Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British accents?

https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/may/14/fake-british-accents-americans-gen-z

by isomorph • 3 years ago

162 447 3 years ago

Why are so many young British men suddenly unable to pronounce th's?

bloak• 3 years ago

What are they saying instead of th, when did this start, and is it particular parts of Britain or particular social groups?

(Using f/v instead of th has long been a feature of some London dialects, and using t/d instead of th has long been a feature of some Irish dialects, and young children often use f/v instead of th, I think. Jocular references to "the youf" have been around in print for a while.)

EDIT: Of course there's also Jamaican pronunciation with t/d instead of th!

arethuza6• 3 years ago

As an aside, the dialect I used in my youth used "f" a lot - fit, fa, fan and far for what, who, when and where. Leading to "Fit fit fits fit fit" making sense...

urubu• 3 years ago

There is a technical linguistic term for it - th fronting:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Th-fronting

Apparently it's been around for quite a bit of time.

andybak2• 3 years ago

If you tell us what they say instead then I can probably give you some insight.

There's "bovvered" or there's "what da hell" or there's "fankyou"...

I can probably think of several more dialects where "th" is replaced with something else.

nicktelford• 3 years ago

There's nothing sudden about it. Many regional (mostly city) accents have common mis-pronounciation. "th" being mis-pronounced as either "f" or "v" was extremely common in the area I grew up 20+ years ago, and I'm sure it predates me.

PrimeMcFly• 3 years ago

I'll take that any day over some of what passes for dialects in the US.

globular-toast• 3 years ago

I believe this is a sign of a hearing problem. Some children are unable to hear a strong difference between certain sounds so, to them, they are speaking the same as everyone else. It used to be that those children would be identified and given special help to allow them to hear better. I remember having eye and ear tests at school. Maybe this has stopped now?

The tragedy is that this is a huge dividing factor in the UK. In all the places I've worked the vast majority of people use the distinct "th" sounds. Use of "f" and "v" sounds is, to use the current terminology, a "red flag".

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

Doesn't seem likely to me - it's common with specific strong dialects and often associated with working class people. As it's regional, I don't see it being a hearing related issue (not that I think it's an issue anyhow).

elros• 3 years ago

You mean a red thlag?

lozenge• 3 years ago

That's classism, Britain is a very classist country.

eth0up• 3 years ago

Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T?

Bread and budder? WTF?

I'm an author; I love horseback writing?

I'm tired of wading for the flood?

I want to ride my modercycle?

It's so pervasive that we really ought to update our dictionaries to replace these, now phantom, "t"s with proper "d"s. Think of it as antipsychotics for a batshit crazy language.

I'm American. But this has always been annoying, along with most of the eN language.

To cast a cynical eye on the bright side; it seems both the "t" and "d" will soon be obsolete as the entire eN language is refined to tonal variations of our most common word/punctuation/expression/noise, "like".

I may be mistaken, but I believe there's evidence that new humans are forming a "like-gland". The sound will become as natural and necessary as that of frogs bleating* after rain.

*Yes, bleating, not bleeding.

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

Reminds me of going into a shop while visiting the U.S. and trying to buy some batteries. The employee struggled with my english accent, so I had to try to explain what batteries where. He eventually understood and exclaimed "oh, badderies!".

tgv• 3 years ago

The t can also disappear. I've heard people say "twenny" instead of "twenty". Perhaps because "twendy" sounds more like Elmer Fudd giving Bugs Bunny decoration advice.

qbrass• 3 years ago

It's from Scandinavian immigrants influencing the accent. It's why Minnesota is pronounced with a "d" sound.

danans2• 3 years ago

Why have Americans always been unable to pronounce the intervocalic T?
Bread and budder? WTF?

In this and most cases there isn't really another word that would fit in context. Also plenty of other dialects (i.e. Australian English) do exactly the same thing.

I'm an author; I love horseback writing?

I'm this case, "riding" and "writing" have a marked difference in the length of the initial diphthong sound "ai".

I general American English is nowhere near the most ambiguous in this way. Many languages rely more heavily on context because they use ambiguous phonological and grammatical marking in common speech (i.e. spoken Japanese).

zabzonk3• 3 years ago

strange that so many british performers have put on american accents!

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

Are there that many? Off the top of my head, I can think of Hugh Laurie, but no-one else springs to mind (I'm british though so it might well be less visible to me).

gmt2027• 3 years ago

Christian Bale, Damian Lewis, Millie Bobbie Brown, Idris Elba, Henry Cavill, Tom Holland, Dominic West are all actors people are surprised to learn are British.

drcongo4• 3 years ago

That's called acting.

zabzonk3• 3 years ago

i was thinking of pop and rock singers

astrange• 3 years ago

British actors are generally good at American accents[0], but not the other way round. That new Zelda game what came out yesterday has surprisingly poorly directed voice acting in general, but especially Zelda herself, who in a sea of American accents is a Canadian-American actress doing an ultra-fake British accent where half the time it still has American vowels.

[1] except David Tennant, who thinks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_gp9K-rMdxg sounds Californian

kitd2• 3 years ago

Let's not mention Daniel Craig in Knives Out though.

dmje• 3 years ago

Hilariously the view from the UK side of the pond is that all our young people now have these terrible manufactured US accents...

ergvgdvgrd3• 3 years ago

I thinks it's possible with the access we both have to the other country's media via Netflix, prime, Hulu, et c., that our accents re-merge. When I was a kid, British accents were a little harder and Scottish accents were impossible, but after 15 years of Netflix, I don't even notice British accents anymore and Scottish accents are noticeable, but understandable.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

When I was a kid, no way could I understand a Geordie accent. I was raised with a RP accent, but I lived in Liverpool; I could understand ordinary scouse fine.

But my mates would sometimes launch into a very broad scouse accent to tease me; I could only just understand that.

Things have changed. Nobody nowadays speaks Geordie with the very broad accent that I couldn't understand as a kid.

hajile• 3 years ago

Perhaps we need to bring back the artificial Transatlantic Accent they used to use all across Hollywood.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

drumhead• 3 years ago

Yes, you hear that a lot with teenagers in the UK, especially streamers, who dont even live in the US and havent been within a 3000 miles of it. Maybe we just like each others cultures so much?

herbst• 3 years ago

I never understood that either but that's also common for Swiss or Austrian streamers who adapt a near to perfect German even thought most people would understand them, or at least would understand a light version of their dialect.

nelox3• 3 years ago

It been that way with music for some time as well. Some singers default to an American accent when singing.

DrThunder2• 3 years ago

You're elongating vowels etc. when you sing. If you sing in English you're most likely going to sound like every other English singer.

