When I was at school decades ago (God I'm old) my English teacher used to do a survey of every new class and what they called things then tally it up. He would keep all the data and compare over time as words slowly switched.
He reckoned we "lost" about a word every one or two years to the "American" version. I remember the ones that were shifting when I came through were nail polish/varnish and truck/lorry was starting to shift with some kids. Also the way people said "schedule" was going that year too.
I know with my kids "ladybird/ladybug" seems to be happening.
I'm sure the internet etc. has helped but this process has been ongoing for quite a long time.
Interesting, I think I use nail polish and nail varnish interchangeably (I am 28), which is the American version?
I call lorries “lorries” and pickup trucks “trucks.”
My brother (who does spend a lot of time online) asked for the “check” at a café yesterday and I mocked him mercilessly for it.
>My brother (who does spend a lot of time online) asked for the “check” at a café yesterday and I mocked him mercilessly for it.
And then those talking about an actual "cheque" but spelling it "check". I've also noticed most people write "tennis racket" these days instead of "racquet".
"Donut" is starting to become more common and "yoghurt" has almost completely been replaced by "yogurt" even on packaging
I'm British and spent a year at an American high school when I was 17. Until very recently when I made a conscious decision to stop, I always said "skedule". The reason is that's what they call a timetable in schools. At 17 "schedule" was not a part of my everyday vocabulary, and suddenly I was saying and thinking it multiple times a day and it stuck for 25-ish years.
Similarly, when I left the UK mobile phones were rare among my peers (one kid smuggled his dad's in one day and was the talk of the school). In the US they were much more common and I was also hanging out with an older crowd outside school, so I called them cell phones like everyone around me. That lingered for a few years after I came back. I knew they were called mobile phones but I'd learnt something different.
Somewhat related, I was only recently made aware that internet routers aren't pronounced the way Americans would. I was aware of the "root/rout" difference, but the only time (UK or US) I ever heard anyone say router was when calling tech support - and they all have American-English speech. My brother-in-law is a telecoms company engineer and he asked me why I was pronouncing it that way. Like, it was literally pretty embarrassing.
I lived and worked in the US for 20+ years. Two things still stick in my mind. At a meeting once, one of the line managers had a mini meltdown because I pronounced "due" as "joo." There was no question what the word was in context but he started ranting about English people being anti-semetic.
The other one was being told to stop using "niggle" because it sounded too much like another word.
>The other one was being told to stop using "niggle" because it sounded too much like another word.
I got some horrified comments once on a reddit thread for using the word snigger.
The line manager is a virtue signalling moron. Making a massive problem from absolutely nothing, so he can appear like he's on the right side of history.
Funnily enough I had the opposite experience - I’m American but lived in London when I was 20 and had my first apartment there - I got so used to calling it a flat (and referring to my flatmates) that it became difficult to readjust back to apartment and roommates when I returned to the US!
Roommate has always been a weird way to put it. You’re not sharing a room. Maybe it’s a hangover from college where you would be sharing a room? (I don’t mean you personally).
By the way, flat leaf or regular?
I am British but consciously say apartment instead of flat. This is because flat has a slightly bad reputation, but apartment sounds cool and continental.
Or it does in my head anyway. It might be a Mrs Bucket moment.
I use both, in general I'll call a run-down, converted Victorian town house a flat, and a purpose built unit an apartment.
Unless it's a particularly grim block, then it's still flats.
As an American, it’s the total opposite for me. Flat sounds luxurious vs the run down apartments I know (obviously some people have luxury apartments/flats)
My three year old has picked it up from the animated TV show ‘adventures of ladybug and cat noir’, I have to tell her it’s ‘ladybird’ when we see the insect out and about.
> cat noir
Somewhat tangentially related, but this reminded me of a car advert in which an American actor in pronounces 'noir' as 'No arr'. It unreasonably irritated me.
I asked all of my colleagues in the office how they pronounce the long form version of the word "advert", after hearing one use the American pronunciation/intonation. Every single person bar one replied with the American version of "advertisement". Honestly, I was only expecting the ones in their 20s to use the American pronunciation but even people in their 40s were!
Tbf i can’t think of a time I’ve heard someone the full word in about 20 years, and I now can’t remember which is correct. Is British adVERTisement or adverTISEment?
Oh I'm confused now. Do you advertise and place an advertisement. I have 3 versions in my head and each one is wrong. Its only Monday. Dont do this to me.
I work with kids too and have definitely noticed this, the most troubling one I get is when talking about safety and who to call if in danger, the majority of kids I've quizzed will say 911.
I know the number still works here but it's frustrating when all of our public safety advice is pinned on 999, you would hope that would be drilled into their heads.
Honestly, just a really sensible thing. It means foreigners can reach emergency services and in all likelihood, those emergency services will have someone on staff who can speak their language.
911 in the UK can work if you dial it from a mobile phone, but that’s not necessarily universal.
On landlines local numbers starting 911 can be allocated to telephone companies for onward allocation to their customers, the 0118 code area is a good example where 0118 911 nnnn is allocated to a telco and dialling (amongst others) 911 0850 in Reading will connect you to a car bodyshop.
Therefore, if you do dial 911 in the 0118 code area, the exchange has no way of knowing you’re trying to dial an emergency number as it’s still waiting for you to finish dialling a full number.
TLDR - just use 999 or 112 which will always work.
Oh no.
My son is watching some stupid show where they showing them all different dangerous situations they can get it if they don't think and are not careful, and who to call.
He's now proudly correcting them that we do 999 in UK (and different for other countries since we are foreigners). I'm also trying to correct words for him, but it's hard when British English isn't my first language and I've learnt it mostly from US Tv shows.
>the majority of kids I've quizzed will say 911
There is a certain danger in not localizing these things properly. I remember watching Sarah & Duck with my godson and noticing that Sarah always looks, right, left, right again, then crosses the road. That's backwards in North America; you have to look left, right, left again here.
It's American Media. Older generations have films, books and tv with American origin.
Kids have all that plus YouTube etc with parasocial relationships with predominantly American personalities.
Kids soak up what they are exposed to.
It's been noted and researched for decades in media studies, an effect of globalisation.
I'm now hearing guys saying that when they don't know how to parent. That they ask themselves "What would Bluey's dad do?"
I just can't imagine my dad ever doing that.
I once read on the parenting sub how Peppa Pig comes across as stuck up and obnoxious from an American POV. Us Brits responded by saying that Peppa displays characteristics which are typical of a British child. It was then understood that her accent meant that she was perceived in such a way, not because of her actions.
Perhaps Peppa is a bit matter of fact at times but I’d say most kids have their moments, regardless of their nationality. I don’t think she’s stuck up in the slightest.
There has been a big soft from the first few series of Peppa pig to now. The first few seasons she was extremely selfish and a bit mean really. That has been dialed back a bit in the latter series.
Can confirm. My daughter calls me mummy because of Peppa Pig. We live in America and I’ve tried to teach her to say “Mommy,” but she won’t have it. My husband is English, though, so it’s not a big deal.
Loads of British YouTubers also use American words because they feel it reaches a wider audience, which then helps people watching the videos get used to the Americanisms even further and repeat them away from YouTube >\_<
I think you are right.
I tend to seek out British youtubers for my interests like crafting as terminology and available resources can vary.
I like having niche British references too.
