Speak proper!

But ye neva hav to put the otha words away - Says it all.

This article by David Almond, "Taalk propa!" has GOT to go on this thread. S'luvly!

At my country primary school we were told we had to learn two languages - Norfick and English. We had to learn to speak English in order to be understood by furreners and also write as Norfick is very difficult for furreners to read.

Will always remember my first job in a girls secondary school in Leicester. Having picking up I had a 'different' accent (my MT being French) - one girl from a 'famous' local estate asked me 'but Miss, why can't ye speak proper like what we do' - the other girls told her my English was a lot better than hers, and she was most upset (quite rightly)

My DSs moved from East Midlands to East Anglia to Greater Manchester and, somehow, have never spoken with anything but RP. This is probably because I speak with an indefinable Scottish accent and their father had (has) a sort of public school accent.

Many students, even at A-level standard, seem unable to differentiate the purposes of their writing, such as practical, informative, emotive. I have seen Scientific reports written in the first person in a chatty tone of voice.

All my ten grandchildren spent most of their childhood in Kent and speak RP. When they moved to Yorkshire, they expected to be teased or bullied, but in fact the children they met found their accentless speech exotic - they were often urged at first to 'say something in your posh voice'. Only one girl picked up some local sounds, but she developed a Kiwi accent after two weeks in NZ.

I have never lost my Salford accent, but once I started teaching and lecturing I had to speak clearly to be heard and understood, particularly when I was teaching in Kent. After almost 50 years away from Lancashire, you might expect my accent to have disappeared, but it has only softened.I notice that when I am with my sister, who has always lived within ten miles of Salford, that I revert back to my Northern vowels, quite sub-consciously.

I don't like the Manchester accent, but I could never bring myself to have elocution lessons as it often makes the speaker sound false (cf Thatcher).
It has never held me back in my various careers and when anybody was stupid enough to think they could patronise me I was more than capable of a good put-down. I think it is extremely rude to comment on anybody's accent, unless to pay them a compliment.

Knowing how to speak clearly and comprehensibly means that you have a choice. Having choices is what good education is about. So DD can continue to say 'would of' but woe betide her (as some of my teachers used to say) if she writes it except inside speech marks!

I agree with FlicketyB: there's nothing wrong with an accent (provided its not so thick as to make you unintelligible), but if you choose to use local words and sentence structures in a different part of the country you are likely to be misunderstood or dismissed as a yokel.
I married a Southerner - I'm from the North - and was surprised to discover how little vernacular he possessed: his normal language seemed very poor compared to the richness that I was used to. And the number of times I had to explain what I meant when I used a phrase! ("I'm not so green as I'm cabbage-looking" perplexes him to this day). Then again, of course, it was the Southern vernacular that became accepted as "proper" English.
The crucial thing is that you are readily understood wherever you are: if nothing else it enhances employment mobility.
Speaking properly also helps with written English, a point that has already been made. Perhaps I'm a pedant, but I squirm when I see words used incorrectly (affect/effect etc) or spelled wrongly, and grammatical errors drive me to despair. Entirely inappropriately, they make me think that the writer is uneducated.
I always corrected my daughter's incorrect spellings in her homework, and she has since thanked me for it.

oh lovely OGM. proper bald.
When we lived in Oldham when DS1 was about 6 his Welsh relatives were amused and amazed by his authentic Owdam accent. It went away when we moved and eventually settled down as a kind of non west country version of Bristolian.
DS2, although he never lived in Bristol, managed to pick this up from big brother and despite completing most of his schooling in Swansea never picked up a Swansea accent (that I can detect). I asked him about it once and he said he had made an effort not to. So kids don't always pick up the prevailing accent.

My late FIL (Bradford born and bred) always used to say;

It were raat gud (It was really good???)

Jess what about the population of Cardiff who enjoy the odd 'Mahs Bah'! And then there's North Wales 'posh', 'telephone English', and 'peer pressure pronounciation'.
My GC (Bradford area) use 'wor' e.g. 'It wor really cold!' I have to say I really dislike this! Thinking about it though, it would be more likely to be. 'It wor proper cold'!
I did snigger at 'Grandad, you're proper bald!'

Mr Bags grew up in S Wales. He was an adult before he realised that birthday wasn't pronounced burfday. #bitslowattimes The f still slips in sometimes.

I like to hear different accents. It makes life interesting. Poor enunciation (as opposed to merely different pronunciation) is a different matter and not to be encouraged.

There used to be a fair amount of elocution in S Wales, in my mother's generation. She had medals for it. But when us Welsh say barth it's cos that's what we do with the vowel in question e.g. Gwlad Glwlad . You can hear it in the national anthem on Sat. if you are watching the match. Or the way we say cath (= cat) pronounced carth

When my children were at high school I used to worry that I spent so much time correcting their speech that I wasn't actually listening to what they were saying. They have of course long ago left behind all the annoying habits picked up at school in an effort to be like everyone else.

Actually, my tolerant self thinks that you can't really blame people for confusing would've with would of. Sound-wise, it makes perfect sense. Sound-wise, would have is clearly nonsense!

I correct Minibags every time she says "would of". She continues to say it but she does know (even in denial, the blighter!) that it is "would've" or "would have" really. If she doesn't remember this when it matters, then I have failed!

When she is speaking to her mates, she has to say "would of" because that is the 'proper' thing to do in that peer group. S'obvious, innit?

Part of me thinks the correct usage will morph into would of in time . Resistance is useless.

But I'll carry on saying "would have" to DD every time she (deliberately) gets it wrong.

pheonix

As I said I lived in Bath. The proper way to say Bath is 'Baff'I was a Baffonion.

I actually found myself texting 'could of ' the other day. What would Miss Wright have said!

Being a born and bred Geordie I cannot bear to hear Newcastle being pronounced Nyoo car stle As various newsreaders tend to do.

There is no Nyoo or Car in bloody Newcastle !

I'm sure all children are bilingual. We always coped perfectly well with speaking "proper English" at school and "common" with our friends. I think dialect is perfectly acceptable IF children learn correct grammar at the same time. A properly constructed sentence can support a few owts and nowts. The worst thing is the general sloppiness of modern English. My biggest bugbear is "would of" used by people who have presumably not noticed that the ve in would've actually means have not of. We wouldn't have got away with that for a moment when I was at school!

PS With regard to the long "A" a male friend of mine would say "bath" if he was having a quick one, and "barth" if he was planning on a good long soak!

Nice one Ana !

When I was a youngster, I spent term time with my mother in Middlesex/Surrey (Middlesex seems to have disappeared) and school holidays in Malvern with my Welsh Grandmother and Yorkshire born Grandfather.

When in Surrey I was occasionally accused of speaking like a "yokel" and when in Malvern was sometimes told that I was speaking "posh" !

As far as I was concerned I was speaking the same no matter where I was!

I would think most children could easily adapt to this "bilingual" way of talking standard English at school and another at home.

Children of primary school age are supposed to be better at learning a new language than older ones. Isn't it something to do with the younger brain still being tuned to learn language? A skill which fades as they go through Childhood.

Would teachers really find it difficult to explain the benefits of being able to modify an accent and dialect to make it generally comprehensible?

I'm too old to change now!