The only way you don't is if you purposely slow down your singing make it sound like your talking accent. This works with some genres (e.g. rap) but not others.

permo-w2• 3 years ago

a very long time. Jeff Lynne, who has a strong Birmingham accent, sang a lot of ELO’s songs in the 70s and 80s with a noticeable American accent. Sweet Is The Night being a prime example

joshlemer• 3 years ago

Weird, I thought that a North American accent was generally low status in the UK.

andybak2• 3 years ago

I'm British and this article still made a lot of sense. I probably have "exaggerated posh" and "exaggerated cockney" modes that I use for similar reasons.

arethuza6• 3 years ago

I'm old enough to recall that being unwise enough to use anything but a "proper" accent in school would result in sudden violence from teachers.

kitd2• 3 years ago

My father was instructed in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to get anywhere in the legal profession in the 1960s, he'd have to drop his Welsh accent. This was in Wales.

rhymeswithjazz2• 3 years ago

I thought this was going to be another article about kids watching Peppa Pig. My three year old has a sort of mixed vocabulary, but mostly from watching Matilda, the Musical on repeat.

boomboomsubban• 3 years ago

It eventually is another article about kids watching Peppa Pig, they just start with other anecdotes.

rhymeswithjazz2• 3 years ago

Yeah, just finished it. It's a funny thing. My kids haven't watched a ton of Peppa Pig, but they all have managed to pickup what I'd call 'different' pronunciations and vocabulary than a lot of their peers.

orthoxerox• 3 years ago

The “Peppa effect” had them speaking like the show’s cartoon pig, saying “Mummy” instead of “Mommy”

I've thought "mommy" vs "mummy" was a spelling difference. The words sound the same to me, /'mɐmɪ/.

worldblue• 3 years ago

I've always thought the difference is more pronounced with the short forms, "mum" vs "mom" (and the red underlining of the latter reminds me of my biases!). I don't think I've heard an American pronounce "mommy" though, so I can't say for certain.

Symbiote3• 3 years ago

I think the audio sample here sounds completely American, as it claims to be: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mommy

But either pronunciation of "mummy" (embalmed corpse) is how I would address my mother as a child: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/mummy

doublerabbit2• 3 years ago

I'm from the south of England, it varies across the country but "mummy" is more "humm-e" but with an M.

"Mom" always sounded like "Nom" with an M.

OJFord6• 3 years ago

Like a lot of American 'o's, 'mommy' often sounds (I don't know the IPA for it) more like 'mahmmy' to me (my British ear) - but it's presumably regional. I mean mainly from TV/film, 'valley girl' sort of accent for example: 'oh my gahd he's so haht'.

bitwize3• 3 years ago

I used to watch a lot of Danger Mouse back when it aired on Nickelodeon. To this day when I do a fake British accent, unless I'm imitating someone in particular I sound a bit like Sir David Jason.

pak9rabid2• 3 years ago

Jesus Danger Mouse. That brings back some memories.

tiffanyg• 3 years ago

Funny, that.

I ended up with Ted Kelsey, personally.

"Hehehehe... Stiletto, I'm so clever..."

nobleach• 3 years ago

Yeah, I do tend to repeat "Penfold, hush" and "crumbs chief" to myself.

wink3• 3 years ago

Guess it's the right time to smugly lean back as a continental European and point to your absolutely disgusting freeform mix of AE and BE terms, pronunciation and spelling, the only saving grace usually having decided to be consistent with o vs ou, at least in a single document or conversation :D

Also yes, I think we mostly learned Received Pronunciation in school but at least half of the people diverged towards American (in words like "can't") pretty soon and I honestly couldn't tell you if I'm still being consistent, 20 years after school and using English for a huge part of my working life, as a software developer.

codethief2• 3 years ago

Another continental European here (also software developer). I know most non-native speakers will never learn "proper" English pronunciation (whether AE or BE or Australian English I don't care) and international English is here to stay but, man, the many ways in people butcher English pronunciation (not because they pronounce everything as in their mother tongue – that's fine – but because they actually try to put on a native AE or BE accent) still makes my ears bleed on a daily basis.

Al-Khwarizmi• 3 years ago

Pronouncing English literally as if it were Spanish, French, etc. would make it impossible to understand.

Every non-native English learner tries to imitate natives, to the best of their ability. I don't think there's any other way to learn. Some people relax and stop trying to improve once they notice that they get to a level where they are understood, though. And then, one can be aware of one's limits (I don't think I'll ever get to distinguish "ice" and "eyes", so I don't even try anymore).

What you describe seems to be some kind of linguistic "uncanny valley" effect.

xchip• 3 years ago

Yet another article talking about trends based on questionable or cherry picked anecdotes.

MetaWhirledPeas2• 3 years ago

Yeah, what qualifies something to be a trend? Been in the US my entire life, and I've never heard someone casually putting on a fake British accent.

joshstrange• 3 years ago

I hate these articles with a passion, they make me think so much less of the "news" org putting them out. Another headline I saw recently on HN that drove me nuts:

"Paper map sales are booming" [0] - with a subtitle of "Fans say physical maps—though less efficient than digital options—enhance one’s journey. Among devotees: a surprising number of millennials and members of Generation Z" - Bullshit. Subtitle should have been "as art", almost no one, especially Gen-Z is using paper maps as actual maps.

Also all the articles about "people are going back to flip/dumb phones" no they aren't. You found a handful of people who did it, half of which I doubt are still doing it 1-2 months later and you want to pretend it's a trend. It's so tiring.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34469378

yamazakiwi7• 3 years ago

I have yet to see a good article that lists any generation in the title.

lloydatkinson• 3 years ago

Globalisation and it's consequences

wheybags• 3 years ago

My dad has been doing this since the 1950s, and I'm willing to bet his dad was since the 1910s. We're from Ireland though, is putting on a funny accent really a new thing in the us?

okonomiyaki3000• 3 years ago

This seems dumb but harmless unless they're also saying "maths". Then it's a sign of the apocalypse.

sfpotter• 3 years ago

As a mathsematician, I have no problem with this.

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

That's the only correct way of contracting "mathematics". "Math" is surely a contraction of "mathematic" which is nonsensical.

Also, do people in the U.S. study physic?

ergvgdvgrd3• 3 years ago

For your next act, defend the British pronounciation of "Worcestershire".

karmakaze2• 3 years ago

The s is a noun marker. In short form it's extraneous.

When you say "maths", how many do you mean? If you mean all collectively that would be singular, e.g. Mathematics is the study of ...

a_shovel• 3 years ago

How much is one math, anyways? Is it an equation, or a plus or minus sign, or a number, or what? For that matter, how much math is five maths?

pak9rabid2• 3 years ago

True, but it always comes off as sounding a bit pretentious to me since the social norm (as far back as I can remember) has been to simply refer to it as "math".

