My 9-year old daughter has started with this speech habit of not saying the "t" sound in some words. Instead of saying "button" she says "buh-en," instead of saying "written" she says "wri-en," and instead of saying "bitten" she says "bih-en."
She says it with any word that has a "tton" or "tten" sound at the end.
Now, she CAN say the words correctly so it's not a speech issue where she can't say the word. For some reason she's picked up this habit from someone!
I've been correcting it whenever she says one of the words because I think it makes her sound ignorant. We homeschool, so I've made it part of her curriculum.
Have any of your children picked up a similar habit, and was it just a phase and they grew out of it or did it stick with them? It's a habit now, similar to the habit of over-using the word "like." I remember doing that a lot as a teen and college student, only to make myself break the habit when I got my first job. No one wants to, like, promote a person who can't like, talk, y'know? I would like to avoid that scenerio with her by catching it now! Am I making a big deal out of nothing?
(I don't make it a big deal to her, we say the words correctly at the beginning of each school day. I'm hoping that will help drill it. I don't correct her in her casual speech, but I do correct her if I'm in "teacher" mode and we're doing lessons and she doesn't say the word correctly.)
Thanks mamas! I was getting some flak for correcting her and was told to "leave her alone, she'll grow out of it" when I corrected her when we were not in homeschool. It seems that other family members think it's "cute." It took me a while to fix some other bad speech habits such as saying "she don't" or "I seen" which drive me absolutely bonkers!
I have had to switch to only stressing speech during homeschool lest I get criticized too heavily from family members. Thanks for the support! I'll keep on it!
She is speaking improperly for no reason, so yes, I would correct her. You're right -it does make her sound ignorant, and I would let her know that. I wish more parents would make a "big deal" out of grammar and sounding intelligent and educated.
This is actually one of the things that drives me crazy: Kids not being taught and MADE to speak AND spell correctly. For her own betterment, keep correcting her. I have a heavy Texas accent, but my mother still corrected me and made me say the words correctly. It was better for me. Now I am actually able to not only carry on an intelligent conversation, but I am able to sound intelligent also!
Now, if we could get all the kids, (and adults), to spell correctly the world would be a better place! Lol! Just a little exaggeration. ;)
Correct her everytime and offer a reward if it stops and a punishment if it doesn't. It does sound ignorant and there is no way I would allow my children to speak that way. good luck, be strong and stay on her.
It's British. Specifically London Estates (lower / middle class) accent, although some brit colonies have the speech pattern as well it's the not-so-new "it" thing that is driving many more upper class british parents bonkers. T's in the middle of the word are replaced by a breathy apostrophe... s's also take some beating (innit springs to mind). TH's turn to Fs (wiff for with, bof for both, etc.). Upper class brits enunciate the T's in the center quite crisply (as opposed to Americans who turn it into a D sound: wadder instead of wa-Ter, waider instead of wai-Ter. It's soooo anomolous in American speech for a crisp T that voice analysts LOOK for them when comparing sound recordings.
Honestly, one HS'ing mum to another, if she's got a talent for accent mimicry, I'd run with THAT for awhile. Turn it into a unit study. Get her a voice coach to do a couple different styles of accents. Doing them on PURPOSE (Any one of the scores of brit accents, dozens of american accents, Aussie, Kiwi, Canadian, etc.) leads to both intent and understanding. NOT TO MENTION ;) the side benefit of having it be a school project means that you can tell people that she's studying accents & linguistics when she starts mouthing off in peculiar fashion.
It reminds me of using "Aight" in place of "all right" :P
I correct my son when he drops too much slang into his speech - or regional accents for that matter - we live in the south and it is easy to fall into a "twang".
Why? Because certain regional accents, use of slang, incorrect grammar, mispronunciations, and foul language lead people to think that the speaker is un(der)educated, lazy, or just not smart, and can affect the way the speaker is hired, promoted, and treated in everyday dealings with others.
I'll be honest - I would be less likely to hire someone who spoke poorly, even if they had wonderful credentials. Biased of me - yes. Reflective of the business world - yes. I am preparing my son to be self reliant, and teaching him proper speech patterns is a part of successful dealings in the adult world.
Long way to say - go ahead and correct your daughter - she may rail against it now - but as an adult she will be happy that she can converse in the business world.
Ugg. I don't know why kids do this sometimes, but it is irritating.
I was volunteering at a thrift store and a girl came in with her mom. They brought a couple of items to the counter and the girl asked, "Why for this one costiz a dollar and this one costiz two dollars?"
I was thinking, "Is she serious?"
I mean she was obviously old enough to speak properly.
I mentioned to my son, who is in high school, and he said that was the new "thing"....girls talking like babies. (At least that's how he termed it).
