accents

[brooke]

I was wondering what sort of accent if any does your child have? My ds can sound american, he pronounces a lot of words in that accent he also uses words like garbage instead of bin!!! He also sounds posh sometimes too especially when pronouncing words with an A sound, like Last or Grass!!! He also has a hint of geordie too!!!!

[Tally]

I think it's inevitable that he would pick up on American accents and words because we are exposed to so much of it.

 

My own accent varies between Estuary and A Bit Posh - although my parents grew up in East London and Essex, they are both very well spoken, but not posh at all. I don't know how I ended up with this accent.

 

My uncle has lived in several different countries and picks up accents very quickly. He's had several different Irish accents as he moved around Ireland, and when he lived in Finland for a year, he was really difficult to understand. He is now teaching his French girlfriend to speak Belfast, and the results are hilarious.

[gothschild]

My son who is nearly 12 is very well spoken. He only tends to sound like he's from North Tyneside (geordie) when angry! x

[jb1964]

I was wondering what sort of accent if any does your child have? My ds can sound american, he pronounces a lot of words in that accent he also uses words like garbage instead of bin!!! He also sounds posh sometimes too especially when pronouncing words with an A sound, like Last or Grass!!! He also has a hint of geordie too!!!!

 

 

Hi Brooke,

 

My daughters nearly 15 - she also uses words like garbage, janitor etc - she does also pronounce words in certain accents. Up until this past year she was always very grown up, well spoken, no slang etc, although I've seen a little change in her this past year - most people probably wouldn't notice because she still does speak lovely - but I can see a subtle difference here and there.

 

Take care,

Jb

[Suze]

My son has always talked with different accents........we have a welsh thing going on at the moment.Past ones have been brummie and scottish .

[smiley]

My monkey speaks with an American accent most of the time..... I've been asked lots of times if we are just here on holiday for the week when out at the shops etc....!

For him, it's a confidence thing - at home, his speech is normally the same as mine. Bit posh (ask Hev ) with a little bita scottish - that gets stronger when i'm tired!

Edited April 30, 2008 by smiley

[pearl]

JP has a light northern accent, but his AS mate sounds distinctly American despite living only half a mile away

[Flora]

This is interesting. Bill has a funny history of accents. When he first started to talk and as a toddler he was what I would call really posh. Then we went to live in America, and although we lived on the west coast, he developed the same accent as a Brooklyn cab driver, which is probably because some of the kids in his class were from New York. Then when we moved back to the UK it took him over a year to lose his American accent and now he is back to 'posh' but the SALT detected some American, not in his pronunciation, but in the emphasis in some of the way he pronounces words. He does have a very odd accent, not at all connected with any of the family or the area we live in.

 

My youngest son has a mixture of Oxfordshire twang and geordie

 

Flo'

[Eva]

Hi,

 

my son (he's 7) speaks with a mixture of accents. Some people have asked if we've been to England, sometimes he pronounces words with an American accent, and sometimes he uses an Aussie accent. When he's trying to be polite he sounds very posh.

 

Oddly, he speaks Italian (he's learning at school) with a really broad Aussie accent though - despite the teacher being Italian and not having an Australian accent.

 

Eva

[Cariad]

Quite a posh accent but with American words slotted in. For instance "My ass hurts" is a favourite and "You are buuuuuuuuteefull" instead of beautiful, and he likes to say "You Twamp" so he has a bit of Johnathan Ross thrown in too!

[mrsmuffins]

This is very interesting! My ds doesn't have an accent but he does add extra vowels in words sometimes - difficult to describe but he will say what sounds like 'ho-yome' for home etc. The SALT said he did it because he was bored and was craving more words to learn so he was just making up his own, don't know how correct it was but he is very literary now and great at reading so I suppose there could be a truth in it?

[caren]

K has a very strong American accent which is there all the time , everyone asks if he's from USA , yesterday he came home talking polish , then today Italian he's very good with it i must admit but he's always had the american accent so thats normal with us , he also says mail truck and mail man i said yesterday K its post man LOL he's very good with it though

[CarolineJ]

Bim picks up on any accent he hears and becomes obsessed with it. We live up in Northumbria right now, so he tends to have a "lercul" accent when talking to his peers.

 

My 6 year old daughter sounds like she comes from Yorkshire. She's never lived there!

[hev]

all steven says is you know what i mean mum?or innit right mum,he doesnt sound posh at all,he doesnt take after me cos im extremely well spoken,people often ask if im royalty cos i sound so posh

 

smileys got a lovely voice,i think hers is really posh,shes as common as muck really though

[Bagpuss]

Hev

 

I don't know about my accent...it's a mish mash of all the different places I've lived in (will have to ask someone what I sound like )

 

Youngest DD's voice is so high pitched, she sounds abit like Sue from the Sooty & Sweep Show, and has no identifiable accent.

 

Eldest DD is beginning to sound abit "northern", although only very faintly, and it's more of a twang when she says certain words.

 

DS has no accent that is noticable either.

 

DH is Yorkshire through and through.

