[Closed] Offspring with different accents to your own

They change with their surroundings...apparently until about 10 when whatever accent they have sticks.
Be thankful it is Yorkshire, some kids in the street have thick American accents - due to the amount of crap us kids TV they watch (they only appear outside to get in a car to be driven somewhere)...pretty poor in my opinion.

can't work out why it grates me when i'm confronted with a flat Yorkshire Noooooo

Coz racist

That'll be it 😆

My nephew's yorkshire accent is so thick I can't understand him half the time and I'm from here

Enjoy

Coz racist

I'm sure that Yorkshire folk would love to be a race unto themselves, but they're not. Lol.

We don't correct him, what will be will be.

Why would you 'correct' him?
He's doing nothing wrong.
🙂

Hast tha considered a course in 'ow ta speak proper tha sen?

It's a weird thing.
Both my kids live in Carlisle having moved from Dumfries. Their kids have different accents.
Sons 2 have broad Cumbrian/Carlisle accents like their mother and her family.
Daughters 2 have acquired an unusually "posh/well spoken" accent, grandson has even started to call his wee sis "posh"..... Their dad has quite a "neutral" non accent possibly due to having travelled a lot with his family. My daughter is a teacher and even though she still has her Dumfries accent is "well spoken" but far from "posh"
Both daughters 2 can get their tongue around the odd "och " as in Loch and there is occasionally the odd Scottish twang when speaking

Could be worse.

You could live in Birmingham 😀

Unless your offspring wish to work as a BBC TV presenter in the future, beat all regional accents out of them. Go RP or go home!

Why would you 'correct' him?
He's doing nothing wrong.

True Rusty, i know it's not wrong but I just can't help biting my lip when i hear it.

Perhaps i am racist. Just the other day i mistook a Lancashire accent for West Yorkshire, there just all the same to me.

🙂
I live on the Lancashire side of the border.
It's very confusing.

If someone is talking sense, I assume they're Lancastrian.
If not, obviously a Yorkshire native attempting to better themselves.

I'm from Leicester but moved to Halifax when I was 16, then travelled a bit, moved back to Leicester but have been in Leeds for the last 16 years. I'm 40 now and my accent is pretty non descript.
My kids were born in Leeds and have a decent yorkshire twang, which I don't have a problem with at all, but I don't like the full on Leeds accent and do teach them to say certain things properly when they pick up really bad bits from school friends. I'm pleased they won't get a Leicester accent as well though.
Wife is from Halifax BTW so she also has a yorkshire accent.

Just the other day i mistook a Lancashire accent for West Yorkshire, there just all the same to me.

I don't know who you've offended the most with that comment!..

Accents are one thing, inflections are another entirely. My daughter started nursery and comes home with a nasal high pitched moaning whine which goes up in pitch toward the end of every sentence. Once I noticed this I started to tune in to some of the mothers conversations at said nursery and notice they all do it too.

Utterly, utterly horrible. Imagine the Kardashians with a Belfast accent. Drastic measures will be taken to nip this in the bud.

I still pick-up the accents of where I'm living and working at 29. Lived in Rossendale as a kid (went to school in Blackburn where they called me posh, WTF?), then moved to Coventry via Hudds and Sheffield.

Somedays even I think it's a horrible mix, especially when S Yorks thee's and tha's start coming through again

it grates me when i'm confronted with a flat Yorkshire Noooooo

I'm teaching English to about 80 kids from age 6 and they've all ended up with my accent, so if you are ever in San Sebastian and you are confronted by a flat Cumbrian Nooo, you know exactly who to blame!

I was a RAF brat, up till the age of about 12 or so we moved every two years, one of the last posting my dad had was Lossiemouth, for a bit I had a accent like the wee free... 😆

Luckily for me, his actual last posting was to Bucks, and I mostly have a decent accent 😉

My accent is neutral, my wife's American. At school they hear Cardiff accents all the time. They still manage to be almost entirely neutral with their accents, but they say "I done" rather than "I did" which drives me up the bloody wall.

I was born in Birmingham. My Mother was from the south east and my dad was from Stetchford. Both spoke RP and I went to school in Oxford. As a result I speak with no discernible accent whatsoever. I studied in Sheffield and live and worked in West Yorkshire, as a cop. I met Mrs Scape at Sheffield (she's from York). I have noticed over the years that her accent has softened. She had a noticeable York twang when I met her, altogether different from Huddersfield or Halifax accents.

Our twins are 19 now. There is a remarkable difference in the way they speak. Lad speaks very similar to me, but with a hint of northern vowels (he uses a short "a" in bath glass and path etc) but his sister has a much more noticeable Huddersfield accent. Occasionally even her mum will pick her up on some pronunciation (!) Her granny noticed it far more.

Chomsky spoke of LAD, language acquisition device, whereby humans pick up their language from environment. Mrs Scape agrees that my son speaks as he does because I am very much his role model, and because since he was a small boy he wanted to share leisure time in the company of other folk who also speak, broadly, like I do. His sister on the other hand has interests that are not, shall we say, quite as formal.