My friend and I picked her daughter from a friend's house and she was talking in the backseat. I looked at her mom and said, "I didn't understand a single word of that." Her mom said she didn't either. The girl is a sophomore. I guess they think it's cute, but I don't think so.
The girls I heard doing it go to the same school so that could be part of the explanation. Even though you homeschool, your daughter may have heard someone else talking a certain way and decided to give it a try.
She knows you don't like it and she knows it's not the proper pronunciation.
Hopefully the "fun" will wear off of saying her words that way.
I think you're right to stop it before it becomes an ingrained habit.
Good luck!
I for sure would correct her. She's old enough now that she should know proper grammar. My mother was always on us with our grammar, it was so annoying, but at least we all know how to speak now (with the exception of some MN slang we picked up when we lived there). :-)
Some kids keep doing a british accent and saying words differently.
It was on some show they watched. I would correct it. People judge us. I wish someone had told me to stop leaving off the g when endin a word;0).
My 18-year-old niece has been talking this way since she was little. We all thought it was cute then. She still talks this way and can't even pronounce my daughter's name right. So I'd say correct it if you can.
to me it sounds very ghetto. I think she's trying to sound "cool" or whatever they call it today. She is old enough to learn you can use slang with friends but not with teachers, in church, etc etc.
When my kids speak improperly (on purpose) I simply can not hear them, I say "I beg your pardon?" or "excuse me?" or even just "what, I couldn't understand you?" I DO NOT respond unless they are speaking properly. If I 'do not understand' more than a few times, I WILL say the statement I think they are trying to say correctly and ask if that is what they are trying to say.
To me, when a person speaks improperly, I DO tend to think they are uneducated/maybe not too smart and I prefer myself and my children present ourselves as the intelligent, educated people we (I) like to think we are.
Well, I don't know what anyone means by Minnesota slang. I've lived her for 22 years, since I was eight, and the only thing I've noticed is that they call casseroles "hotdishes."
However, I would ABSOLUTELY correct this right away, because speech habits can be VERY hard to break if you let them continue for a length of time. It becomes an accent, almost. And I agree that pronouncing it that way does sound "ignorant." I don't like to label, so I won't, but I know exactly what it sounds like to me. Where in the world do you suppose she would've picked up such a lazy way of speaking? Weird, especially since you homeschool.
I think you should just gently correct her whenever she says it, during "school" hours or not. My own five year old had just a few genuine speech issues to address, and in just a few months of consistently addressing them, she has outgrown them. It can be done.
With this one, especially, I would nip it in the bud or before you know, she will be saying, "Ma, can I Aks you something?" Hmm.
Good luck! I think you are on the right track, just stick with it!
i don't know, but my son (4) has been saying "brung" like crazy lately and it DRIVES ME NUTS. i think it sounds ignorant and would like him to have the self respect to at least KNOW how to speak correctly. i don't want him learning bad habits this young. i have been correcting him and it actually can trip him up, trying to say "brought", so badly that he stutters and stops and starts his thought several times before he can correct it. i am gentle about it, but i do correct him. "honey he didn't 'brung' anything, what did he do?" my mother always insisted on proper grammar so i guess that's how i was raised. maybe it's not really that big of a deal. but i have always taken some pride in the fact that i speak correctly, and i would like my son to have that too. not to say that slang doesn't have its place, and i'm not going to freak out and start correcting him in front of his friends, or like, say, when he's in high school. i'm not a nazi about it. as long as a child KNOWS the difference. and i think, around mom, is a prime example of when a kid should know they need to speak correctly. just like they may (as teenagers) cuss and brag and be little buttheads with their friends - but not around mom. same idea.
My 11-year-old daughter has a speech problem (for which she has received therapy since she was 3 years old.) We usually make a speech goal for her, such as "correctly saying the R sound." Then, we attach a prize to her saying it correctly in conversation. Once she starts using the correct sound consistently, we take her to Justice to buy a new outfit, or give her an I-Tunes gift card.
You may want to try this. Give her a goal and a prize. Remind her throughout the day that she's working toward a prize and she'll start making an effort.
