Scottish child picking up English accent

[Scotupnorth]

A bit nervous about posting this as I hope it's not taken the wrong way by anyone...

I live in a town in the Scottish Highlands, we moved here not long ago from another town in Highland. We needed to move to a bigger house but since Covid prices have gone wild with so many people moving here and so we couldn't get anything suitable in our price range in our home town and needed to move to another one about an hour away. I love it here although similar to many of the other towns in the Highlands, there has been a huge influx of people moving here from England, particularly post-covid. I have no issue with this however my daughter has started at the local nursery where the majority of staff and very many of the children are now English and she is now starting to say many things with an English accent. She is only there 3 days a week and we are very hands on with her so she hears us speaking to her all the time but as time goes on she's speaking this way more and more and it's starting to make me a bit nervous. Obviously there is nothing wrong with English accents but she has been born and brought up in Scotland and has never set foot in England so it would be weird for her to grow up speaking with an English accent. I was hoping initially that she would lose it as she gets older but I've recently started working in a position with local children and so many of them have English accents, including many children who have been born here, that I'm worried that she won't. When she has been saying things in an English accent we have been repeating it with our accent and she will often repeat it again with a Scottish accent, but as she is speaking this way more and more, I don't want to be correcting her all the time and giving her some kind of complex about it.

Anyone else in a Highland town having issue?

I hope this post is not taken the wrong way, there is no anti-English sentiment to my post or feelings but I just feel it would be weird for her to speak with an English accent when she is Scottish and has been born and raised here to Scottish parents.

I think some people are missing the OP’s point. Yes of course children’s accents will change when moving to another region/country but their child is living in the Highlands where it should be a predominately Highland/Scottish accent and not an English one.

Sure, but a place where the majority are English? Even in Edinburgh I would be very surprised to find a nursery like that.

I think kids sound " posher" the younger they are, so you may find that as they get older they get a broader Highlands accent.

Not sure how relevant this is (no Scottish connection!) but I have two kids who speak with a different accent from me. It’s discombobulating isn’t it op? I imagine even more so if it’s a different accent from the local one where you live.

if your dc is anything like me, they’ll have an “at home” accent and a “Out and about” accent. You can definitely tell when I’ve been in the phone to my mom or sister - my home accent comes back with a vengeance.

I think accents are getting much milder. Kids have so many more influences nowadays.

My kids sound American some times lol.

Maybe all the recent incomers are people with young families, hence more English children at nursery.

Well, we are a European family living in London and speak our own language at home. When DC were 2-3 we hired a nanny (v limited exposure to English until then) … she was Scottish and our DC naturally spoke with her accent!
We found it cute but had to explain to a quite a few people why our foreign DC were speaking with this accent (school especially were perplex and initially suggested they might need speech therapy!)

Back to your post, I have to admit the thought of « imagine if it was someone in England worried about their kids picking up a Scottish accent » crossed my mind.

@SinkToTheBottomWithYou England has ten times the population of Scotland. So Scots is a minority language in comparison and recognised as such.
It's not just an accent, the children are speaking a different language.
When the language and culture of a large country completely take over a neighbouring small country that is a huge loss of identity and it's the kind of thing that causes all kinds of social ills. This is entirely down to the madness of the housing market.

And where the majority of the nursery staff are English. It does seem unlikely.

Maybe try a different nursery at least, OP?

Although, I do wonder if you're just particularly sensitive/ hypervigilant for this. My friend is from Belfast and her son definitely has an NI twang, despite being around nobody else from NI ever. My DC were at nursery where all the workers had strong Glaswegian accents and they didn't pick up any at all.

In that case why is the Scottish population still failing to grow at the rate of other parts of the UK.

If you wrote like like this about accents in Lincolnshire becoming east European you'd be called a gammon.

Corby for example has been very shaped by Scottish influence over the years.

There are some helpful posts on here and some thinly veiled racism.

All parts of the UK are changing, the Highlands isn't exempt. Nor is it only those from England pushing up house prices. Because houses in Edinburgh aren't exactly sold for peanuts and plenty of people from other parts of Scotland moved to more rural areas after COVID.

