# Does your toddler ever speak with an accent?



## renaissanceed (Aug 2, 2005)

Mine sometimes affects this deep southern accent which I find a bit strange. I do use voices when I read her stories, and I read a lot of stories, but I tend to veer towards the English or East Indian style accents or very nasal ones.

Anyone else's toddler ever use an accent that you don't think they'd be familiar with when speaking? She's not using it when speaking 'for' her toys, just when she's talking to us about every day things. She doesn't watch TV/see movies so she's not getting it from there and we don't know anyone from the south IRL.


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## riverscout (Dec 22, 2006)

It's possible she is imitating your version of an English accent and just missing the mark a bit. There are some similarities between the two. After all, Southern accents, at least in part, originated from the English.

Here's part a wiki article that discusses it:

"Southern dialects substantially originated from immigrants from the British Isles who moved to the South in the 17th and 18th centuries. The South was predominantly settled by immigrants from the West Country[citation needed] in the southwest of England, the dialects of which have similarities to the Southern US dialects. Settlement also included large numbers of Protestants from Ulster, Ireland, and from Scotland. During the migration south and west, the settlers encountered the French immigrants of New France (from which Kentucky, Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi and western Tennessee originated), and the French accent itself fused into the British and Irish accents. The modern Southern dialects were born."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English


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## MelW (Jan 13, 2005)

Mine does sometimes. We're Canadian (from the west coast), but have lived in Oregon for almost two years. She pronounces things differently depending on who she is with (family or friends).

She also thinks it's sooo funny to use an accent and drop her "r"- ask for "wata" instead of "water", etc. Or she'll ask us to mispronounce words so she can correct us "you say yocolate, and I'll say NOOOO- CHocolate!" or "you say fatha, and I'll say NOOO- father".

She's really aware of how different people speak. At 21 months old she explained to me how all of the different toddlers we know pronounced her name: "X calls me Mila, Y calls me Nia, Z calls me Neema. But I'm really Neela". It was so cute!


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## operamommy (Nov 9, 2004)

Ds2 will sometimes use a Jersey accent, which I find highly amusing.

We live in the midwest, but some people around here have southern accents. Ds2 has really picked that up. Hills are "Hails" etc.


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## becoming (Apr 11, 2003)

DD (33 months) sounds British sometimes, just certain words she says. We don't even know anyone British IRL, so I don't know where she gets it.


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## cyndimo (Jul 20, 2005)

Ds does a few words the way he hears them on his Thomas DVDs, so sort of English.
Sometimes he says "I cahn't due it!" like Gordon does on one episode. There are also a few times he does Seasame Street's NY accent, but I can't think of those examples.
Everyone we see regularly speaks about the same as we do, so there's not so much to pick up on.


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## milehighmonkeys (Apr 13, 2006)

Our neighbors eldest did this. I've seen other people's kids do it, too. Not sure why.


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## limette (Feb 25, 2008)

that's funny. my dh is from england and apparently still has a heavy accent ( i don't hear it). everyone says my daughter also has an english accent but i swear she speaks with a southern drawl!


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## blue butterfly (Nov 28, 2005)

dd1 had a "jersey" accent up until she was about 4 years old, we live in the midwest


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## hippiemum21580 (Jul 14, 2007)

Mine do! I always thought it was funny that my 5 year old was born in teh deep south but only lived there a few months before we moved back north but he still speaks with a thick southern drawl as if he grew up there! And my 3 year old has this funny british accent thing going on which he has always had. It is funny because I don't really have any particular accent. Nothing Britsh or Southern for sure! Perhaps they carry it over from a past life?


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## bzmum (Feb 18, 2008)

Mine sounds like he's from Boston. We're in Westcoast Canada. I think he just has trouble with his r's though and he'll grow out of it, but its such a crack-up sometimes to hear him talk.


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## LizLizard (Jul 16, 2007)

This thread is appropriate because just today, we were discussing how DD has inflections like Borat.







Especially when she says "I Like" something, and the way she's trying to put together sentences. It's total broken Borat English, LOL.... "I lieeek a cupcayyyyke, Mama, ees verrry nieeeece"


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## LaLaLaLa (Oct 29, 2007)

We are from the Boston area but apparently my DD, who is nearly four, was born and raised in the Bronx. "Bowl" for "ball" always cracks us up. This is definitely just a thing with her speech and still figuring out how to form words, as we don't regularly speak to anyone with a New York accent so she's not imitating it from anywhere.


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## richella (Nov 30, 2004)

Our dd puts on a fake hick accent (not exactly southern, just, well, rural?) which she may have heard around here, we're not sure. It freaks dh out.









(Otherwise most of the weird stuff I hear sounds like MIL. eg exter for extra, batata for potato, good as an adverb "you did good" etc etc etc)


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## cheeseRjedi (Jun 5, 2005)

That's so funny you posted this Edwina! M gets this hilarious southern accent whenever she says 'Silas'.


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## SevenVeils (Aug 28, 2006)

My son had a British accent until he was 5. I have no idea where it came from. He also asked my friends to call him "Gorby". Again, I have no clue why.


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## Hokulele (Mar 2, 2005)

This is a funny thread - I was raised in the UK (but have a US accent now) and DH was raised in the NorthEast but we've lived in the south since DD was two months old. A couple months back she developed a southern accent - something I'm guessing she picked up from someone at her preschool. Words like "home" became two syllable words!! I joked it was time to send her to her grandparents up north to get her accent back on track.

I think for DD, she just heard someone talking like that and thought it sounded fun. It lasted maybe a couple weeks.


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## MrsMike (Aug 4, 2006)

I have been told that my own accent is a mix of Philly and New York. My mom has a New York accent (she's from Staten Island and Manhatten). My dad and my hubby have plain old Philly accents. Ds definitely has the cross between a Philly and New York accent. We had family up from Ga recently and they say it's pretty pronounced to them. He says things like "chawklit" , "cawfee" and "wooder or wooda". The latter is "water" but Philly is the only place that pronounces it correctly (wooder).







He sometimes drops the "r". He also says, "YO!"


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