I would correct her on both but that doesnt mean she is going to stop. like me i am a redneck and have said yall my whole life all rednecks say it. or yeatyet (did you eat yet) some slangs like that are from certain areas of the country. some are race the blacks (no offense intended to anyone) have a whole diffrent language of thier own just like rednecks do. I think yall is a okla thing to everyone there used it. so you may not be able to break her of it. is it worth the fight
No, you should do your best to correct it now otherwise she may keep doing it...Sounds like she definitly heard it from someone & she prob thinks it sound's "kewl" to try to fit in w/that person, maybe she wants to be friends w/that person & doesn't know how to go about it other than imulating this other kid. I detest poor speech habits when it's not necessary like saying 'Dest' for Desk or Axe for Ask, Chilren for Children, etc. etc. You should charge her allowance money for saying it incorrectly, perhaps she'll get out of the habit once she figures out, that really is not the way to say it. Or you could repeat the word back to her when she says it wrong in a correcting manner like if she says Wri-en or whatever the word is, immediatly say WRITTEN in a firm matter of fact voice & maybe that will help annoy it out of her. She may also just get tired of talking that way & phase out of it too but not all kids do. Good luck!
My brothers and I were homeschooled for 3.5 years and my mom made sure we worked on saying "to" like too instead of ta and "for" like 4 instead of fer. I don't know if it's a Midwestern mispronunciation or universal, but I do notice that many people pronounce "to" like "I'm going ta the store" and "for" like "I'm going fer a walk." Anyway, I'm conscious of using the correct pronunciation now especially when I'm reading to my daughters. I think it's important to have correct pronunciation and it will serve your daughter well, so go for it!
Oh wow, this very same subject came up, not about grammar, or you like, or you know or all the other things, but about my sister who talks like a baby all the time and she is twenty seven years old! She doesn't do this once in awhile, she has made this her demeanor. And she is in nursing school! It probably started out when she was in highschool if I recall correctly -and I think we briefly did something like that then, too, but she has carried it too far and I am afraid if she lapses into that during her schooling or her career someone might think she is incapable of doing her job. That's unfortunately just the equation some people make. At any rate, she has been told, but continues to do so. It isn't really cute after awhile and you are right to try nip it in the bud.
fix it is my suggestion ... it could easily cause problems
I think is a kids thing, they hear things like that and they think is funny or sometimes they come up with them on their own.
I remember when I was her age I meat a girl from other country and she had a different accent and I start talking like that, it drove my mom crazy hahaha.
No to long ago my daughter start laughing really weird, no idea why or where she pick it up, it drove me crazy too.
Lucky both of us move on.
I would talk to her and tell her what you just write to us and keep repeating her the right word, but this things happen to some kids as they are growing and are trying to "find" them selfs.
I say correct it every time you hear it.
Absolutely correct her! Bad speech habits are harder to break as time goes on.
Yes-gently and in private. If she is able to pronounce these words and doesn't-then you can correct her-and bring it to her attention, but if she is struggling with a word-then you offer encouragement.
Correct her! Do not let this one slide. The only way to break a bad habit is to form new, good ones.
This is more in response to your "So What Happened?" section. That is awful! Obviously you don't want your daughter to make a bad habit a lifetime issue... I have a cousin, who everyone thought it was "so cute!" that she couldn't pronounce her R's in the middle of words, she used Y's with it. Like the name Sarah came out as Sayrah. It wasn't that she couldn't do it, because she could make the sound in other forms and in other words. If she was corrected she would immediately say it correctly without a flaw. But alas her mother thought it was the cutest thing in the world, and she ended up in years and years of speech therapy in school, which did not bode well for her self-esteem.
Sorry if this sounded like an attack, but I hate it when people think that speech quirks and baby-like actions are just "so cute!" It ends up doing the child a huge disservice in the long run.
Correct it, its not cute, though she may think it sounds cool...Im sure it will pass but just do what your doing
It's good to correct her but I wouldn't make too big a deal about it. (It sounds like she's trying to do a cockney accent to me). My friends and I used to run around doing accents all the time in junior high. It is really normal for teens to create their own "language" with their friends. But then, what often happens is that peer pressure from other quarters, (or getting a job or whatever) makes them realize it is too much or is no longer "cool" or appropriate. My mother corrected my grammar constantly which drove me nuts, But she didn't seem to mind the baby talk and other weird stuff. Now I have really good grammar, and I only talk baby talk to my hubby. ;-)
Hi,
I think correcting her in the school time and not during casual speech (where she is conversing and the sharing and the message are most important) is a wonderful balance. If she can consistently pronounce these words correctly in school mode, then things will work out. If she cannot, or if she can only repeat them, but not produce them independently in connected sentences, then you might consider what caused this change. Did the shape of her mouth bite change? Has her hearing been checked very recently? Have her tonsils and adenoids grown large? As to the posters who have suggested that someone might think that improper articulation indicates questionable intelligence, I'm sure they are correct that some folks have that perception. I'm glad to add that many, many very intelligent people have speech difficulties. This seems to be more obvious in adults, but I think it's helpful to keep this in mind when we are listening to children, too. Thanks for asking a great question.