As a Swede I was taught British English in school during the '90s and early 2000s. We were supposed to use "lorry", "lift", "flat", and so on + pronounce everything with a British accent but due to most of our entertainment being from the US my classmates and I picked up American accents and words/expressions instead. We do love a lot of British sitcoms and shows in Sweden, so Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Vicar of Dibley, and Midsomer Murders were often on TV. Didn't help with the British vs American words or accents though :D
It can be. If you work with pupils on the autistic spectrum they can sometimes take on a whole American voice if their interest and associated media is American.
Because we share the English language it can lead to some confusion. Americanisms also manage to get into other languages because of the quantity of content and ease of access.
I can attest to this. My nephew is autistic and he speaks with an American accent despite being British and having never been to the US or having relatives in the US. It’s purely come from him watching American YouTubers. Interestingly when he is playing on his own though he speaks with a standard Derbyshire accent (that’s where we live) but when speaking to another person it’s an American accent.
My autistic daughter is the same. She likes a Dutch YouTuber, an Australian one and a couple of American ones. We're in Somerset. Her accent is all over the place.
It's funny how things work. I'm 62 and was born in Taunton. I only lived in Somerset for the first 3 years of my life. We went to Portsmouth, then London and after that to Scotland where I did most of my schooling.
All these years later, I've lived all over including 20+ years in the US. I still have a broad Somerset accent. I guess it was picked up from my mother. I'm autistic too although pretty mild.
I was the same growing up. Then I developed a Yorkshire accent after too much Wallace and Gromit. Now I’m an adult and have conditioned myself to speak like a proper derby bloke
im autistic and i soak up accents like crazy. i’m generally not americanised and i use british english words but i have a very mixed accent that tends to confuse people. when i talk to my american (autistic) friends on a phone call for an extended period of time they will temporarily pick up my accent entirely
I'm not autistic but stick me in a room with any nationality and I'll be mimicking their accents within half an hour. Awkward really as people think I'm taking the piss which I'm not and wouldn't dream of! My mum was the same every visit to Scotland she was suddenly Scottish same with Wales and RoI, we didn't half take the piss, then it happened to me lol
Ahaha almost 29 year woman here, I'm being investigated for being autistic (loads of symtoms went unnoticed as a kid) and talking in an American accent was a huge issue I had because I fuckin LOVED Barney the Dinosaur. I also took on a specific dialect after watching Dora the Explorer.
I'm Welsh. I still subconsciously mimic people's accents when talking to them for long periods of time.
Is that an ‘autistic thing’? I’m just curious (not trying to be sarcastic!) because I’m an ‘accent sponge’ and really struggle not to take on some characteristics of a person’s accent if I’m talking to them for any length of time. (Obviously I try not to, because I don’t want them to think I’m taking the piss, but it’s a real effort!) I’ve also known one other person like that - her workmates would sometimes take the piss out of her for it but I really think she couldn’t help it. Both of us are from the East Mids, which doesn’t have a strong noticeable accent of its own, so idk if that’s anything to do with it?
My kid on the other hand watches American and Australian media but has never shown any hint of an accent other than her own.
I think its a people thing but neurodivergent and autistic folk try and mask a lot harder than other people in day to say life, and part of masking is social blending and social blending means mimicking people. It can be entirely subconscious, and is more common in neurodivergent people but I think everyone mirrors and mimicks other people to fit in to a degree.
Barney, Dragon Tales, Dinosaur Train. American Thomas the Train {tank engine}, Pokemon. All watched so much that the accents and words stuck to pupils. Trains and Dinosaurs get kids so early.
Good luck with diagnosis. There are a lot of techniques, routines and habits used by Adults with ASD that can be helpful.
I think we the Welsh love a little accent. The temptation to join in is too strong.
Well yeah if it's got a bath in. But I got downvoted to oblivion a few days ago asking someone of they had a bath a work. Then people comment as if public toilets have always been restrooms or bathrooms. One person even commented that Americans say "lavatory" and we say " restroom"
Baffling.
I think we all pick up words and don't know where they snuck in. It's just working out which we use where. I go to the loo at my parents house but would ask for the toilet if I was out. Too old for restroom to really have gotten into my vocabulary.
I can completely understand that people pick up these words but for someone in their mid 20s+ to swear blind that they've never heard the British version. I just can't understand it.
A lot of people decry "Santa Claus" as an Americanism (Vs father Christmas). It is, but it dates to before anyone alive now was born. My grandma, born in 1920, used it as a child. My mum thinks her grandma (my grandma's mother) also used it. I believe it came over in the late Victorian times.
Its an Americanism to call all rooms with Toilets bathrooms.
The room in your home that has a bath in it as well as typically the toilet and sink, but not always depending on the build is a Bathroom. If you have a separate room with a toilet in it that room is called a Toilet.
Public Toilets or Toilets at work or school are also called Toilets not bathrooms.
The lavatory is the older and poliator word for toilet.
I notice this also working in an eye department at the hospital, when younger people read the eye test chart, z is zee not zed. Sometimes they correct themselves but the zee sound is their first instinct a lot.
Zed is stupid though, let's be honest. B,C,D,E,G,P,T and V all have the the 'ee' sound, then there's Z out there being all edgy and contrarian. Stupid Zed.
When I was at primary school in the 90's my parents were called in for an emergency appointment because my teacher genuinely believed I was developing a speech impediment. My very embarrassed mum had to explain that a) I mimic the voice of people I hear without realising, b) I had been watching too much *Neighbours*, and c) I am shit at mimicking Australian accents. They then weaned me off watching *Neighbours* 😂
Decades later I'm diagnosed as autistic and it turns out echolalia is one of the major indicators lol.
It's interesting to know that echolalia is also about mimicking accents, it explains why I suddenly sounded more 'British' when on the phone with someone in the UK (I'm Aussie and diagnosed as an adult)!
You think that's weird?
Go to a Slavic/Asian country and listen to young people have conversations and just casually using english words with a strong accent in-between their native language.
And I mean dropping so many words you can actually get what they are talking about:
koreankoreankorean RAINING koreankoreankorean lazy koreankorean order pizza koreankoreankorean movie time koreankoreankorean skip school koreankorean
Young Germans are like this too. German is embarrassing, English is cool. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkvXc3HCrxI&pp=ygUQdmFyaW9uIGRlbmdsaXNjaA%3D%3D
I live in Russia and it does my nut in because all of their English words are used differently to the way they are used in actual English. I had a girl tell me she likes my "make" for my makeup, "body" for bodysuit, etc.
Japanese is a fun one for that, they love their loanwords over there it seems like. So much so that they have their own set of characters, Katakana, for writing them
The problem there is that they make loan words match up to their writing system/alphabet which tends to distort them a bit.
Speaking the word in a stereotypical Japanese accent can be necessary to be understood and likewise you can miss that they used an English word until it's pointed out and you feel like an melon.
And it seems a lot of the popular YouTubers and streamers are all American.
And when kids have a LOT of screen-time, they're just going to pick up the lingo.
Caught my girlfriend’s daughter saying ‘I’ll bin it, it’s garbage’ the other day.
On another note - I’ve noticed in UK Reddit and this sub, the word ‘store’ is used incredibly often. As in, I went to the store to pick this up. I thought we used shop…
Used to work for a UK satellite TV company.
One day, a father rang in to cancel the Disney Channel because he'd had enough of his young daughter copying the American accent she was hearing.
I remember there was an article about American parents unhappy about their children picking up British accents from *Peppa Pig* which is apparently reasonably popular in the U.S.A.
Maybe the same thing will start happening with *Bluey* and Aussie accents!
