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.

This is nothing to do with the accent thing per se, but re large number of retirees moving to Scotland, I have heard anecdotally that some older English couples are tempted in part by the fact that the kind of benefits and subsidies used mainly by older people are more generous in Scotland. Maybe it is time for a rethink.

In contrast my friends moved from SE England to a remote area on the north west coast her children were 8 and 10 both now have a soft Highlands accent. They can’t hear it I can and wheh they go back to England their family can definitely hear it!
My DS lived in Glasgow for 6 years from 19 I noticed he developed a slight Glaswegian twang and certainly picked up the odd Scottish/Glaswegian phrase/word. He’s now moved to the Highland and that’s all gone now. I think it’s inevitable that we pick up and copy accents we hear around us.

Born and bred in Scotland. My DNA results are 98% Scottish. Most of my gran's family moved to Canada in the 1920s and I moved to London in 1984, all for job opportunities. This is how society works. We can't put rings round places and say people can't move here or there. My husband's family is from London. Do you think he likes the fact that everyone except us has had to move away? My street is full of people from all over the world. House prices mean my kids can't buy here. The house next door went to people from Hong Kong. Loads of houses in the new estate behind me are empty because they were bought by investors. We have so many Germans, they have their own school. So many Koreans, they have their own shops, churches. A Brazilian shop has just opened up...

The issue of English people moving into the Highlands is part and parcel of global moves by people for whatever reason. And just as I live with non indigenous neighbours so must you.

This is one of the most unpleasant threads I have read here for a long time.

I'm an EU immigrant to Scotland (20 years here), despite the "oh EU folks are fine, it's just the English we have a problem with", I'm left feeling a deep sense of discomfort - that this really is how people feel and perceive others. The exact same feeling I had after the Brexit referendum.

@gingerlybread I would guess the vast majority of people reading your comments feel deeply uncomfortable and saddened by your parochial, insular and bigoted stance. Shame on you.

I agree. For some reason Brexiteers are always described with absolute venom as racists but this anti English feeling isn’t racist. Makes me so mad.

I just find it astounding, the whole ‘I’m not bigoted but get back to England’ attitude. So tone deaf.

Completely agree. There's such nonsense and inverse snobbery. One of the first things my husband's brother (I refuse to call him my brother- in- law) when he met me was to make fun of my accent, which he didn't think was Scottish enough.

They're embarrassing.

When this happened to my nephew the culprit was too much screen time and Peppa Pig!

Scots is directly descended from Northumberland Anglo Saxon so to say it has no relation to English is wrong. The fact that the Frisians understand Scots proves that point.

She might just be a mimicker OP.
DH and I are both English, DS1 and DS2 mostly sound English but are Scots born and we live here if DS1 is reading out loud he sounds scottish and is a dab hand at Scots poem complete with a Scots accent. I've generally found it depends where/who they are learning the words to how it sounds...some words he says comes with a French or Italian accent as he mimics the word exactly including any accent on it.

Over time it all sorts itself out especially at school I wouldn't worry.

Many of the English "immigrants" in the Highlands are there because they were posted there, Morayshire had 2 massive RAF Stations there up until recently, most of the service personnel were English, many never went south when they left the RAF. I was first based up there in the early 80s for a few years and the local accent was strong, when i went back in the 90s it had already been watered down. Many of those English voices have been there for half a century so this "influx" of southerners is not new.