LgLasagnaModel• 3 years ago

I don't think either one is a contraction.

cardinalfang• 3 years ago

Statistics -> stats, calculus -> calc, logic -> null

Null-Set• 3 years ago

Do british students study chem or chemy? The american word math is an abbreviation of mathematics, why would it be a contraction?

lamontcg2• 3 years ago

That's the only correct way of contracting "mathematics"

That's the correct way of doing it if you've naturally got a British accent (or really any accent where you clearly learned British English as a second language).

Americans saying 'maths' is like dragging fingernails down a chalkboard.

yamazakiwi7• 3 years ago

Saying maths, or my favorites monies, sounds juvenile to most Americans in spite of their literary accuracy.

RandallBrown• 3 years ago

If it's a contraction and not just a shortening, why isn't it math's?

dev_tty012• 3 years ago

No, we are just unhappy with putting the "s" sound after the "th" sound. For some reason it just feels wrong.

marcus_holmes2• 3 years ago

Americans never seem to understand that there is more than one mathematics ;)

jonhohle2• 3 years ago

Fish is the plural of fish. Sheep is the plural of sheep. Trousers is the plural of trousers. And math is the plural of math.

hackeraccount• 3 years ago

Those kids as a adults will be the ones talking about a "drugs" policy. What's up with that anyhow?

LinuxBender• 3 years ago

Are the young people watching old episodes of "Look Around You"? [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4J9MRYJz9-4 [video][1 min]

shadowgovt• 3 years ago

The Helvetica Scenario is another sign of the apocalypse.

jonhohle2• 3 years ago

Or worse: aluminium!

Tokkemon• 3 years ago

Or worse, Aluminium.

boris• 3 years ago

Titanum.

pjc505• 3 years ago

You've just dredged up a memory of an educational video we watched at school years ago for Corel-Draw, which was rendered in the most Canadian accent any of us had ever heard.

A friend jammed all the drawls into a single catchphrase which he used for laughs for weeks. "The daaataaa on the staaatus baaar is made of an aluuuuminum cahhhhmpaaaund and stahred on a cd-raaaaaaahm"

lamontcg2• 3 years ago

Disorientated

zeynepevecen• 3 years ago

Because they only know English. Let me explain a bit. I’m a bilingual person, since I’m not living in a English speaking country and I’m 21. They’re saying that switching accents are their defend mechanism or coping mechanism with serious situations. Well, when I say this i think I’m talking for most of the bilingual people, our defend mechanism or us “being playful” is adding some English words into the sentence or switching to English. So it is not something to be shocked

xxs• 3 years ago

Because they only know English.

We don't know that (and the article is quite low on the quality scale expected from Guardian).

I speak three languages, and I don't see a reason to mix. Of course, you might be right, but also that's a one trick point. You will be called for being pretentious or just obnoxious.

trasz4• 3 years ago

Sometimes there is a reason to mix, when the word in one language doesn't quite match the meaning you want, but in another it does. Like, for example, in Polish "security" and "safety" are the same word ("bezpieczeństwo"), so it would become weird when you're talking about the difference between them.

But I feel like this article is about something else. We don't think in terms of words, we think in terms of phrases, and when we remember those phrases it's not just their literal meaning, but also the context, and this can include the accent they were heard in.

In the ideal world we'd just play the sample that we have in the head, but we don't have that yet.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

the quality scale expected from Guardian

It's taken a tabloid turn (not just in terms of the page format). It's got noticeably worse, even in the last 6 months. It's packed with "listicle" articles ("10 reasons..."), and it's moving rapidly to the right, politically.

eequah9L• 3 years ago

I don't think it's anything "reasonable". Like, OK, there might be objective reasons why you need to clarify which technical term you mean by a word that has multiple meanings in your native language, and use (typically) English to clear it up.

But I think most of the time it's just seen as hip, interesting, an extra flavor (flavour?). I do this occasionally -- sprinkle a foreign phrase here and there in my native Czech when I see that it fits and the other party might get it. More if I'm drunk. Some of my friends do it as well, in some social settings a number of jokes could be foreign language references. On the other hand, some people find it infuriating, as you note.

looping8• 3 years ago

But how exactly do they choose British accent instead of a Canadian one or an Australian one or whatever?

Izkata• 3 years ago

Personally, I have no idea what makes a Canadian accent, and the only Australian one I can think of is over-exaggerated Steve Irwin. British accents on the other hand are pretty common in TV/movies.

naravara• 3 years ago

A lot of British television is popular on streaming here, and there is very little Australian television.

Canadian accents are largely indistinguishable from the generic American "TV accent" aside from a few specific sounds and vocabulary choices. If you go into the Boonies of Canada you hear more distinctive ones, but those are more like regionalisms, you don't hear them as much in the media.

AdmiralAsshat• 3 years ago

The average American would likely fail to identify all but the most exaggerated Canadian accent (adding "eh?" to the end of every sentence). That's why we're constantly shocked when Hollywood blockbuster actors are Canadian.

rippercushions• 3 years ago

It's recognizable and easy enough to fake, at least to the degree that another American would recognize it as British English. Most people would not recognize a (say) New Zealand or South African accent, much less be able to replicate it.

It's also interesting that it's always a "posh" British accent: nobody ever fakes Cockney or Scouse or something.

xwdv• 3 years ago

Because stereotypically British aren’t seen as very threatening people, they sound quite docile really. There’s also a lot of exposure to British accents in popular media compared to the others.

happymellon3• 3 years ago

And why do they never choose to copy Brian Blessed or Matt Berry?

eternalban2• 3 years ago

Because Hollywood has been promoting* that accent.

* Review films made in the past 2 decades (that’s roughly when I began noticing the trend). Invariably, an English accent is used to imply authority or superiority (of some kind). Why this is happening in American movie industry is unknown to me but that it has been going on is clear for me.

unethical_ban• 3 years ago

Canada doesn't have an accept other than saying "out and about" like "oat in a boat"

Source: Texan who has been close to Canada once by visiting New York City. I know a Canadian and wouldn't have known it if he didn't tell me.

Serious answer, we hear a lot more British in pop culture than we hear Australian or NZ.

TulliusCicero• 3 years ago

I've known a bunch of Canadians, and the ones who aren't French Canadians sound mostly identical to Americans. There's a few different words and pronunciations, but unless you stumble into those during a conversation, it's very hard to tell.

clnq• 3 years ago

Because so many British are picking up American accents. And so many other accents are being picked up by other people. It's a globalized world.

doublerabbit2• 3 years ago

I hope not. As an Englishman I would hate to pick up a dry-monotonic accent misrepresenting data and router.