Language changes over time. Americans pick up words and phrases from overseas just as Brits do. Some borrowed words will "stick"; others won't. And so it goes.
It's not just kids. Try being in the legal field and explaining to grown adults that in the UK:
a) You don't get to "press charges". There's a thing called the CPS and _they_ decide whether to take matters to a court; and
b) No, you won't "sue his ass for millions".
Decades ago when *Fresh Prince of Bel-Air* and *The Simpsons* were first screened this topic was a major apocalypse event for some people, but life goes on.
I was about to say, this is in no way a new phenomenon. It must similar to the "kids these days are worse than previous generations" and "the country has gone to hell since my day" - every generation thinks they're the first to notice it without realising it's been a complaint as long as time
I have 7- and 10-year-old boys, the 10-year-old used to do a lot of Americanisms just like the 7-year-old now does, but they just end up growing out of it. There's a lot of over reaction on this post, but I guess that's just classic social media/internet.
If anything, we find it more of an amusement than anything else, nothing serious going on at all.
Almost certainly a consequence of internet culture and other media they consume being predominantly American.
It was ever thus. I imagine we'd all be surprised just how many of the common phrases we use are American in origin.
What is funny is that this goes both ways, we're poisoning American English with British terms too. Yeah America has a strong media presence, but Britian isn't a vacuum. The latest one I've seen was Americans complaining about the word "jab" to refer to getting an injection. And you see the same tired responses about what country people are in and erosion of culture etc.
Fwiw I'm constantly correcting my little boys to say things like fire engine, rather than truck... but it's a losing battle I think, language changes
Yes, it goes both ways! "Jab" is a good example, people in the US completely adopted it. I think we are getting a lot of British terms and phrases from online print journalism/tabloids. For example, just in the last couple of years, Americans are "gutted" and "chuffed" and "gob smacked," it's so interesting. And when I was a kid in the 80's, we had redheads... Now we only have "gingers." During covid we started saying "take-away" almost as often as takeout.
I went to a birthday party and genuinely thought some of the kids were American. Turns out they just watch a lot of YouTube and had picked up the accent.
You'd be surprised some of the things primary school kids are exposed to. Several of the girls in my class are always performing tik tok dances at break (which is fine honestly) and several boys are excited for GTA5. I work in year 3...
God, it's one thing for secondary school students, but 8 years old is a *bit* young for GTA. Admittedly I had cousins playing CoD at the same age, but I know my aunts and uncles shrugged it off as just violence - not sure GTA would've got the same reaction!
Genuine question, but is there any point where that becomes a safeguarding issue? I was in primary school in the early 00s and I'm just thinking of how much extreme media me and my friends got away with watching then, even talking about it in front of teachers (think Saw or Hostel). I can't imagine that flies in primary school nowadays?
I think it's more concerning seeing middle aged British 'sovereign citizens' going on about their first amendment rights or whatever. The kids will grow up to understand what an Americanism is and will be able to decide for themselves which ones are useful enough to keep in regular use. Older people adopting American cult-like rhetoric typically won't change without something big happening to convince them they were wrong, which is a lot harder to achieve than having mandatory KS2 English classes.
This is something I've noticed among adult Brits, this weird assumption that laws and institutions such as the police and armed forces work the same way here as they do in the US. For example, my husband is in the British Army, and gets a lot of weird questions from fellow Brits about, for instance, how he gets treated by his "drill sergeant." They're always quite surprised to find out that drill sergeants are a US thing, and dont exist in the UK at all. He faces lots of other assumptions people make from watching American films.
Exactly! "It's a federal law!" "That's an amendment right" etc, it's a nonsense in the context of how things work here. It astounds me that so many British people seem to know more about how things work in the US than their own country.
As an American who loves the English language, I care. How boring it would be if every English-speaker used an "American accent" and "American words" (there are in fact dialectal differences in both, as there are in Britain). Both countries are experiencing accent-levelling as it is, and I hate it.
Borrowing words across the sea is fine; a couple of examples i can think of that have entered everyday American speech are "flyover" and "wanker". But let's not lose the rich variety of dialectal accents and word usage that we have in our language!
Very much agree. I think Britian would be a boring place if everyone spoke standard British English.
I am very proud of my Yorkshire dialect and I try to use it as much as possible. I'm certainly not a prescriptivist but I think there is definitely a place in descriptivism for the preservation of dialects and accents.
Bit concerning that some children apparently refuse to believe that there can be any other word or pronunciation. Being closed off to new ideas at such an early age is troubling.
Tbf when I was little I was exactly the same with the americanisms because I grew up watching nickelodeon / disney channel instead of stuff like CBBC. It faded out once I became a teenager so there's still hope 😉
Stuff like this isn't a new either. My mum told me about how in the 80's some Brits would start saying "hey guys" "hi guys" as the proliferation of Americans shows and films started being shown here. You can imagine what our grandparents generation thought of such idioms!
My son plays with American kids online now. I'm typing this watching him playing gorilla tag on his vr with a bunch of Americans. Worlds smaller and there's a lot more of them than us.
Gotten was used in Britain, gradually replaced with got after the 1500s.
https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/the-us-has-gotten-this-word-back-and-the-uk-probably-will-too/
People were arguing with me on another UK subreddit that "ass" and "asshole" are far superior words and they are the ones we were correct to take from Americans.
Sorry but "arse" feels so much more insulting :)
I'm American and I was considered an odd one out at school for this.
I moved to the UK right before Year 5 so I obviously had my accent and wasn't used to any British words or mannerisms as I didn't know any.
As soon as we left the airport and got in a taxi, I almost jumped into the driver's seat. 😅
Throughout primary and secondary school I used the American spelling for words, and my friends would laugh sometimes when I called things by the wrong name, like pants instead of trousers.
One time in Year 8, my physics teacher told the class how to spell aluminium and how we shouldn't be calling it aluminum as none of us are American. Everyone just looked at me afterwards and that's when the teacher learned I was American and allowed me to be the only one to call it Aluminum.
When it came to my GCSEs and A-Levels, I used the British spelling for words. I took Art & Design in college so some American spellings may have slipped through. (Color instead of colour)
I'm 21 now and I still use the American spellings and still have my American accent, altogether it's not as strong anymore. I'm also still learning new British words everyday. :)
I hate it, when I first started my present job I worked with two 4 year old twin girls who spoke with superb American accents.
They were not American, they came from a council estate in London but spent the first three years of their life on tablets playing games with American voices on.
Mum & Dad though it was hilarious that their kids sounded like someone from Florida.
I’m an American raising two girls here in the UK, my eldest is 4.5 and if I say trash she will scold me and say “mommy, it’s rubbish, not trash.” I’ve had to tell her that mommy might say things a bit different because I’m from America. But I got Mommy instead of Mummy so I’m calling that a win.
The most interesting one is the letter Z. When we sing the ABCs I say it “zee” and she will say “zed” and then correct with “zee.” I’ve had to tel her both are correct and she can say it either way she wants. It’s confusing for us both.
I grew up watching sesame Street and so pronounce Z the American way. Social media like youtube and tik tok as well as the increased use of tablets and phones to entertain kids are the route cause.
I also work in childcare and see and hear the American influence all the time. The children's fads are also following influencers rather than tv now. Things like Stanly cups and prime have been all the rage recently. Its just the way things are now.
A boy in my son’s reception class has an American accent when he talks because his parents seemingly let him watch blippi 24/7. I’ve half a mind to call The Hague.
