it hurts English accent! I know a lot of Irish people find that a bit hard on the nerves but I love it.

To me the Suffolk accent sounded a bit like the Cornwall/Devon accent! ONLY a foreigner could think that I'm sure.

MAga its because they're both quite drawly with long sounds. Norfolk too

''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.'

But to the rest of the world, you sound Irish.

And, to anyone educated or in the least travelled, someone with a 'neutral' Irish accent is a usually Dubliner, trying to be neutral, so it's pretty obvious where they are from.

I can't pick out S. English accents, having never lived there, but cut glass English accents really sound like nails on a chalkboard to me. RP accents put me to sleep.

But, naturally, I am biased. I prefer a Scottish accent.

Well, Scottish accents are all quite nice .

DC (we are in Norfolk) often drop Ts in the middle of words. It sounds wrong to me, but as long as they spell the same words correctly I can live with it. I have so much bigger fish to fry.

Apparently all DC have a slight American twang to their accent (I am American), and DS1 has an East Midlands sound; so says DH, I can't hear any of it!!

I'm American, I have a Texan accent. My children have zero trace of American to their voice. I am the only person they hear with this accent, and they hear only few English people as this area has only few.

I thought they might change a bit on a fortnight holiday to the US, but no, they stayed Scottish lower W. Highland.

There are quite a few here who are half-American, as there was once a base here. But they all sound Scottish.

I think it is inevitable. If you want to avoid it you need to keep moving every few years! I have moved around a lot and so have no particular accent! At one time people used to say 'you come from the north'-but not any more-unless they have a very good ear for 'slight' northern vowels.
I wouldn't recommend moving your DCs so often so it is best to put up with the accent! We just mimic the worst -like the silent 't' so they are at least aware that they are doing it.

I'm the same as janeite, I have a Nottingham accent but my grammar is good so that's all that matters! DD2 has started picking up the related but altogether different Ilkeston (small town up the road from Nottm) accent from her childminder. I hear the way she pronounces cheese as chee-yuz and please as plee-yuz and it's very different from me. I find it fascinating and it doesn't bother me at all. LMAO at people from the south thinking they have no accent.

What people are confusing here is the difference bewteen accent and dialect. Accent is how the words sound and it is pefectly possible to speak completely correctly but with a strong regional accent (as I do, though my lovely West Mids is moderate, rather than strong).
And OP, if you don't like it, pay and send her to one of the v plummy central London private schools.

...where she will pick up the mid-Atlantic drawl with that horrid way of ending each statement as if it were a question.

It is very tough for a child to have the "wrong" accent for their school. I moved around a lot in primary school and always seemed to have to change my accent to fit in.

Moving from East London to Liverpool - I was called a "posh southerner". Moving from Liverpool to Cambridgeshire they all thought I sounded like a scouser. Moving within Cambs from local primary to independent senior school my voice was deemed "too local". I was forever playing catch-up.

Now I find myself copying accents if I speak to someone with a strong regional accent. It is certainly not intentional but I think comes from many years of trying to sound the same as my friends to fit in. My accent has an identity crisis I think!

It would be hard for my children to pick up an accent here as we live in an area of high immigration, I'm not sure what proportion of the children are born to parents or have grandparents who were themselves born overseas but I would put it at over half, and a school of 90 has around 35 different first languages.

I grew up here and the environment was similar but with less variety at that time. I think both dh (army family so moved around a lot) and I have general middle-of-the-road south east accents and the children seem to be developing the same.

I'm mentally scanning trough my class register of kids, who are predominantly all "local" children, and even then, there's quite a range of accents.
More than a few of them will say "I done" and "we was" and "I brang" and "would of," all of which I'm afraid I can't help correcting, being a pedant, although I don't think I'm supposed to.
Some drop aitches (which I don't correct) and others sound "posher." But I presume that's down to parental influence.

Expatpat you say "And, to anyone educated or in the least travelled, someone with a 'neutral' Irish accent is a usually Dubliner, trying to be neutral, so it's pretty obvious where they are from."

That is ridiculous ha ha. Irish people don't pretend to be Dubliners to neutralise their own regional accents! Dublin has its own accents. The fact that you assume anybody with an accent you find mild is either from Dublin or pretending to be from Dublin shows that you don't know what you're talking about.. And people could guess between two counties where I come from but they wouldn't know 'til I told them. I don't assume I can guess where everybody comes from because sometimes it isn't obvious... I know you're on a life long mission to cut through what you see as bullshit, as you see it, but make sure it is actually bullshit first.

I am from Surrey (so very Southern, somewhere between RP and saff lahndahn, tending more towards the latter). DH is Scottish, we both have long vowels. My children "translate" from their local (Cheshire) accents for me - shall we have a bath I mean a barth mummy. Love it

I love regional accents. I really do not see what the fuss is.

There is no such thing as "correct" English anyway. Language is a far more complicated thing than that, and long may it be so!

I always thought I had a very nice accent (I'm from Surrey don't you know!) DH is from sarf London.
DD2 aged 3.6 was born in the Middle East. She attends a nursery on an ex-pat compound which is made up of lots of british, south african, canadian, australian and american residents. Up until very recently she had a 'normal' british accent but has not developed a very odd one.

Last week I phoned DH and said it was time to go home as she'd started saying 'tomaaatoes' (in a very american accent)

Magal, as has been pointed out on this thread by numerous others besides myself, people still know where you're from despite your belief in a 'neutral' accent.

So though you think it's BS, to the rest of the world, it isn't.

Trying to moderate someone's regional accent without elocution lessons when they live in the region from which it originates appears, to the rest of the world excepting perhaps England and certain Irish, a ridiculous and pointless endeavour because, well, it's not possible without the person in question sounding fake, not 'neutral'.

Because if it walks like a Scotsman, and it talks like a Scotsman (John Barrowman excepted), it's probably a Scotsman.

For the life of me, I can't see what's so terrible about that, be it a Scotsman, Irishman or Englishman.

But you're right, too, because tbh I haven't really encountered many Irish people who strive for this 'neutral' accent.

Plenty of English people on here who have, though.

expat, it's snobbery plain and simple. People are terrfied that their DC's will appear to be working class.