Accacin3• 3 years ago

I started ironically saying "on accident", and now I can (non-ironically) not stop saying it.

petercooper• 3 years ago

I'd love to hear this. It's not something I've noticed in my plentiful YouTube watching, etc, but I think it'd be an interesting development. The English-inspired "posh" American accents of yesteryear are beautiful, I think.

The similar thing that stands out to me like a sore thumb (and I appreciate this is all on me and anyone can talk however they like!) is when British people keep their accent but drop their "t"s to "d"s when speaking in public/on YouTube/podcasts/etc. ("Bedder" instead of "better", for example.) It doesn't seem to be a youth only thing, a lot of British speakers at tech conferences seem to do it, but it's not how we'd talk amongst ourselves in the UK. I wonder if it's something to do with subconsciously reducing plosives which often come out bad on mic?

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

I'm a brit; in general my accent is RP, but I say "bedder" (and I don't speak publicly). I think it's just laziness.

igetspam• 3 years ago

I adjust my speech patterns based on the audience. I've done it since I was a kid. Different groups of friends speak differently and convergence ensured I wouldn't stick out as weird. It wasn't an entirely conscious decision but I've always been fully aware of it. This seems similar although more pronounced and I didn't use accents.

stonogo• 3 years ago

The term for this is "code switching" and it's a fascinating area of study.

yamazakiwi7• 3 years ago

They could be code switching in this example but I think their comment is better defined by Linguistic Accommodation.

walthamstow• 3 years ago

Poor Dominic West, he'll never work again.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

I'm re-watching The Wire. He's supposed to be a cop from Baltimore; I suspect his accent wouldn't be recognisable as a Baltimore accent to anyone familiar with it. I think he actually struggles to sound authentic as any kind of US accent.

I think he's great in the part, though.

MetaWhirledPeas2• 3 years ago

I'm not from Baltimore, but I watched the entire series and never thought he sounded off in any way. So it was good enough to fool me.

Daniel Craig sounding like Foghorn Leghorn, now that's another matter.

imbnwa• 3 years ago

Almost no one in the cast, including the Americans, save for the 3 actors from the area (Robert Chew as Prop Joe, Felicia Pearson as Snoop, Anwan Glover as Slim Charles) even tried putting on a Baltimore accent. Wood Harris and Idris Elba were supposed to be dealers from the Baltimore projects, but Harris just spoke in his Chicago AAVE accent and Elba sounded like a guy from New York City (his accent even breaks pronouncing the word 'responsibilities'). Lance Reddick sounded like Lance Reddick. Robert Chew tried coaching the kids in season 4 in a Baltimore accent and dialect but the accent didn't seem to land.

I do wish David Simon had enforced accents as strongly as he did with Treme.

kbos872• 3 years ago

I was on public transportation this morning, about to reach my stop, and I needed to ask a woman who was blocking my way to the doors to please excuse me. The train was quiet, I was right behind her, and I had the feeling that I'd startle her.

As the train rolled into the station, a thought popped into my head that I've had before - a friendly British accent would be disarming in a moment like this! It was a passing thought but an organic one, so it's funny to now read this.

VWWHFSfQ• 3 years ago

you thought politely asking someone to move so you could exit the train would startle them? and then you thought you might do it in a fake british accent?

jononomo• 3 years ago

Yes, you read that correctly. And it makes perfect sense if you think about it.

snacktaster• 3 years ago

I don't know if it's Gen Z specific but I think people now just have a very difficult time interacting with strangers in public. It's kind of a bizarre phenomenon of the digital age.

kbos872• 3 years ago

Yes and yes. It's uncommon where I live to talk to people on the train - and being a bulky 6'4 male, whether I like it or not, I have a lifetime of experience that it's startling for women when I appear behind them without them realizing. It was a passing thought I found funny in the moment. I think it might say something about the reason why some segment of the population is apparently doing this.

pedrogpimenta• 3 years ago

Are you asking a question? And then following with another question?

Humdeee2• 3 years ago

A British accent is often perceived to be more gentle

Accacin3• 3 years ago

Most British people I know in this situation would literally just say, "Sorry!", just loud enough for the person blocking hear you so that they move and reply, "Sorry!".

In general I think we don't like to converse too much, especially on public transport.

NGRhodes• 3 years ago

Im not so sure:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PT0ay9u1gg4

bb123• 3 years ago

That is quite funny I have a British accent and live in the US and I often worry that my accent comes across abrupt and un-friendly, especially in situations like that.

rsynnott2• 3 years ago

affecting an accent has become a Gen Z verbal tic

Also other generations. For instance:

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valley_girl#Valleyspeak

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

Novel sociolects aren't something that gen z has just invented; they show up from time to time.

MrOwnPut2• 3 years ago

I'd pick fake British any day, though I haven't heard any prominent use.

Valley/Uptalk is the most annoying. Everything is a questionnn. No matter whaatt.

Those are mostly regional accents btw, not generational.

rgrieselhuber• 3 years ago

Or people can just not speak in uptalk.

Freak_NL• 3 years ago

Everything is a questionnn

That particular affectation seems to have leaked into written text too. Damn annoying.

Valley/Uptalk is the most annoying.

Add in a vocal fry and you'll have something to torture me with.

OJFord6• 3 years ago

So, I feel like I agree with that?

permo-w2• 3 years ago

the tiktok voice is quite valley girl, and I’m not sure there’s a more annoying sound around

on the other hand: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qb21lsCQ3EM

WorldMaker2• 3 years ago

Uptalk evolved to fill a social niche and is related to dialects/sociolects that commonly use "right?" or "eh?" to inter-punctuate sentences without using such filler words. (Admittedly, Valleyspeak is partly best known for different filler words so there was, like, no space for inter-punctuating sentences.)

One article on the subject: https://www.thecut.com/2017/06/the-real-purpose-of-uptalk-is...

rsynnott2• 3 years ago

(There's a whole genre of newspaper story that more or less consists of "Look! This generation are doing a thing that all the other generations did, too! How surprising!" There's always an audience for moaning about the youth of today, and apparently has been for literally millennia; ancient Roman commentators liked doing it, say).

bmitc2• 3 years ago

Are those generational though? They seem much more regional and less to do with a particular general generation.

bnralt• 3 years ago

The overuse of “like” is extremely common in younger (say, sub-50) Americans across geographic locations.

tyingq• 3 years ago

Maybe somewhat generational in that it's easier these days for an American to see more social media, television and movie content from the UK.

kbrosnan• 3 years ago

Valley talk is generational it was at its peak from 82-90ish with Clueless.

annoyingnoob• 3 years ago

Oh my God, I'm Sure! Gag me with a spoon!

bitwize3• 3 years ago

“If you like to think of yourself as somebody who’s easygoing, you might adopt a certain voice to express frustration, because you don’t feel totally comfortable with that part of yourself that complains,” he said.