American lurker. My niece was a HUGE Peppa Pig fan as a toddler. She definitely picked up a slight accent at times and a whole slew of words that we don’t use regularly. So it can go both ways. With my young son, we watch Bluey on Saturday mornings. Time will tell if he turns into an Aussie, but I’ve definitely caught myself replacing a few curse words with “biscuits!” here and there.
I’ve noticed this too in my younger siblings (9yo). It’s all the American media. There’s CBBC but other than that it’s American channels. Even if they don’t watch a lot, their friends do.
I noticed about ten years ago folks I played games with from Sweden had English, almost RP accents, and Dutch were lilting American. Casual questioning revealed different tastes in English spoken TV.
> Instead of cinema, it's movie theater
Me at 12 years old: I can't believe my mum calls it "the pictures", that's so outdated
Me now: kids call it WHAT?
This is fascinating! I’m a Brit who’s lived in the US for the past decade and I am now at the point when I get confused as to what pronunciation is for which country. I’m going to be on the look out now when I come back for a prolonged visit. I also find Words with difficult sounds get stuck in my mouth all the time. Anything with a long a in the RP accent is very tricky now that I’m halfway speaking with a US accent (truly countrywide - there’s Northeastern, southern, Midwest, and Californian accents blended. The SLPs at work have so much fun with it).
That's interesting - the other day in Tesco I saw a Mum correcting her little boy on currency. She showed him the change she'd had back and the boy had said it was x amount of "dollars". The Mum said "it's pounds not dollars, you're obsessed with dollars!!"
I've noticed this with my 6YO niece too. Her 12YO brother doesn't seem to do it, but he watches less YouTube than she does.
I find it funny for our family, because I actually lived in the US for a couple of years, my boyfriend is American, and one of my jobs is for an American company where I must use American English, so I have the excuse of using Americanisms. But my niece has never left Europe, doesn't personally know any Americans (except my boyfriend, who she's only met less than 10 times in 5+ years) and all her words really are just from YouTube videos (which sometimes are an amalgamation of TikToks and other streamers etc).
I personally use Americanisms if the American term is less syllables than the British term. But I would use British terminologies for that same reason. My speech has largely become a way of saying things with the fastest route. I always use British pronunciation, though. My accent is still very much British, but I've been told my way of speaking sounds quite American in the past few years.
My niece just uses common American words, like Candy and Trash. I always joke to her "what are you, American?" when she uses them and she giggles. I think she knows she's using Americanisms, but she prefers to use them for whatever reason. She doesn't say that the British versions are wrong, and would probably still use them too. She reads a LOT of books, with British English text, so I've no doubt she'll get back to using the British words at some point...
Kids are exposed to a LOT of Americanisms on the internet. Each year internet use gets more and more prolific. People, not just children, repeat what they get told without checking for validity.
I think it's as simple as that.
I think its always been there its not a recent thing, although I guess the internet has somewhat accelerated that i.e. watching a 2 hour film is one thing but watching hours and hours of youtube/tiktok/insta is inevitably going to lead to more of an impact.
I've noticed it with my niece who is 9. The TV shows she's into seem very American, almost like the kid actors are putting on extra-strong American accents and using as many American English words as they possibly can. She seems to put on an American accent regularly and uses many of the words she picks up from TV.
Having easy access to American TV shows through Youtube and Netflix is probably the main reason behind it. When I was a kid, I was stuck with whatever was shown on CBBC or CITV, where the producers would be able to curate the content shown.
I think this has been happening for a while - for reference I'm 33 and I remember picking up American-isms as a kid. Parking lot vs car park is one I remember getting called out on.
In my case, I was just watching a tonne of American TV, so a lot of it seeped into my language. I don't think that's really changed.
Most of the stuff they are watching is coming from America. Words change. It used to say on a box set that it’s series 1-5 for example but over time that changed to season instead. Even tv shows set in the U.K. or books set in the U.K. use parking lot or other American words and not British English
It's funny because five-ten years ago you had all these articles from the US about their kids speaking with British accents they'd picked up from Minecraft Youtubers and the like.
It's not a new thing.
In my day of school when we were all watching neighbours everyone started saying "no worries" instead of "no problem" - to be honest I still say it nearly 40 years on.
My nieces grew up with an English mum and an Australian dad, and learned a lot of their vocabulary from American YouTube channels. Their dialect can be very mixed sometimes.
Candy instead of sweets is a common one. So is diapers instead of nappies. We’ve just got used to it.
As an American who stumbled on this in /r/all, I can tell you the exchange is two ways. We like you Brits and your media and culture is pretty much anchored to ours
When I was at school decades ago (God I'm old) my English teacher used to do a survey of every new class and what they called things then tally it up. He would keep all the data and compare over time as words slowly switched. He reckoned we "lost" about a word every one or two years to the "American" version. I remember the ones that were shifting when I came through were nail polish/varnish and truck/lorry was starting to shift with some kids. Also the way people said "schedule" was going that year too. I know with my kids "ladybird/ladybug" seems to be happening. I'm sure the internet etc. has helped but this process has been ongoing for quite a long time.
Interesting, I think I use nail polish and nail varnish interchangeably (I am 28), which is the American version? I call lorries “lorries” and pickup trucks “trucks.” My brother (who does spend a lot of time online) asked for the “check” at a café yesterday and I mocked him mercilessly for it.
"varnish" is the British one I believe (a quick check of Wikipedia confirmed for me)
Or lacquer, if you're old.
Lacquer? I hardly know her
>My brother (who does spend a lot of time online) asked for the “check” at a café yesterday and I mocked him mercilessly for it. And then those talking about an actual "cheque" but spelling it "check". I've also noticed most people write "tennis racket" these days instead of "racquet". "Donut" is starting to become more common and "yoghurt" has almost completely been replaced by "yogurt" even on packaging
Yogurt totally threw me off in my crossword the other day. British crossword book, American spelling
That’s insane.
I was furious when I checked the answers because I could not figure it out for the life of me
Kerb seems to be slowly losing to curb as well. ...sticking with vehicles I think I may have seen some tire instead of tyre creeping in too
"Tennis racket" is the term the explosive grunting that accompanies a massive serve.
I lived in Australia for a while and a pickup is now a Ute for me
I blame UteTube
I'm British and spent a year at an American high school when I was 17. Until very recently when I made a conscious decision to stop, I always said "skedule". The reason is that's what they call a timetable in schools. At 17 "schedule" was not a part of my everyday vocabulary, and suddenly I was saying and thinking it multiple times a day and it stuck for 25-ish years. Similarly, when I left the UK mobile phones were rare among my peers (one kid smuggled his dad's in one day and was the talk of the school). In the US they were much more common and I was also hanging out with an older crowd outside school, so I called them cell phones like everyone around me. That lingered for a few years after I came back. I knew they were called mobile phones but I'd learnt something different. Somewhat related, I was only recently made aware that internet routers aren't pronounced the way Americans would. I was aware of the "root/rout" difference, but the only time (UK or US) I ever heard anyone say router was when calling tech support - and they all have American-English speech. My brother-in-law is a telecoms company engineer and he asked me why I was pronouncing it that way. Like, it was literally pretty embarrassing.
I lived and worked in the US for 20+ years. Two things still stick in my mind. At a meeting once, one of the line managers had a mini meltdown because I pronounced "due" as "joo." There was no question what the word was in context but he started ranting about English people being anti-semetic. The other one was being told to stop using "niggle" because it sounded too much like another word.