My kids all speak German as their main language at home. When they speak English two of them speak with a slight American accent which they've picked up from school.

I love regional accents, they should be encouraged not eliminated!

my 19 year old daughter speaks a different language to me, she speaks total bollox most of the time....... 😀

@ton 🙂

Sarf London boy here with 3 kids who grew up in Surrey and went to private school. To be honest my accent is a bit Heinz 57 with traces of Australian and very occasional Mid Atlantic depending upon environment 😐

Regional accents are to be treasured.

My kids all speak German as their main language at home. When they speak English two of them speak with a slight American accent which they've picked up from school

I make a point of correcting my French relatives when they use American terms, not surprising given TV and Film content that they hear that most of all.

My kids all speak German as their main language at home.

I find few things more bizarre than a small child speaking German.

It's just not natural.

my 10 year old daughter has delevoped a wee snobby accent, nothing like my broad Ayrshire dialect.

My old fella was an ex Army Officer, pretty classless generic accent with traces of his Sheffield background.

He was pretty disappointed that I grew up speaking like John Cooper Clarke.

Nooooo. in yorkshire is pronounced neyw lad ...God knows what your son is saying, sounds like Queens english

Where in the country do you stop having a "barth" and start having a "baff"?

I don't say barth or baff, I say bath 🙂

Living in Oz but our kids sound very English.

Got the in laws here and FIL from Bradford, our daughter's started saying "up t". Cracked me up when she said they were going "up t' shop".

Could be worse. I'm from wolverhampton!

I'm teaching English to about 80 kids from age 6 and they've all ended up with my accent, so if you are ever in San Sebastian and you are confronted by a flat Cumbrian Nooo, you know exactly who to blame!

😀

Ee-yar, y'frm barra?

Yeah, I mean, I'm scottish and Dexter Holland sounds all californian, what's up with that?

zippykona - Member

Where in the country do you stop having a "barth" and start having a "baff"?

It's Yorkshire, why would they need a word for bath?

My dad's got a Yorkshire Wolds accent which has been getting stronger. My mum is from Beverley and apparently it's different, not that I can tell.

My brother mostly grew up in North Yorks, so has got a strong Whitby accent and picked up the local phrases.

My sister lives near Sunderland, so it a proper Mackem.

I've travelled a bit, so I've got Hull, South Yorkshire, North Yorks and RP. When drunk, i supposedly sound like i'm from Wakefield 😀

If you put me and my siblings in the same room, you'd think that we were adopted and shipped to different ends of the country

I volunteer in a localish primary school helping 8-9 year old kids learn to read. I'm pleased that although most of them are New British with a variety of maternal languages ( Portuguese, Somali, French, Wolof, Urdu, etc etc ) and don't communicate in English at home, nearly all have broad Bristol accents.

Grew up in south Bucks but now live in Chesterfield. The kids haven't picked up much of an accent but if they use local phrases which are graatically incorrect e.g. "I won you" instead of "I won" or "I beat you" they get picked up on it.

Work with various people with regional grammar and it really annoys me when it makes it into work emails or documents, it's just unprofessional.

I find few things more bizarre than a small child speaking German.

Or Austrian, that duzz me edin 😉

I'm sure that Yorkshire folk would love to be a race unto themselves, but they're not. Lol.

Tell me, what exactly does the term "race" mean here?

Interestingly, when learning to teach using using [s]fake[/s] phonics, teachers get marked down if not using local vowel sounds.

Yes, we have kids with Yorkshire accents (although their friends think they "sound posh", which I presume means Southern).

Anyone else have kids who talk funny? How much are elocution lessons?

I'm the exact opposite to you OP. From West Yorkshire and now living in Macclesfield. The missus is from Alderley Edge and there doesn't appear to be any accent at all around here. This saddens me to the core as my son may grow up sans accent. Elocution lessons would result in your child speaking like Little Lord Fontleroy and this will not go down well in a Yorkshire playground 😉

I love regional accents, they should be encouraged not eliminated!

I could not agree more with this. Regional accents are brilliant.

The Yorkshire accent took centuries to perfect, it was developed simply to woo sheep.

We moved to Scotland from Sheffield with three mini Sean Bean's, who crossed 't roaad 't get buss.

We now have two Highlanders and one non-descript northern accent, who like me will be mistaken for an Austrailian now and again...

Could be worse.

You could live in [s]Birmingham[/s] Bristol 😉

The kids are young enough, just beat it out of them.

Who wants a Yykesyire accent anyhoos 🙄

But I'll agree it is weird, my BIL born and bread in Yorkshire, his Wife the same, yet Son 1 (11yrs old) speaks RP, son 2 (8yrs) speaks a mix of Devon'ish and East Yorkshire.

How very odd.

I blame the Cattle Feed delivery driver and the Sheep Shearer..

Strangely, our son, who was ony just 3 when we moved from Kendal to Perthshire (now 17) has never developed a Scottish accent - his is much more like my wife's and mine (she’s Sussex, and I'm more middle class Home Counties). My accent, however, is nothing like my parents, who moved to London from Ireland just before I was born.