Fred Rogers was reported by his children to express frustration or annoyance in Lady Elaine Fairchilde's voice rather than his own.

pbj19682• 3 years ago

The one that gets me is the soft double T sound they’re all making now.

Button sounds like “buh-hen.” It’s borderline baby talk.

nmeofthestate• 3 years ago

Are you talking about a glottal stop? I've noticed young Americans using it a lot more on Youtube.

pbj19682• 3 years ago

That is indeed what I am referring to. Thank you for teaching me the name of this lunacy.

elliottkember• 3 years ago

I’m from New Zealand. It’s staggering how many people in the US will repeat what I say back to me in a British accent. It’s hard to be annoyed because they’re “just having fun” but my god does it get old.

Fortunately I can do a bit of California surfer dude right back and that usually gets the message across

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

I was taught by a kiwi friend how to tell apart Australian and New Zealand accents - just get them to say "fish and chips".

"Fush and chups" - New Zealand. "Feesh and cheeps" - Australian

nelox3• 3 years ago

https://youtu.be/ZdVHZwI8pcA

OJFord6• 3 years ago

That's great actually, because it also works for South African (I often have a hard time with SA vs NZ) - 'fish and chips' with very short 'i', like it's reluctantly put in at all, I think.

LouisSayers• 3 years ago

The whole fish and chips thing is well overdone...

If you want to tell Aussies and kiwis apart, listen for "Chance" and "Dance".

Kiwis will say the 'a' like in the word "aren't", whereas Aussies will say it like the 'a' in "ants".

Much more discrete to ask about dancing than fish and chips ;)

hydrok94• 3 years ago

Canadian: "What time is it now?" New Zealander: "Teeen." Canadian: "??????"

ngngngng2• 3 years ago

When I'm talking to British friends they'll often repeat back what I said and exaggerate the rhoticity of my western US accent. I'll poke back with a "It's chewsday innit bruv?"

Seems pretty common.

hydrok94• 3 years ago

Had a Londoner tell me that they "litchrally" invented the language so N.A. says everything wrong.

seanmcdirmid5• 3 years ago

Do New Zealanders ever speak with a British accent? I mean, the ones I’ve known, it seems different from a neutral American (Midwest accent) but not by much, I would be hard pressed to call them out as British or even non-Americans (well, there is one guy, but he was also born in London).

talideon• 3 years ago

The Kiwi accent is quite different. It's certainly closer to your typical southern English accent than a US Midwestern one, but the vowel qualities and rhythm of speech are completely different from both. As somebody from Ireland, I don't have issues picking out somebody from NZ. I could understand getting a New Zealander mixed up with an Aussie if you don't notice with differences in vowel pronunciation between the two countries, but that's about it.

That said, both AU and NZ have their own "TV accents", which in AU is referred to as "Cultivated Australian", which is relatively close to British RP (though not the same), and I expect NZ has their own equivalent, but most people would have something close to what you would generally think of people from that part of the world sounding like.

alias_neo2• 3 years ago

No, their accent is quite clearly identifiable as Kiwi to us Brits.

They're easy to understand, they enunciate when they speak but the intonation and inflections and general sound is very different.

As for "a British accent". Would an American say there's "an American accent"?

There is no single British accent, we have, English, Scottish, Welsh, Irish and others with their own languages (and thus accents), then in England, we have widely varying accents, many clearly identifiable to a Brit; Newcastle (Jordie), Birmingham (Brummie), Liverpool (Scouse), London (Cockney), Essex, Yorkshire, etc.

I think when people say "British" like the article in OP, they really mean what we call "posh". We do it ourselves at times, but most people don't actually speak that way.

jonnycomputer• 3 years ago

I cannot say that your experience includes this phenomenon, but whenever people gather they tend to talk like each other, and pretty rapidly. I've found that I've a tendency to unconsciously modulate my "accent" when I'm with my in-laws in Europe, or when visiting the UK.

pmontra2• 3 years ago

When I'm staying for a few days in a different part of my country (Italy) I end up switching to the local phrase construction pattern if it's notably different from my native one. Accent not so much, I guess it takes quite a long time. Words are easy to swap (like truck/lorry in English) and pronunciation quite easy too (change of vowel sounds in my case.) BTW, none of this involves speaking dialects, it's all Italian with regional differences that everybody understand.

renewiltord• 3 years ago

Yeah it's "accommodation". But people also do the other thing where they repeat what you say and honestly I think they're just relishing this other similar sound they enjoy.

rjbwork• 3 years ago

True! Almost all of my extended family lives in South Louisiana and many have quite thick Cajun accents. When I spend too much time around them, I end up sounding a bit different when I get home.

inanutshellus• 3 years ago

"imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" comes to mind, though I get it's hard to take it as a compliment when it's so commonplace for you.

That said, in that moment, they're not "having fun" (in the mocking sense) they're relishing the sound of your voice and wanting to imagine a version of ourselves being uniquely interesting, like you, in the mimicry.

I get that it gets old, though, as your accent isn't novel to you.

dev_tty012• 3 years ago

as your accent isn't novel to you.

I would imagine that part of the reason it gets old is that it isn't "your accent." It is a NZ accent after having been filtered and ruined by US ears and speech patterns.

Old joke. What do you call someone who knows three languages? Trilingual. Two languages? Bilingual. One language? American (US). Speaking as one myself...

slap_shot• 3 years ago

I watch a YouTube channel that frequently features a guest from New Zealand, and in every video in which he appears, different people in the background will parrot the guest after he says certain words that really show off the NZ accent. I think he's become numb to it, because he shows no reaction. I'm sure it gets very old, but hopefully it's seen as endearment. imo, it's the best accent one can have :)

BerislavLopac2• 3 years ago

I'll just leave this here and see myself out... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6c4Nupnup0

cancerhacker• 3 years ago

Counter with Flight of the Conchords: https://youtu.be/qTwAoFR4DuM?t=104

philonoist2• 3 years ago

I love the British accents so much, I would put months of practice if I could. Their wit and dry humour parallel closely to mine in daily lives.

The other day we were mocking Brits on received pronunciation or what people call the 'royal posh talk'. Oh god, their novels are too fun when adapted into play, drama or theatre. My nephew had so much fun, it consumed the whole afternoon and evening in a jiffy.

Anybody who grew up in different mother tongue will appreciate Brits and their culture, language being just the start.

denton-scratch12• 3 years ago

what people call the 'royal posh talk'

That's not RP. RP is the accent of the older BBC news anchors. The aristocracy speak (or spoke) a horribly strangled accent:

"Ee-aw, heelyaw, Meekyeh!" -> "Oh, hello, Mickey".

jjgreen2• 3 years ago

The common aristocratic phrase "There's a trite in my trizers" translates to "there's a trout in my trousers" (apologies to Steve Bell).

atchoo• 3 years ago

Not bad, I read your comment in an English accent. Too much positivity though. We can only give that level of enthusiastic complement as an insult.