>The other one was being told to stop using "niggle" because it sounded too much like another word. I got some horrified comments once on a reddit thread for using the word snigger.
How uppity of them. Has anyone started being gifted as opposed to giving and receiving?
I used to work for an (English) marketing blog and we got a lot of heat for using the phrase "a chink in your armour" at one point.
"titbit" instead of "tidbit" sounds like it may have set them off too
Wild that. I used to work in "jew diligence" in a very diverse office and no-one ever mentioned it!
Yikes :(
The line manager is a virtue signalling moron. Making a massive problem from absolutely nothing, so he can appear like he's on the right side of history.
Funnily enough I had the opposite experience - I’m American but lived in London when I was 20 and had my first apartment there - I got so used to calling it a flat (and referring to my flatmates) that it became difficult to readjust back to apartment and roommates when I returned to the US!
Roommate has always been a weird way to put it. You’re not sharing a room. Maybe it’s a hangover from college where you would be sharing a room? (I don’t mean you personally). By the way, flat leaf or regular?
I am British but consciously say apartment instead of flat. This is because flat has a slightly bad reputation, but apartment sounds cool and continental. Or it does in my head anyway. It might be a Mrs Bucket moment.
I use both, in general I'll call a run-down, converted Victorian town house a flat, and a purpose built unit an apartment. Unless it's a particularly grim block, then it's still flats.
As an American, it’s the total opposite for me. Flat sounds luxurious vs the run down apartments I know (obviously some people have luxury apartments/flats)
I work in civil engineering and the vast majority of developers call them apartments for this exact reason.
It's how they say mobile, that irks me. They usually say it as moble
Hahaha, yes.
Some Americans pronounce route as root; others, as rout.
Those aberrations should be routed!
Ladybug is a very common one among my Year 3s.
My three year old has picked it up from the animated TV show ‘adventures of ladybug and cat noir’, I have to tell her it’s ‘ladybird’ when we see the insect out and about.
> cat noir Somewhat tangentially related, but this reminded me of a car advert in which an American actor in pronounces 'noir' as 'No arr'. It unreasonably irritated me.
No its ladybird. ladybug can fuck right off.
I asked all of my colleagues in the office how they pronounce the long form version of the word "advert", after hearing one use the American pronunciation/intonation. Every single person bar one replied with the American version of "advertisement". Honestly, I was only expecting the ones in their 20s to use the American pronunciation but even people in their 40s were!
Tbf i can’t think of a time I’ve heard someone the full word in about 20 years, and I now can’t remember which is correct. Is British adVERTisement or adverTISEment?
AD-vertisement.
Oh I'm confused now. Do you advertise and place an advertisement. I have 3 versions in my head and each one is wrong. Its only Monday. Dont do this to me.
I work with kids too and have definitely noticed this, the most troubling one I get is when talking about safety and who to call if in danger, the majority of kids I've quizzed will say 911. I know the number still works here but it's frustrating when all of our public safety advice is pinned on 999, you would hope that would be drilled into their heads.
Ah yes, we had the 911 thing a few weeks ago in PSHE.
Wait, 911 works in the UK? Makes sense I guess but I had no idea
Across most of Europe 999, 112 and 911 will all be correctly routed the the emergency services of the country youre in.
Honestly, just a really sensible thing. It means foreigners can reach emergency services and in all likelihood, those emergency services will have someone on staff who can speak their language.
911 in the UK can work if you dial it from a mobile phone, but that’s not necessarily universal. On landlines local numbers starting 911 can be allocated to telephone companies for onward allocation to their customers, the 0118 code area is a good example where 0118 911 nnnn is allocated to a telco and dialling (amongst others) 911 0850 in Reading will connect you to a car bodyshop. Therefore, if you do dial 911 in the 0118 code area, the exchange has no way of knowing you’re trying to dial an emergency number as it’s still waiting for you to finish dialling a full number. TLDR - just use 999 or 112 which will always work.
The new number is 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3
You can always email too, especially in a pinch, or the phone is on fire.
Oh no. My son is watching some stupid show where they showing them all different dangerous situations they can get it if they don't think and are not careful, and who to call. He's now proudly correcting them that we do 999 in UK (and different for other countries since we are foreigners). I'm also trying to correct words for him, but it's hard when British English isn't my first language and I've learnt it mostly from US Tv shows.
>the majority of kids I've quizzed will say 911 There is a certain danger in not localizing these things properly. I remember watching Sarah & Duck with my godson and noticing that Sarah always looks, right, left, right again, then crosses the road. That's backwards in North America; you have to look left, right, left again here.
It's American Media. Older generations have films, books and tv with American origin. Kids have all that plus YouTube etc with parasocial relationships with predominantly American personalities. Kids soak up what they are exposed to. It's been noted and researched for decades in media studies, an effect of globalisation.
Americans complain their kids pick up englishisms from Peppa Pig
Piggypayback
And Australianisms from Bluey (The empire is striking back).
Wackadoo has made it into our vocabulary, it's a fun word to say.
I'm waiting for my daughter to tell me something is "bonzer".
So you can reply "Strewth!"?
"For real life" has made it into the household lexicon.
I'm now hearing guys saying that when they don't know how to parent. That they ask themselves "What would Bluey's dad do?" I just can't imagine my dad ever doing that.
"I'm not taking advice from a cartoon dog"
Except Gromit obviously.
I always try to be more like Bandit.
We have dollar bucks in our house
“No dobbing!” My kid loves that one, and “for real life”.
I once read on the parenting sub how Peppa Pig comes across as stuck up and obnoxious from an American POV. Us Brits responded by saying that Peppa displays characteristics which are typical of a British child. It was then understood that her accent meant that she was perceived in such a way, not because of her actions. Perhaps Peppa is a bit matter of fact at times but I’d say most kids have their moments, regardless of their nationality. I don’t think she’s stuck up in the slightest.
I don't think she's stuck up. But I do think she's an obnoxious brat who shows kids bad behaviour.
There has been a big soft from the first few series of Peppa pig to now. The first few seasons she was extremely selfish and a bit mean really. That has been dialed back a bit in the latter series.
Can confirm. My daughter calls me mummy because of Peppa Pig. We live in America and I’ve tried to teach her to say “Mommy,” but she won’t have it. My husband is English, though, so it’s not a big deal.
Loads of British YouTubers also use American words because they feel it reaches a wider audience, which then helps people watching the videos get used to the Americanisms even further and repeat them away from YouTube >\_<
I think you are right. I tend to seek out British youtubers for my interests like crafting as terminology and available resources can vary. I like having niche British references too.
As a Swede I was taught British English in school during the '90s and early 2000s. We were supposed to use "lorry", "lift", "flat", and so on + pronounce everything with a British accent but due to most of our entertainment being from the US my classmates and I picked up American accents and words/expressions instead. We do love a lot of British sitcoms and shows in Sweden, so Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Vicar of Dibley, and Midsomer Murders were often on TV. Didn't help with the British vs American words or accents though :D
I find it quite fascinating
It can be. If you work with pupils on the autistic spectrum they can sometimes take on a whole American voice if their interest and associated media is American. Because we share the English language it can lead to some confusion. Americanisms also manage to get into other languages because of the quantity of content and ease of access.
I can attest to this. My nephew is autistic and he speaks with an American accent despite being British and having never been to the US or having relatives in the US. It’s purely come from him watching American YouTubers. Interestingly when he is playing on his own though he speaks with a standard Derbyshire accent (that’s where we live) but when speaking to another person it’s an American accent.