He gets called posh at school solely because he has an English (but not Eastenders) accent.

funkmasterp- I live close to Macclesfield (though I'm from Northwich) and there is a bit of an accent. Though I agree, not a very strong one.

We moved from NE England to Australia in 2006 with our two children that were 12 and 10 at the time. Within, I'd say 6 to 12 months they both had strong Australian accents. My wife and myself always kept our accents, just learned to speak slowly so that the Aussies could almost understand us, lol. Whenever we came home for a holiday the kids always got stronge looks because of their accents.

We returned to NE England in 2013. Again, within 6 to 12 months, their accents had changed again.

Somebody once told me that children up to the age of 18 will change their accents to 'conform'with their friends.

Somebody once told me that children up to the age of 18 will change their accents to 'conform'with their friends.

It's not just children though is it. Adult Scots in London for example will strongly tone down their accents but not when they are speaking among themselves.

And I myself will subconsciously speak differently when I'm working on site to when, for example, I'm speaking to my GP - I tend to tone down a tad my South London accent, not massively but probably noticeably. Saying "or why geezer ouse i' goin" to my GP doesn't feel right, sounds fine on site though.

EDIT : It's just occurred to me why I might tone down my South London accent at certain times - when I'm working on site I am completely unaware of my London accent, but if I'm having a conservation with someone who hasn't got it I become acutely aware of it - I can hear it myself as I'm speaking. I guess that creates pressure for me to try to tone it down a bit.

Adult Scots in London for example will strongly tone down their accents but not when they are speaking among themselves.

I've found that it's more about pace and dialect than accent. When communicating amongst themselves, Weegies speak at twice the rate of most English folks and use strange and unusual words like walloper , diddies and dobber.

Just the other day i mistook a Lancashire accent for West Yorkshire, there just all the same to me.

East Lancs and West Yorkshire are pretty similar TBF.

Somebody once told me that children up to the age of 18 will change their accents to 'conform'with their friends.

I don't think it's necessarily conscious, but some people are more susceptible than others. My better half was born in Central Lancashire, grew up in Somerset, lived in the Home Counties for a good chunk of her adult life, spent a lot of time in London and has been in East Lancs for the last ten years (I think I've got that right, it's hard to keep track. She has a fairly neutral accent but it does tend to flux if we move around the country. Up here people think she's well spoken, go down to That London and everyone thinks she's a Northerner. Visiting her mum for a week in Taunton and she comes back sounding like she's been in the fields on the cider.

My ex was a Welsh schoolteacher, out of term time she'd have a nondescript accent that you'd never place; during term she sounded like Charlotte Church.

I'm similar too I think. Away from home my accent tends to soften (sometimes by choice so that I can be understood by Americans), then when I get home it almost immediately degenerates into hey up and sithee. I'm not as broad as my farmer grandparents were, but can affect it if I put my mind to it. Part of that's probably just by dint of being educated and learning to pronounce words properly; things like "bath" and "note" are as flat as you like, but things like "Sarah" come out as "Say-rah" rather than "Surr-ah" because, I dunno, it just sounds wrong and ugly otherwise.

Toddboy - Member

Somebody once told me that children up to the age of 18 will change their accents to 'conform'with their friends.

Also adults over 18.

OTOH I get more scottish the close to London I get
.

[quote=ernie_lynch ]It's not just children though is it. Adult Scots in London for example will strongly tone down their accents but not when they are speaking among themselves.I lost much of my accent when working in London and it's never fully returned. I suspect it's also to do with the people you come into contact with on a regular basis. My career involved talking with lots of English, Irish and American "english" speakers as well as folk who were newer to the language. My current job is in tourism and I also find I tone it down/slow it down a bit. I'm occasionally asked to talk in a broader accent by some of our customers. It's surprisingly hard just to switch it on when asked 🙂

I have a strong Cumbrian accent.
The missus less so. We're darn sarf.
L'il j sounds like a BBC news reporter from the 50's to me! He has a toy "carstle" and takes "barths".
When we take him home, family beg him to talk & then ooh & ah like imbeciles.
He does quite a good northern accent too. 🙂

the bible was written using yorkshire dialect.......... FACT

I'll second Ton. It's definitely a fact.

MrsMC grew up near Eastbourne. Our kids were born and raised in Derby. The arguments about "grass" and "grarse", "bath" and "barth" are a constant joy!

The world does not revolve around Yaaaarkshire, FACT. 😆

I'm English, MrsSC is Canadian, eh.
Both boys have wee Scottish accents but not as broad as some in the playground. Suspect their accents are broader in school - and both have won prizes for reciting Scottish poetry (they pronounce pooem rather than po-em.)

And the stories above remind me of my late-friend Ken, from North Shields. His accent was impenetrable and he spent his retirement teaching English to children in Spain.

ton - Member

the bible was written using yorkshire dialect.......... FACT

That's why you can believe every single word in the bible.