Your "so much fun" and "too fun" makes me think of "such fun" which is a complicated phrase now I think about it. It's rarely used to express something positive about having fun... Even just the word "fun" is rarely used positively. If an English person ever reacts to something with "well isn't that fun", be worried.

Oh, and jiffies are passed rather than consumed. Don't ask me why.

philonoist2• 3 years ago

The nature of sarcasm is such!

Always a way to learn!

Thanks!

DrThunder2• 3 years ago

My sister married a guy from the UK. She lives there now and has mishmash of midwestern US / southern UK accent. It's the most ridiculous sounding thing ever. UK people can't figure out where she's from and US people can't either.

zoklet-enjoyer• 3 years ago

Weird

glitchc• 3 years ago

If by young Americans, they mean young American males, the answer is obvious: Young American females find a British accent sexy.

justinator3• 3 years ago

British accents are heavily localized and class-based. I don't even know what a fake British accent means honestly. People in GB can spot an accent and a fake localized accent quite easily, and act accordingly.

I think Americans are just parroting pop culture from GB, and doing their best to sound, I dunno: posh or proper or whatever. It would be like someone in Kent trying to sound like a Wyoming cowboy. As the kids say: cringe.

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

I think when people outside refer to "British Accent", they meant the Received Pronunciation accent, common on TV/Movies.

justinator3• 3 years ago

Most American actors do a terrible job with British accents, to the point that it becomes a meme in of itself.

crazygringo• 3 years ago

On the one hand they do, as they certainly don't mean Cockney or Essex or Manchester.

But on the other hand they don't, because true RP is generally far too pretentious. Even in movies/TV, you see it mainly only in villains and historical dramas, or for comedic effect.

Most people are generally referring to a kind of middle-class London accent. Like Jude Law for example. Neither "posh" nor "regional" nor "lower class" nor "multicultural" (quotes for irony where necessary, obviously London is a region). I'm not sure what the name for that is though?

petesergeant• 3 years ago

This isn't what the article says, however: "Gen Z has embraced bad imitations of Cockney slang or a Yorkshire dialect" and then name-checks accents acquired from Love Island and The Only Way is Essex, neither of which are known for their RP!

George83728• 3 years ago

I think the average American doesn't / can't distinguish Michael Caine's Cockney accent and David Attenborough's RP. Caine's working class accent is perceived to be just as posh and sophisticated as RP, so he gets cast in the role of butlers for bat-themed billionaires, etc.

dboreham• 3 years ago

Wyoming cowboy is pretty easy -- not much of a strong accent there. More challenging would be a strong Boston accent, or somewhere from the deep south.

Disclosure: British person living close to Wyoming, in Montana, so I have a fake US accent.

justinator3• 3 years ago

Not to be rude, but the worst person to critique a foreign accent is perhaps the foreigner trying to fake it!

pessimizer2• 3 years ago

English people are terrible at weak and standard American accents; they sound like they're head-injured, and put 'r's at the end of works that end with 'a's. The funniest examples are French & Saunders' bad American accents (but at least they're aware that they're terrible at it.)

English people vastly prefer trying to do a sterotypical New Yawk accent because they can hide their mistakes in the extremity.

Afaict, Scots are the best at doing an American accent, followed by the Irish, followed by the Australians and the Welsh, then you get to English people.

asdfman1233• 3 years ago

Every culture that has ever existed is more nuanced than outsiders think.

I grew up in Texas and I’m a liberal who’s lived all over the country. I meet lots of people in California who’ve never left home and think people from X are like A and from Y are like B.

But put four people from any location into the same room and you’ll find plenty of differences between them.

anonymouskimmer• 3 years ago

But put four people from any location into the same room and you’ll find plenty of differences between them.

I think most of us first discover this fact in our own nuclear families. :D

CyberDildonics2• 3 years ago

people from X are like A and from Y are like B.

But put four people from any location into the same room and you’ll find plenty of differences between them.

Aren't these saying the same thing?

xeromal• 3 years ago

If it's anything like the polish who have act like an american day where they shoot fireworks and wear flags, I'd welcome them with open arms. It cracks me up. I don't think it's cringe at all.

pjc505• 3 years ago

I think Americans are just parroting pop culture from GB

Yes - a new "cool brittania" era, this time mostly via TV and TikTok/Youtube rather than music.

I consider this harmlessly funny, it's the reverse of the ubiquitousness of Americanisms everywhere and the extent to which non-English speakers usually have Americanish accents.

(Long ago, US East Coasters used to adopt high class English accents for much the same reason, and there is still what's called a "mid Atlantic" accent).

wombatpm• 3 years ago

I thought Mid Atlantic was a completely fake accent taught to radio and movie actors because of better fidelity with the recording equipment of the day

99_00• 3 years ago

That's not what the article is about.

But Gen Z has embraced bad imitations of Cockney slang or a Yorkshire dialect, using obviously fake, theatrical voices to make light of low-grade daily dramas.

helsinkiandrew2• 3 years ago

I think Americans are just parroting pop culture from GB, and doing their best to sound, I dunno: posh or proper or whatever

That contradicts the article. They’re imitating the Essex and regional accents they hear on love island and x-factor and TikTok. Unlike previous generations that probably heard ‘posh’ or cockney accents, Gen-Z are more likely to have heard Millie-B rapping than Alan Rickman in a movie.

AuryGlenz• 3 years ago

For whatever reason that accent seems easier for US people. My wife can do a killer imitation of a Love Island-like girl but neither of us can do anything resembling the accents on the more posh side without it turning into caricature quickly. We used to watch a lot of British panel shows.

foobarian• 3 years ago

To me the most excellent British accent is the "your soundcard works perfectly" clip from Warcraft 2 audio configuration. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_A1GNx0M9M

fredley• 3 years ago

As a Brit, my favourite is the annoucements in the Chalk Farm tube station lifts, specifically. It is a very old fashioned accent indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AUI3EwR8DM

cjrp3• 3 years ago

Weird, to me that sounds slightly Scandinavian. Maybe just because he’s really over-annunciating.

sarchertech2• 3 years ago

That clip is indelibly etched in my brain.

filoleg• 3 years ago

I think Americans are just parroting pop culture from GB, and doing their best to sound, I dunno: posh or proper or whatever

Agreed with your take, but there is another reason as well - just the whole "rubbing off" effect.