[pookie170]

Cal spoke terribly properly as a smallster, it cracked us up! Now he's ten, many little slangy terms are sneaking in, I think now that hes around a peer group his own age hes picking it up and perhaps consciously so, in an effort to fit in? He is fabulous at mimicking accents though, to the delight of his teacher, who often calls on him to read out the spoken text in stories as he 'brings the characters to life'! Bless!

 

Esther x

[MrB]

Cal spoke terribly properly as a smallster, it cracked us up! Now he's ten, many little slangy terms are sneaking in, I think now that hes around a peer group his own age hes picking it up and perhaps consciously so, in an effort to fit in? He is fabulous at mimicking accents though, to the delight of his teacher, who often calls on him to read out the spoken text in stories as he 'brings the characters to life'! Bless!

 

Esther x

 

I think it could be something we do. I picked up my vocabulary and a lot of accent from listening to Radio 4 as a teenager, however I also spoke like my peers (although in an extreme manner). To this day I flip between a strange accent (I know its strange 'cause it baffles people) and local accent. It depends on who I talk to. However, neither are entirely successful as elements of each impose and jar on the other, thus giving me a very odd accent and way of speaking.

 

Only now do I accept that this was due to me trying on different accents for size as it were and mimicking everything around me. I will often start mimicking the sound of whoever I am speaking to (especially if they have a marked manner that appeals to my brain), very unconscious of it till it becomes too apparent. If I stop it will resurface in later conversations, sometimes years later.

 

I know it is odd sounding, but find it hard to control.

[pinkclouds]

People always comment on how my son sounds posh or american! I didn't realise it was common with aspergers/asd until it was pointed out when he was diagnosed last week! I've always been aware he doesn't sound like my friend's kids, but I didn't think much of it.

[Willow-Tree]

Hiya,

 

I'm 17 and people have been mistaking me for American for a few years now. My brother (9 with Autism) says American words, like candy, dollar, garbage, instead of our words. Not sure why this is, but we're both on the spectrum (I'm Asperger's).

 

Willow

[NobbyNobbs]

my accent is unusual, not at all like the rest of my family's. people find it quite strange when we're out as a family because i dont sound anything like the rest of them, but we all look very similar. i have welsh intonations on certain words from being at university there, i have bits of american from living/studying there, and things that i referred to there more than here i tend to use the american word for, but its not intentional i dont know i'm doing it (and its not the usual garbage/ elevator stuff its really random things)

 

i use american spelling for most things which is left over from having to write papers for university with american spellings and grammar, but can correct myself if i know its for a mainly british audience (i try to use mum rather than mom on here)

[bikemad]

J swings between very American to very upper class English...you know the kinda thing.....'one wishes to use the lavatory'......the rest of us have very strong valleys Welsh accents lol.

[skye]

This one is hard for me, because I am American so DD probably gets it from me, however I have a couple of American friends who also live over here and their kids sound like they are definately from the areas that they are from. I think the Libby sounds like she is speaking the Queens English. Very posh for West Yorkshire!!

 

One more thing I just thought of. My daughter says American words mostly from all of her shows on Nick Jr and Playhouse Disney but she almost really overdoes the accent like Caaaandy or Tom-AAA-toes. Does this make sense?? HAHA

Edited August 4, 2009 by skye

[hsmum]

Hello,

 

My eldest son has a pretty neutral British accent. His grammar is more or less standard as well. My youngest son speaks with a Yorkshire accent, and his grammar also has regional features. I beleive research suggests that accent and speech style is closely related to the peer or other groups with which one consciously or unconsciously identifies. Also, quite interestigly, boys/young men are more likely to use non-standard/regional accents than girls. The fact that my youngest has adopted the speech style of his peers and my eldest has adopted the speech style of the (mostly professional) adults that he gravitates toward seems to support the first statement. As for Americanisms my youngest (and his friends) use them profusely - they're cool (although I daren't tell them that they're not so cool when mixed with Northern English accents)! My eldest tends not to use Americanisms - he will in fact tell his little brother to stop speaking like an American.

 

Sorry for going on a bit, but the whole issue of accent and identity is fascinating

 

[LordGorse]

My parents always seem very proud that I "talk proper" A few people have pointed out that I don't seem to have any sort of accent; maybe it comes from a tendency to read books rather than talk to people

[TheNeil]

Rough assed northern . OK it's not as pronounced as it used to be but dump me in Newcastle of Middlesbrough and nobody has the faintest idea what I'm on about...even my other half struggles when I 'go northern' (just wait until we visit 'the homeland' m'dear - you'll be even more dumbfounded ).

 

As for what I say (when I actually say anything) then it's an awful lot more structured and 'grammatically correct' than the rest of my family (although I can swear like a docker ). I've always put that down to the fact that I tend to read books rather than watch trash .

[ScienceGeek]

I have no idea what my accent is doing anymore. It seems to be a mix between east london, west country with a few americanisms slipping in too. I pick up accents real easy, when we had an american friend stay I noticed I picked up some of her accent (rhode island )

[gemgems77]

my ds can sound itallian esp when he says stoppa lookin ata me , because of his speach probs ,but we love this though seeing that he looks like a liitle italian rugby player