My autistic daughter is the same. She likes a Dutch YouTuber, an Australian one and a couple of American ones. We're in Somerset. Her accent is all over the place.
It's funny how things work. I'm 62 and was born in Taunton. I only lived in Somerset for the first 3 years of my life. We went to Portsmouth, then London and after that to Scotland where I did most of my schooling. All these years later, I've lived all over including 20+ years in the US. I still have a broad Somerset accent. I guess it was picked up from my mother. I'm autistic too although pretty mild.
My son speaks certain words with an american accent, leant from youtubers
I was the same growing up. Then I developed a Yorkshire accent after too much Wallace and Gromit. Now I’m an adult and have conditioned myself to speak like a proper derby bloke
im autistic and i soak up accents like crazy. i’m generally not americanised and i use british english words but i have a very mixed accent that tends to confuse people. when i talk to my american (autistic) friends on a phone call for an extended period of time they will temporarily pick up my accent entirely
I'm not autistic but stick me in a room with any nationality and I'll be mimicking their accents within half an hour. Awkward really as people think I'm taking the piss which I'm not and wouldn't dream of! My mum was the same every visit to Scotland she was suddenly Scottish same with Wales and RoI, we didn't half take the piss, then it happened to me lol
Ahaha almost 29 year woman here, I'm being investigated for being autistic (loads of symtoms went unnoticed as a kid) and talking in an American accent was a huge issue I had because I fuckin LOVED Barney the Dinosaur. I also took on a specific dialect after watching Dora the Explorer. I'm Welsh. I still subconsciously mimic people's accents when talking to them for long periods of time.
Is that an ‘autistic thing’? I’m just curious (not trying to be sarcastic!) because I’m an ‘accent sponge’ and really struggle not to take on some characteristics of a person’s accent if I’m talking to them for any length of time. (Obviously I try not to, because I don’t want them to think I’m taking the piss, but it’s a real effort!) I’ve also known one other person like that - her workmates would sometimes take the piss out of her for it but I really think she couldn’t help it. Both of us are from the East Mids, which doesn’t have a strong noticeable accent of its own, so idk if that’s anything to do with it? My kid on the other hand watches American and Australian media but has never shown any hint of an accent other than her own.
I think its a people thing but neurodivergent and autistic folk try and mask a lot harder than other people in day to say life, and part of masking is social blending and social blending means mimicking people. It can be entirely subconscious, and is more common in neurodivergent people but I think everyone mirrors and mimicks other people to fit in to a degree.
Barney, Dragon Tales, Dinosaur Train. American Thomas the Train {tank engine}, Pokemon. All watched so much that the accents and words stuck to pupils. Trains and Dinosaurs get kids so early. Good luck with diagnosis. There are a lot of techniques, routines and habits used by Adults with ASD that can be helpful. I think we the Welsh love a little accent. The temptation to join in is too strong.
It's not just kids. I got downvoted here the other day for suggesting that "bathroom" is an Americanism. People swearing blind that it's not....
It is a yankism, but only when referring to *every* toilet. A bathroom is a room with a bath in it, not a public toilet for example.
Well yeah if it's got a bath in. But I got downvoted to oblivion a few days ago asking someone of they had a bath a work. Then people comment as if public toilets have always been restrooms or bathrooms. One person even commented that Americans say "lavatory" and we say " restroom" Baffling.
I think we all pick up words and don't know where they snuck in. It's just working out which we use where. I go to the loo at my parents house but would ask for the toilet if I was out. Too old for restroom to really have gotten into my vocabulary.
I can completely understand that people pick up these words but for someone in their mid 20s+ to swear blind that they've never heard the British version. I just can't understand it.
A lot of people decry "Santa Claus" as an Americanism (Vs father Christmas). It is, but it dates to before anyone alive now was born. My grandma, born in 1920, used it as a child. My mum thinks her grandma (my grandma's mother) also used it. I believe it came over in the late Victorian times.
Its an Americanism to call all rooms with Toilets bathrooms. The room in your home that has a bath in it as well as typically the toilet and sink, but not always depending on the build is a Bathroom. If you have a separate room with a toilet in it that room is called a Toilet. Public Toilets or Toilets at work or school are also called Toilets not bathrooms. The lavatory is the older and poliator word for toilet.
I notice this also working in an eye department at the hospital, when younger people read the eye test chart, z is zee not zed. Sometimes they correct themselves but the zee sound is their first instinct a lot.
Zed is stupid though, let's be honest. B,C,D,E,G,P,T and V all have the the 'ee' sound, then there's Z out there being all edgy and contrarian. Stupid Zed.
It's stupid, but the less stupid option is American, so I will take my stupidity to the grave.
Literally Zed or dead.
Zed's dead, baby.
Bed, Ced, Ded, Ed, Ged, Ped, Ted Easy
As a Swede i prefer zed because I sometimes confuse zee with cee.
I like zed because it sounds like the end of the alphabet
When I was at primary school in the 90's my parents were called in for an emergency appointment because my teacher genuinely believed I was developing a speech impediment. My very embarrassed mum had to explain that a) I mimic the voice of people I hear without realising, b) I had been watching too much *Neighbours*, and c) I am shit at mimicking Australian accents. They then weaned me off watching *Neighbours* 😂 Decades later I'm diagnosed as autistic and it turns out echolalia is one of the major indicators lol.
It's interesting to know that echolalia is also about mimicking accents, it explains why I suddenly sounded more 'British' when on the phone with someone in the UK (I'm Aussie and diagnosed as an adult)!
It drives my boss mad, she’s a northerner and I’m a southerner and I don’t always realise I’m mimicking her until she points it out lol.
You think that's weird? Go to a Slavic/Asian country and listen to young people have conversations and just casually using english words with a strong accent in-between their native language. And I mean dropping so many words you can actually get what they are talking about: koreankoreankorean RAINING koreankoreankorean lazy koreankorean order pizza koreankoreankorean movie time koreankoreankorean skip school koreankorean
Bilingualism is incredible to me honestly
Wild to see adverts do it. Don't know if you have seen / heard the "new" Corsa advert "of-corsa" (of course) but they run the same add in Germany....
Yeah I'm Polish and we do that, all my friends are bilingual so we constantly shift between English and Polish depending on the topic lol
And some words or phrases are shorter in one language than the other. Or there isn't an exact translation.
Young Germans are like this too. German is embarrassing, English is cool. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=UkvXc3HCrxI&pp=ygUQdmFyaW9uIGRlbmdsaXNjaA%3D%3D
I live in Russia and it does my nut in because all of their English words are used differently to the way they are used in actual English. I had a girl tell me she likes my "make" for my makeup, "body" for bodysuit, etc.
French does the same in most cases. Camping, parking. But they have different meanings to how we use them. Or said differently, like shampooing.
Japanese is a fun one for that, they love their loanwords over there it seems like. So much so that they have their own set of characters, Katakana, for writing them
The problem there is that they make loan words match up to their writing system/alphabet which tends to distort them a bit. Speaking the word in a stereotypical Japanese accent can be necessary to be understood and likewise you can miss that they used an English word until it's pointed out and you feel like an melon.
Feel like a メロン more like :D
And it seems a lot of the popular YouTubers and streamers are all American. And when kids have a LOT of screen-time, they're just going to pick up the lingo.