I've seen quite a ton of comments in more serious/non-joke threads all across social media (including HN), talking about people from all across the western europe getting pseudo-american accents (usually something generic in-between or more general like californian, not anything like the boston one lol) from consuming so much american media. And that includes countries where english was already the de-facto primary language, such as the UK. So it seems like it goes in both directions.

Anecdotally, as someone for whom american english (and english in general) wasn't the first language (but has been the primarily used language 99% of the time for the past 15 years), I definitely get the occasional slips of pronunciation if I watch a lot of british english media. That is entirely unintentional on my part though, and I correct rather quickly and return back to the baseline in a couple of days.

With this in mind, I wonder if there is data available that plots these incidences of "fake british accents" against worldwide consumption rates of british-english-heavy media. I suspect there would be a statistically-significant correlation.

stevekemp2• 3 years ago

I moved to Finland, from the UK, and I can identify many of the local people as having grown up listening to American TV.

It's a little disconcerting to hear American words ("fall", not "autumn"), and New York accents from people who've spent their lives in Helsinki.

Still I come from the UK, and for me it's easy to place which part of the country people spent their formative years - sometimes even which half of a city somebody has grown up in, let alone the changes you hear across 20-25 miles.

(I'm doing my part, raising a child born in Finland to understand Rab C. Nesbit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc4gB89LN7o It's also a well-known fact that Scottish accents aren't easy for voice recognition - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbDnxzrbxn4 )

subsubzero• 3 years ago

This has had precedent. Years ago during the silver screen era there was a accent that most major movie stars had called the transatlantic accent, it has some elements of British and also American sounds.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

Also for some reason I do not understand almost all US reality shows and other entertainment(contestant based shows mainly) have to have someone British judging Americans like we are incapable of having our own citizens be makers of taste or standards.

mauvehaus• 3 years ago

The History of English podcast just released a bonus episode about this. Highly recommended to anyone interested in hearing how it was historically used and how its use has changed over time.

https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/2023/03/31/bonus-episode...

hospitalhusband• 3 years ago

almost all US reality shows and other entertainment(contestant based shows mainly)

Politics, too.

matthewfcarlson• 3 years ago

I've thought about trying to learn the transatlantic accent just for fun but wonder when/if I could use it. It doesn't have the same humor that the fake posh British ones do.

tivert• 3 years ago

Also for some reason I do not understand almost all US reality shows and other entertainment(contestant based shows mainly) have to have someone British judging Americans like we are incapable of having our own citizens be makers of taste or standards.

Also, IIRC, infomercials, too.

I think America has some longstanding cultural assumptions that Europe is more culturally refined/upper class/fashionable. Probably dating from when America was mostly hick farmers and Europe had all that royalty setting trends. Throwing in a superfluous European accent is an easy way to hook into those assumptions.

sangnoir• 3 years ago

Correction: the accent is named Mid Atlantic as in half-way between American & British.

wefarrell• 3 years ago

My grandparents had this accent. It was contextual, they didn't use it with us but I did hear it come out when they would talk to certain friends or tell stories and voice characters.

And then my grandparents on my other side had thick Bronx and Queens accents respectively. I think there were a lot more variations in region and class specific accents 50+ years ago.

DrBazza• 3 years ago

People in GB can spot an accent and a fake localized accent quite easily, and act accordingly.

As a Brit the only convincing fake British accent I can remember in many years is James Marsters who played Spike in Buffy. I never once suspected he was American (in the pre-internet days).

Mid-Atlantic accents such as Loyd Grossman, are hard on the ears. "Soss", rather than "sauce" is particularly odd.

And then flip it - UK actors putting on US accents. Most of them sound to me like they're from the West Country such as Somerset, just rolling their Rs.

For US readers, the currently growing new London accent is awful and nothing like the 'Cockney' accent you might expect from watching older films. I've yet to see a US actor try that.

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

As a Brit the only convincing fake British accent I can remember in many years is James Marsters who played Spike in Buffy.

That's strange, I always thought his accent was awful and I'm a Brit too. Spike was one of the best characters though.

amiga3862• 3 years ago

UK actors putting on US accents

Yeah but Hugh Laurie in House though

For US readers, the currently growing new London accent is awful and nothing like the 'Cockney' accent you might expect from watching older films. I've yet to see a US actor try that.

Multicultural London English. It's not "awful", although you are entitled to your views. Personally, I think it's great for comedy, have you heard Big Shaq's Man's Not Hot ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M_5oYU-IsU&t=54s

brightball• 3 years ago

The movie My Fair Lady unpacks this quite well. Classic movie.

GypsyKing716• 3 years ago

Com un bruv. You barly undr stund hur stru'gools.

RHSman2• 3 years ago

Christian Bale

Brajeshwar2• 3 years ago

I think this is everywhere where English is more common. I live in an Indian city with many Indians (and others, including ex-pats) from all over. So, the kids default to English as the common language. Their exposure to TV/Movies of both the US and the UK influences how they speak - not just the accent but the words they use, which are, at times, not how a “common English-speaking-Indian” speaks.

And yes, my daughter grew up on Peppa Pig and had a British-ish accent. She has since mellowed and now has a more neutral accent. Her best friend is an American, but she didn’t pick up on that one.

Our family is from a remote corner of India, and we always had an accent. I grew up in a school run by a British soldier and his wife (he stayed in India after the war). In the last 20 years, I have worked primarily with American and British clients, which influenced how I talk, and I also learned a lot along the way. However, I find it hard to converse with the Scots; I am OK if I pay attention to the Australians and am highly comfortable with Jap-lish.

I now believe that there is nothing called a “fake accent.” All the third-culture kids pick up talks from all over the world, and they know the Internet colloquial more than their immediate geographical and cultural norms.

I speak three languages fluently, and I modify how I talk to make the listener understand better. The way I talk Hindi to an Indian from the north or west is different from how I speak to a South Indian. With English, not necessarily the accent, my muscle memory kicks in, which picks up and uses different ways of saying specific words and expressions depending on the listener.

It is OK to have any accent - play with it - there is nothing fake about it. :-)

zdragnar2• 3 years ago

If you learn a language from someone with a particular speech pattern, you'll adopt it too. That's fine, and normal.

I don't think that's what the article is talking about, though. These kids are adopting an affectation different from the way they learned the language.

Your average American kid doesn't have much, if any, access to British media or people aside from a few popular shows they might pick up online. It's not a courtesy based on context.

ChrisMarshallNY2• 3 years ago

I used to have a British accent, when I was a kid, but have lost it. I now have a really weird accent (or so I'm told), that involves bits of British, Southern, and New York.

radlad• 3 years ago

Your average American kid doesn't have much, if any, access to British media or people aside from a few popular shows they might pick up online.

