Will the boy grow up imitating my dulcet Derry tones, or have a cockney accent?
My son doesn’t have an accent. I mean, he does, but not one I can distinguish yet. When he calls eggs ‘eeegs’, it reveals little about his Hackney upbringing, and I am still trying to pin down the thousand meanings of his favourite placeholder, ‘deeto deeto’, which has no cultural or linguistic precedent I can identify.
A few Irish people asked if I’d ‘mind’ him having an English accent, in that ‘not that there’s anything wrong with it’ tone which suggests there is, actually, something wrong with it; the way someone might inquire about the prospects of your toddler getting an Arsenal face tattoo. Since he’s being raised in England, I tell them, he will obviously have an English accent, and quite soon. This won’t bother me at all, but it did get me thinking about the accent neuroses I do have.
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