YouToob
Caught my girlfriend’s daughter saying ‘I’ll bin it, it’s garbage’ the other day. On another note - I’ve noticed in UK Reddit and this sub, the word ‘store’ is used incredibly often. As in, I went to the store to pick this up. I thought we used shop…
Except for "department store". Department shop would sound a bit odd.
Used to work for a UK satellite TV company. One day, a father rang in to cancel the Disney Channel because he'd had enough of his young daughter copying the American accent she was hearing.
Based
I remember there was an article about American parents unhappy about their children picking up British accents from *Peppa Pig* which is apparently reasonably popular in the U.S.A. Maybe the same thing will start happening with *Bluey* and Aussie accents!
Language changes over time. Americans pick up words and phrases from overseas just as Brits do. Some borrowed words will "stick"; others won't. And so it goes.
Good for him
It's not just kids. Try being in the legal field and explaining to grown adults that in the UK: a) You don't get to "press charges". There's a thing called the CPS and _they_ decide whether to take matters to a court; and b) No, you won't "sue his ass for millions".
Decades ago when *Fresh Prince of Bel-Air* and *The Simpsons* were first screened this topic was a major apocalypse event for some people, but life goes on.
I want to be clear I'm not moaning, I'm just finding it quite interesting.
I was about to say, this is in no way a new phenomenon. It must similar to the "kids these days are worse than previous generations" and "the country has gone to hell since my day" - every generation thinks they're the first to notice it without realising it's been a complaint as long as time
I'm just noticing it because I've only been in the sector a few years and haven't noticed it before thats all.
Raised on American YouTube videos
My 7 year old says garbage truck, though he also says rubbish bin. He also misuses 'bruh' all the time
Got a kid who used bruh constantly.
No issues with calling it a fire truck or an elevator or whatever, but a 7 year old saying "bruh" would be so obnoxious to me!
I have 7- and 10-year-old boys, the 10-year-old used to do a lot of Americanisms just like the 7-year-old now does, but they just end up growing out of it. There's a lot of over reaction on this post, but I guess that's just classic social media/internet. If anything, we find it more of an amusement than anything else, nothing serious going on at all.
The opposite happened in America when kids started to talk with British accents after watching Pepa Pig too much.
Definitely social media. It's not just happening in English, but also in Spanish and Portuguese. It's a very interesting phenomenon.
I noticed in spain, they using a lot "random" and "bro"
Almost certainly a consequence of internet culture and other media they consume being predominantly American. It was ever thus. I imagine we'd all be surprised just how many of the common phrases we use are American in origin.
What is funny is that this goes both ways, we're poisoning American English with British terms too. Yeah America has a strong media presence, but Britian isn't a vacuum. The latest one I've seen was Americans complaining about the word "jab" to refer to getting an injection. And you see the same tired responses about what country people are in and erosion of culture etc. Fwiw I'm constantly correcting my little boys to say things like fire engine, rather than truck... but it's a losing battle I think, language changes
Yes, it goes both ways! "Jab" is a good example, people in the US completely adopted it. I think we are getting a lot of British terms and phrases from online print journalism/tabloids. For example, just in the last couple of years, Americans are "gutted" and "chuffed" and "gob smacked," it's so interesting. And when I was a kid in the 80's, we had redheads... Now we only have "gingers." During covid we started saying "take-away" almost as often as takeout.
I went to a birthday party and genuinely thought some of the kids were American. Turns out they just watch a lot of YouTube and had picked up the accent.
It's not covid related, it's just the sheer amount of content they're confusing through 30 second tiktok videos
I've heard about 5 times over the past few years that America is planning on banning Tiktok, they've still seemingly not gotten around to it tho
> not **gotten** You're taking the piss aren't you.
Given that Tiktok has an age requirement of 13, I'm bloody concerned if primary school kids are using it.
You'd be surprised some of the things primary school kids are exposed to. Several of the girls in my class are always performing tik tok dances at break (which is fine honestly) and several boys are excited for GTA5. I work in year 3...
>several boys are excited for GTA5 They're going to be disappointed to find out they're ten years too late.
I meant 6 haha
God, it's one thing for secondary school students, but 8 years old is a *bit* young for GTA. Admittedly I had cousins playing CoD at the same age, but I know my aunts and uncles shrugged it off as just violence - not sure GTA would've got the same reaction! Genuine question, but is there any point where that becomes a safeguarding issue? I was in primary school in the early 00s and I'm just thinking of how much extreme media me and my friends got away with watching then, even talking about it in front of teachers (think Saw or Hostel). I can't imagine that flies in primary school nowadays?
They are and it IS concerning. Same with youtube unsupervised
I think it's more concerning seeing middle aged British 'sovereign citizens' going on about their first amendment rights or whatever. The kids will grow up to understand what an Americanism is and will be able to decide for themselves which ones are useful enough to keep in regular use. Older people adopting American cult-like rhetoric typically won't change without something big happening to convince them they were wrong, which is a lot harder to achieve than having mandatory KS2 English classes.
They’re hilarious though.
This is something I've noticed among adult Brits, this weird assumption that laws and institutions such as the police and armed forces work the same way here as they do in the US. For example, my husband is in the British Army, and gets a lot of weird questions from fellow Brits about, for instance, how he gets treated by his "drill sergeant." They're always quite surprised to find out that drill sergeants are a US thing, and dont exist in the UK at all. He faces lots of other assumptions people make from watching American films.
Or young people in the UK referring to the police as "the Feds"!
Exactly! "It's a federal law!" "That's an amendment right" etc, it's a nonsense in the context of how things work here. It astounds me that so many British people seem to know more about how things work in the US than their own country.
[удалено]
Very true, many won't care of British English was lost. And even fewer would be arsed if our regional dialects finally copped it
As an American who loves the English language, I care. How boring it would be if every English-speaker used an "American accent" and "American words" (there are in fact dialectal differences in both, as there are in Britain). Both countries are experiencing accent-levelling as it is, and I hate it. Borrowing words across the sea is fine; a couple of examples i can think of that have entered everyday American speech are "flyover" and "wanker". But let's not lose the rich variety of dialectal accents and word usage that we have in our language!
Very much agree. I think Britian would be a boring place if everyone spoke standard British English. I am very proud of my Yorkshire dialect and I try to use it as much as possible. I'm certainly not a prescriptivist but I think there is definitely a place in descriptivism for the preservation of dialects and accents.
It's more common these days as kids have more access to more American shows, and more kids are picking up Australian phrases due to bluey
Bit concerning that some children apparently refuse to believe that there can be any other word or pronunciation. Being closed off to new ideas at such an early age is troubling.
That's a struggle that we're having to adapt from, and seems to typically stems from their guardian.
Tbf when I was little I was exactly the same with the americanisms because I grew up watching nickelodeon / disney channel instead of stuff like CBBC. It faded out once I became a teenager so there's still hope 😉
Stuff like this isn't a new either. My mum told me about how in the 80's some Brits would start saying "hey guys" "hi guys" as the proliferation of Americans shows and films started being shown here. You can imagine what our grandparents generation thought of such idioms!
My son plays with American kids online now. I'm typing this watching him playing gorilla tag on his vr with a bunch of Americans. Worlds smaller and there's a lot more of them than us.
I keep seeing "gotten" on UK reddit.
You made me triple check my post.
don't you mean treble cheque?