Tradition and culture are important but you'd get short shrift if you said Bradford had to stop immigration from South Asian countries with larger populations because it was 'being taken over'.

Mine are the same 😂

@UnderTheStairs51 inequality in UK wide house prices are to blame for this because professional people can't afford to buy in the highlands and people from England can. It's not racist. The people from England could be of any background.
A huge influx of people from a big, next door country into a smaller country which has a history of conflict/ conquest with the big country, is not great for society.
None of the highlands is far from Culloden.

If a lot of Spanish people moved into Portugal it would raise similar concerns.

@UnderTheStairs51 it would be wonderful if we could have all our Brexit immigrants back in Scotland, who added an amazing mix of cultures to the overall Scottish one.
Unfortunately they were all sent back and we have been refused a Scottish skills visa. That's why the population is falling.
Also, we're importing too many retired people.

It's a fairly poor understanding of UK housing though. It is not uniform in England any more than it is in Scotland

Indeed. It's also insulting to Scottish professionals to say that 'professional people can't afford to buy in the highlands and people from England can'.

@treadingonlego @UnderTheStairs51

My children will never be able to afford to buy a house in their home village, not even with joint professional salaries of the kind they could access in the highlands. Doctors, health professionals, teachers all struggle and the wifi is so variable that working from home is not reliable. Every essential profession here has problems retaining staff due to housing cost.
Meanwhile the village is full of new homes built by people from England, most of them retired, one or two families who've sold up for lifestyle reasons.
This is happening all over the highlands. It is due to housing cost.
The other group of people who move to villages are younger and come from the North of England and generally get council housing. And need a lot of support.
Anyone who actually lives outside the central belt will recognise this.
Younger people live in towns or are in the city.

I do live outside the central belt and I don't recognise this.

The Europeans added to culture and didn't in any way have a detrimental impact on housing but all the English do.

But you are displaying no prejudice whatsoever. Okay.

No that sounds about right, UnderTheStairs. Everyone knows that English people are either super-uber-posho-professionals or council estate-football-hooligans.

Sorry, didn't mean to include the quote.

@UnderTheStairs51 are you seriously telling me that you think a demographic where most jobs pay less than £30k and most family housing costs more than £300k is acceptable?

Of course people will move from England to their Scottish dream home when they can sell a horrible semi for £400k and buy or build in rural Scotland . England is a huge country compared to Scotland so even a small percentage who can afford it make a big difference.
You just can't discuss this problem because you see it as anti English, but I see a culture and a place that's losing its uniqueness and even it's very ability to function properly or employ people because of house price disparity. In those highland villages where the English speaking children outweigh the Scots they will be condemned to the same fate when they grow up because they won't be able to afford to stay. It's completely awful.

@treadingonlego you did include the quote which explains that even doctors can't afford houses. So the two groups of people who DO get houses are either rich or poor with needs that put them to the top of a list.
It's really simple.

Unfortunately they were all sent back and we have been refused a Scottish skills visa. That's why the population is falling.
I'm still here, so is the Polish family two doors down from me, and the Polish woman married to a Scottish man next door to them, there are loads of other EU citizens here. Who has been "sent back"?

@Igneococcus not everyone got settled status, even children who had to go back for national service at the time of Brexit lost it unfortunately. People on short term contracts in health too ☹️

My Ds scottish accent is milder than mine which is milder than my dps and far far milder than my gps who are all dead now but spoke broad Scots.
My ds doesn’t sound Scottish to me but I suspect he would to an English person. I find it a bit sad but in the other hand his friends have parents from Eastern Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and Nigeria and that’s far richer culturally than the context I grew up in up in so he is lucky in that way.

So everyone in England has a 400k semi and can miraculously afford these on their ordinary professional wages? And no one anywhere in Scotland has a 400k house they've seen increase in value.

House price disparity and affordability is a problem. I just don't think it's a Scottish versus English one.

So you don't know a single person from England working in healthcare, teaching, volunteering with the mountain rescue, running a community council. They all just sit lording it over everyone in their giant new builds or sitting in their council houses.

I don't know a single person who has been refused settled status, that are all people who have been living and working here before Brexit happened tbf.