Raising an American child with a British accent.

My wife and I are both American, and of course, since we've been living here 10 years our daughter has an English accent. British people seem to find this hard to believe for some reason.

I did my latest blog about it: http://expatclaptrap.com/dare-daughter-english-accent/

Lol!  Love it!  I've always heard you will have the accent of your peers at school.  Can she do a mean American accent though?

Believe it or not, she can't really do an American accent, but I'm trying to teach her. Once she asked me "May I have a glass of wah-ta" and I taught her to say "How about a glass of wawter?" instead.

Kids will definitely take on the accents of peers. We moved from northern Indiana to North Carolina when my daughter was in middle school. Her accent became "southern" within weeks, if not days.

As long as she can pronounce "three" as it should be (rather than "free" - one of my pet peeves) I wouldn't worry about it. Go to the US for a month, and she will come back with an American accent. 

When my mother first visited Britain she could not get over how all the little children had English or Scottish accents.  She expected the grownups would but not children.  I think this was because she grew up in an immigrant community where the adults spoke with Italian or Irish or whatever accents but the kids all spoke American.

My mobile completely cut off my response so this is part two!

I moved to England with my four-year-old fully American son. His father is from Houston and is American and we divorced when our son was two-years-old. I moved with our son to England to marry my English fiance (that was 19 years ago yesterday, yay, us!).

In the beginning, my son had a very strong American accent and his favorite expression was, "Check it out, man!" and found that most people found him amusing. He started nursery school in two months of our arrival and almost overnight he caught a somewhat posh Berkshire accent (we lived in Wokingham). My husband is from Wigan, in the northwest so it was definitely an accent brought on by his environment.

It was indeed quite odd when we visited his father back in Houston because our son was the same child but with a completely different voice. I know that his paternal grandparents found it difficult to understand him since they were not confident with the English language to begin with (they are from Mexico) and this young boy with an English accent was a real test to their grasp of English.

We did finally move back to the US almost ten years later. In addition to my 14 year-old, I had two English-born children who were then seven and three. My oldest child happily went to school to find out that he was completely ostracized for his accent and his lack of social references that the other kids were tuned into. He struggled in many lessons such as spelling, geography and history. It was probably a month before he made the decision to completely change his accent. In fact, he completely decided to reject anything relating to his life in England.

My children are 23, 17 and 14 now. My oldest child has a neutral American accent but when he's in my home (he's grown with his own little family), he relaxes so I do catch his English accent and his use of English words for every day things. My middle son has a slight English accent still but uses English words frequently. My daughter lost her accent the day she arrived in the USA. She has a Houston accent so it's a little bit of a Texas twang. One thing about my three is that they are great at drama at school because they can always play an English character with ease!

I actually worry a bit- if we ever moved back to the states- about my daughter losing her accent. It's not that I value the accent in and of itself (I think if you read my blog you'll see that I am not an Anglophile, I'm neutral)...

It's just that it's such a part of who she is and how I see her... she's my English daughter. If her accent changed, it'd be like she lost a bit of herself or something.

But maybe I'm wrong- maybe it'd be just fine.

I'm from Texas and our 3 children have found it difficult transitioning. My oldest is 14, 11 then our baby who is 3. The older 2 say there are teased in school when they were learning about slavery or the death penalty but everyone liked their accents.

They have now been in school for a year and I don't hear much of a difference in them with the exception of my 3 year old. He still isn't fully British which is funny cuz his dad is but I still hear a bit of a twang in his accent.

Anyone else have older kids who moved here and noticed accents changed?

My daughter was 14 when we moved here, she is now 25...she has a mixed accent...unlike me when she goes in a shop noone notices she isn't English but after talking awhile to her they will question her accent. So it has changed, and now it is an odd mix of English and American

HG I get the funniest stares if I ask questions in a shop! Even at work people laugh in my face. I work in a business Park so we get food vans that come around lunch. If I say the "food truck" is outside, they all break out into laughter. Kinda makes me not want to talk sometimes!

Or if I ask what kind of candy bars they have. Ugh

I don't ever want to speak with a British accent cuz I feel I'd sound ridiculous but I think it's adorable to hear it in my son.

HG I get the funniest stares if I ask questions in a shop! Even at work people laugh in my face. I work in a business Park so we get food vans that come around lunch. If I say the "food truck" is outside, they all break out into laughter. Kinda makes me not want to talk sometimes!

Or if I ask what kind of candy bars they have. Ugh

I don't ever want to speak with a British accent cuz I feel I'd sound ridiculous but I think it's adorable to hear it in my son.

I work at a school...and I quickly learned english words and use them most of the time, but my accent is still very american. There are certain words that when I say them the boys (it is an all boys school) will laugh and ask me to repeat them...yogurt is one of their favourites!