Estuary English in the West Midlands: I am confuse

[nanila]

Humuhumu has begun to drop her T's, replacing them with glottal stops. Wa'er. Beau'iful. Floa'ing.

I presume she's picked this up from nursery somehow, but I haven't worked out from whom. It sounds very peculiar when coupled with her otherwise Brummie pronunciation ("I loike oice cream").

It also sets my nerves jangling. "Floa-ting, darling," I

Comments

[melissa_maples]

It's early days. I don't sound anything like I did when I was her age; neither do you. David, sheesh, he sported a broad Lancashire drawl until he was out of school, but then moved in with posh people down south and got it all ironed out of him. You wouldn't peg him as a northerner at all.

So... yeah, wait and see. Things will flex this way and that.

[nanila]

True. I know lots of academics from the north who don't sound Northern at all. I think the higher education system encourages generification of accents (toward southern or modern RP).

[daphnep]

What accent does your husband have? This is really interesting.

[nanila]

He grew up in Norfolk, but he doesn't have the local accent. When I met him his accent was a lot more Estuary English, but years in academia, and lecturing, have generified it to "educated southeastern English. It's still miles from a plummy RP accent.

He had speech therapy as a child and the way he speaks (including accent) reflects that as well.

[mysterysquid]

In a way, being brought up in a house with so many accents might make "code switching" easier for her later on.

[nanila]

I hope so. I can mimic a modern RP English accent, but I don't do it often. I find it difficult to hear some of the distinctions between accents that native English people find quite easy to make. Geordie/Essex is fairly obvious, but Geordie/Mackem - I'd have to have a Brit help me out.

[owlfish]

T-dropping is a feature of our local accent. Grouting spent about two weeks actively dropping them and we wouldn't go along with it. At all. It was the first time we'd really argued back about accent acquisition. And the first time I realized that actually I am picky about accents to some degree.

When she asked for "wa'er" to drink, we made her put the T back in before we would oblige. She's okay on water now. But other words are still an issue.

[nanila]

Sympathies. Also, holding off on handing over the water is a good idea. I often do this with Humuhumu when she's forgotten her manners, so I think she'd probably put the pronunciation correction requirement in the same category - annoying, but easy enough to satisfy.

[nanila]

*winces* :P