Would you correct someone else’s pronunciation for your child? How do you feel about regional/international accents?

I bumped into a mother I know at a coffee shop. I have an unusual accent, because I’m ESL and I immigrated to the UK when I was 14 so I picked up a lot of london pronunciations but I don’t generally have trouble being understood.

Her son doesn’t have any speech issues or anything, he’s got a great vocabulary for 4. He is very friendly so he talks to me when we see them at the park or soft play, and he always seems to understand me.

I was speaking to my child in English and then suddenly I realised the other mother was correcting words I said for her son? I asked my daughter “do you want some water?” which I guess is like dyu wan some wata if I just say it quickly without thinking, and she said quite loudly “we would say WA-TER, do you WANT some WATER” and made him repeat it back twice.

Other words I heard her correct were cloth and cheeky girl, then I started to get self conscious and making an effort to enunciate better. I was so embarrassed, she was speaking quite loudly so she must have known I could hear her. But I like my accent, it still sounds a bit like where I come from. I don’t mind if my daughter hears it and learns it, my heritage is her heritage. We only see this woman occasionally (she’s a bit condescending so I try to avoid play dates) so I doubt my accent is rubbing off on her son.

It’s been a couple days and this is still sitting with me. It feels so out of line to do that in front of the person unprompted. As long as people understand each other, does it matter?

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Voted wrong. I would never correct and I would honestly put more distance between you and her. That’s incredibly rude

I’m sorry she did that to you that is so rude and unfair. I would avoid her tbh

She clearly understands you, otherwise she wouldn't be able to point it out, so it's not like she thinks people are unable to kniw what you mean.
What a rude and horrible thing to do. I would MAYBE clarify if my kid didn't understand, but I would try to do so super gently. My oldest is 2 so there's a lot of words he asks about because he's still learning, but if he knew what you were saying I would never

I think if I was in the situation and my son asked me what was being said I would likely quietly explain but 100% would not be in any type of way expecting him to repeat words back to me or talking loudly and mostly because I wouldn't know what else to do than to answer if he asked so he could understand and learn accents some times sound different. I wouldn't want to dismiss him being curious and wanting to learn and understand. Also though highly doubt my son would even ask as we go to a cafe ran by a Turkish family and I have done for years and years and very friendly with them, they always come over to say hello and talk with my son and he just seems to absorb it all in and the odd time he looks a little lost I just repeat the question to him in another way as if to encourage an answer rather than to interpret but they also do that among themselves sometimes if one of them struggles on a word they would have a little chat and then come back with the word or a reply or whatever

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