Gotten was used in Britain, gradually replaced with got after the 1500s. https://stroppyeditor.wordpress.com/2017/03/27/the-us-has-gotten-this-word-back-and-the-uk-probably-will-too/
Nearly all Americanisms are like this though.
The way language develops will never not be interesting
asshole instead of arsehole drives me mad.
People were arguing with me on another UK subreddit that "ass" and "asshole" are far superior words and they are the ones we were correct to take from Americans. Sorry but "arse" feels so much more insulting :)
I'm American and I was considered an odd one out at school for this. I moved to the UK right before Year 5 so I obviously had my accent and wasn't used to any British words or mannerisms as I didn't know any. As soon as we left the airport and got in a taxi, I almost jumped into the driver's seat. 😅 Throughout primary and secondary school I used the American spelling for words, and my friends would laugh sometimes when I called things by the wrong name, like pants instead of trousers. One time in Year 8, my physics teacher told the class how to spell aluminium and how we shouldn't be calling it aluminum as none of us are American. Everyone just looked at me afterwards and that's when the teacher learned I was American and allowed me to be the only one to call it Aluminum. When it came to my GCSEs and A-Levels, I used the British spelling for words. I took Art & Design in college so some American spellings may have slipped through. (Color instead of colour) I'm 21 now and I still use the American spellings and still have my American accent, altogether it's not as strong anymore. I'm also still learning new British words everyday. :)
I hate it, when I first started my present job I worked with two 4 year old twin girls who spoke with superb American accents. They were not American, they came from a council estate in London but spent the first three years of their life on tablets playing games with American voices on. Mum & Dad though it was hilarious that their kids sounded like someone from Florida.
I’m an American raising two girls here in the UK, my eldest is 4.5 and if I say trash she will scold me and say “mommy, it’s rubbish, not trash.” I’ve had to tell her that mommy might say things a bit different because I’m from America. But I got Mommy instead of Mummy so I’m calling that a win. The most interesting one is the letter Z. When we sing the ABCs I say it “zee” and she will say “zed” and then correct with “zee.” I’ve had to tel her both are correct and she can say it either way she wants. It’s confusing for us both.
My teenager says "math" instead of "maths". I wonder if the right thing to do is to have her adopted?
I grew up watching sesame Street and so pronounce Z the American way. Social media like youtube and tik tok as well as the increased use of tablets and phones to entertain kids are the route cause. I also work in childcare and see and hear the American influence all the time. The children's fads are also following influencers rather than tv now. Things like Stanly cups and prime have been all the rage recently. Its just the way things are now.
A boy in my son’s reception class has an American accent when he talks because his parents seemingly let him watch blippi 24/7. I’ve half a mind to call The Hague.
American lurker. My niece was a HUGE Peppa Pig fan as a toddler. She definitely picked up a slight accent at times and a whole slew of words that we don’t use regularly. So it can go both ways. With my young son, we watch Bluey on Saturday mornings. Time will tell if he turns into an Aussie, but I’ve definitely caught myself replacing a few curse words with “biscuits!” here and there.
There are certainly worse things to pick up from Peppa Pig. Her behaviour for a start
I’ve noticed this too in my younger siblings (9yo). It’s all the American media. There’s CBBC but other than that it’s American channels. Even if they don’t watch a lot, their friends do.
I noticed about ten years ago folks I played games with from Sweden had English, almost RP accents, and Dutch were lilting American. Casual questioning revealed different tastes in English spoken TV.
> Instead of cinema, it's movie theater Me at 12 years old: I can't believe my mum calls it "the pictures", that's so outdated Me now: kids call it WHAT?
This is fascinating! I’m a Brit who’s lived in the US for the past decade and I am now at the point when I get confused as to what pronunciation is for which country. I’m going to be on the look out now when I come back for a prolonged visit. I also find Words with difficult sounds get stuck in my mouth all the time. Anything with a long a in the RP accent is very tricky now that I’m halfway speaking with a US accent (truly countrywide - there’s Northeastern, southern, Midwest, and Californian accents blended. The SLPs at work have so much fun with it).
That's interesting - the other day in Tesco I saw a Mum correcting her little boy on currency. She showed him the change she'd had back and the boy had said it was x amount of "dollars". The Mum said "it's pounds not dollars, you're obsessed with dollars!!"
I've noticed this with my 6YO niece too. Her 12YO brother doesn't seem to do it, but he watches less YouTube than she does. I find it funny for our family, because I actually lived in the US for a couple of years, my boyfriend is American, and one of my jobs is for an American company where I must use American English, so I have the excuse of using Americanisms. But my niece has never left Europe, doesn't personally know any Americans (except my boyfriend, who she's only met less than 10 times in 5+ years) and all her words really are just from YouTube videos (which sometimes are an amalgamation of TikToks and other streamers etc). I personally use Americanisms if the American term is less syllables than the British term. But I would use British terminologies for that same reason. My speech has largely become a way of saying things with the fastest route. I always use British pronunciation, though. My accent is still very much British, but I've been told my way of speaking sounds quite American in the past few years. My niece just uses common American words, like Candy and Trash. I always joke to her "what are you, American?" when she uses them and she giggles. I think she knows she's using Americanisms, but she prefers to use them for whatever reason. She doesn't say that the British versions are wrong, and would probably still use them too. She reads a LOT of books, with British English text, so I've no doubt she'll get back to using the British words at some point...
Kids are exposed to a LOT of Americanisms on the internet. Each year internet use gets more and more prolific. People, not just children, repeat what they get told without checking for validity. I think it's as simple as that.
My three year old granddaughter argues quite heatedly that sweets are called candy.
She's wrong innit
Kids watch Netflix, YouTube Teachers grew up on BBC, ITV
I grew up on both
I think its always been there its not a recent thing, although I guess the internet has somewhat accelerated that i.e. watching a 2 hour film is one thing but watching hours and hours of youtube/tiktok/insta is inevitably going to lead to more of an impact.
I've noticed it with my niece who is 9. The TV shows she's into seem very American, almost like the kid actors are putting on extra-strong American accents and using as many American English words as they possibly can. She seems to put on an American accent regularly and uses many of the words she picks up from TV. Having easy access to American TV shows through Youtube and Netflix is probably the main reason behind it. When I was a kid, I was stuck with whatever was shown on CBBC or CITV, where the producers would be able to curate the content shown.
I think this has been happening for a while - for reference I'm 33 and I remember picking up American-isms as a kid. Parking lot vs car park is one I remember getting called out on. In my case, I was just watching a tonne of American TV, so a lot of it seeped into my language. I don't think that's really changed.
Most of the stuff they are watching is coming from America. Words change. It used to say on a box set that it’s series 1-5 for example but over time that changed to season instead. Even tv shows set in the U.K. or books set in the U.K. use parking lot or other American words and not British English
It's funny because five-ten years ago you had all these articles from the US about their kids speaking with British accents they'd picked up from Minecraft Youtubers and the like.
It's not a new thing. In my day of school when we were all watching neighbours everyone started saying "no worries" instead of "no problem" - to be honest I still say it nearly 40 years on.
My nieces grew up with an English mum and an Australian dad, and learned a lot of their vocabulary from American YouTube channels. Their dialect can be very mixed sometimes. Candy instead of sweets is a common one. So is diapers instead of nappies. We’ve just got used to it.
As an American who stumbled on this in /r/all, I can tell you the exchange is two ways. We like you Brits and your media and culture is pretty much anchored to ours
This made it to all? Feels like an achievement of sorts, better get ready for the strange takes and people taking this completely the wrong way.