You really think so? The internet is today's Great Melting Pot. "Popular shows" feels out of touch. TikTok? Instagram? Discord?

When I was about 12 years old I stumbled on an internet community of hackers and programmers that was largely based out of Europe, and I still talk to them today. We often spoke over Ventrilo/TeamSpeak (today it would be Discord) and at times I would start to pick up their accents.

namdnay• 3 years ago

you're forgetting youtube - I have a very strong suspicion that videos recorded with a British voice do better than those with American voices.

watwut• 3 years ago

You will acquire accent different then you learned language with after being apposed to it a lot. Not perfectly, but you will "naturally" and without effort mimic it.

also, British media are all around the internet.

kcb• 3 years ago

Lol. Peppa Pig has been extremely popular in the US for like a decade or more now. I know for sure my young niece and nephew will randomly throw out British phrases with accent because of this show. And now Bluey with Australian accents and phrases too.

troad• 3 years ago

I really enjoyed you sharing this story, thank you. I entirely appreciate the situation you are describing, and whole-heartedly agree when you say language should be played with. It's a perspective common in post-colonial contexts and amongst third culture kids, as you note, but folk from more monolingual spaces tend to struggle to accept it (and instead they're often preoccupied with a fretful prescriptivism, as though the bastions of language shall collapse in on themselves if undefended, and we shall all revert to communicating by grunts and yelps).

mrangle• 3 years ago

For the same reason that children adopt virtually anything.

Within the context of their general development, children are undergoing a long process of constructing their social architecture.

Which often entails a long stint of unsophisticated and ruthless social climbing. Therefore, anything that is presented to them as being socially advantageous stands a chance of being adopted.

It isn't much different in nature from blue-blood adults consciously adopting the Mid Atlantic Accent.

kkylin• 3 years ago

Not what the article is talking about, but for kids of a certain age, Harry Potter might have something to do with it.

amelius• 3 years ago

It's much better than the American accent, imho.

rayiner• 3 years ago

What’s fascinating to me is that an entire generation of Americans in the early/mid-20th century adopted a fake British accent: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent.

handedness• 3 years ago

As if RP itself wasn't already enough of an affectation.

alexambarch• 3 years ago

For the record, "188,000 views on TikTok" is not that many for a single video to reach, let alone an entire search term's worth of videos.

As a zoomer reading this article I can tell you this very literally boils down to "funny voice = funny joke" and you could just as easily swap out the british accent for a Kermit impression. The popularity of british reality TV has exposed the young americans that watch it to funny sounding british slang (e.g. "fanny flutters") and now those sayings are making their way into jokes.

I promise you no one except for the Miami content creators and former reality TV cast members quoted in the article are slipping into British accents at Burger King.

yamazakiwi7• 3 years ago

I agree and Americans have been quoting funny British lines from media for decades.

teawrecks• 3 years ago

Would that it were, would that it were!

drc500free• 3 years ago

If anything that data point proves that this isn't a trend. I searched "funny elbow" and saw more than 188k views. In other words "fake british accent" is less of a trend than "funny elbow," which is two random words I put together.

It's interesting how much reporting about TikTok depends completely on the audience having zero exposure to TikTok.

imwillofficial• 3 years ago

Don’t give them ideas!

alewi481• 3 years ago

This reminds me of those trashy articles like the ones Microsoft peddles on their Windows 11 widgets tab. They basically take a few tweets with just a handful of likes and create an entire article around them. The buzz that they are drumming up feels artificial and contrived. And if the author was really lacking in integrity, they could just set up anonymous Twitter accounts and conjure up the posts themselves.

ndsipa_pomu25• 3 years ago

Well, that's quite humerus

nindalf• 3 years ago

I’m so glad we’ve moved on from the journalism of “here’s what 3 or 4 people are talking about on Twitter” to “here are a few videos on TikTok with barely any views starting a massive trend”. Can’t wait for the journalists to fully automate this process with chatGPT.

ahahahahah• 3 years ago

But the data point is just wrong or poorly described. Did you really just test one side (the "funny elbow") and compare it to the possibly very different thing from the article. A search for "fake British accents" brings up multiple videos with >100000 likes each and significantly more such than for funny elbow.

numtel• 3 years ago

There's an obvious connection in your two 'random' words: hitting the edge of one's elbow is commonly referred to as the "funny bone."

intrasight• 3 years ago

True story. My daughter watched way too much Harry Potter growing up (2004-2012 ish). Some of her friends parents and teachers, etc. were surprised by my lack of a British accent. We still laugh about it.

jameshart2• 3 years ago

This was an affectation that Bart Simpson used to use way back in golden-era Simpsons - in almost exactly this kind of ‘defense mechanism’ kind of way.

It’s been confusing people for years: https://movies.stackexchange.com/questions/114329/why-does-b...

heywherelogingo• 3 years ago

Sounds like they're not adopting an English accent as much as they're adopting a Hugh Grant awkward persona.

avereveard• 3 years ago

I mean people finally learning proper english can't be that bad, labeling it 'fake british' just seems anticultural

throwaway743• 3 years ago

This is brainrot

flanbiscuit• 3 years ago

So this article claims "so many ..." and cites 6 examples (I'm not counting Madonna). And maybe statistically they represent more, but I feel like this article is just someone looking to write something about nothing. I'm not on TikTok and Twitter much (just instagram), so it could be a trend and I'm just not seeing it.

Speaking of the Madonna example, I'm not sure it's fair to lump her into this because this article seems to be focusing on people who have never lived anywhere in the UK, they are just mimicking what they've heard on TV/Film. A lot of people made fun of Madonna when she started speaking with a British accent but she at least _lived_ there for a long time, and doing so can definitely affect your accent. I've known it to happen the other way around. I've had British friends who lived in the US tell me that their friends back home would make fun of them for their new Americanized accent.

tqi• 3 years ago

Why? Probably for the same reason journalists love writing trend pieces about manufactured narratives, attention and clicks?

damnesian• 3 years ago

Could be kids coming of age who had parents who were themselves raised on (in particular) British comedy. In my own case it would be the inestimable influence of Monty Python. Younger adult Americans's parents maybe quoted the Parrot Sketch, or offered to give their kid lupins when they were ill, or perhaps demanded a shrubbery if they don't want to do their chores.

dkarl• 3 years ago

It's interesting that there are a variety of English accents, with differing connotations for Americans.

YouTube channels that make informative, content-driven videos tend to demand English accents from their voice talent. For videos about nature, history, technology, geography, any content where a viewer's enjoyment and engagement will be improved by trusting the video's sincerity and veracity, (certain) English accents rule.

But the article mentions young Americans adopting (presumably different) English accents when they are aware of being insincere or demanding.

To some extent this must be down to Americans receiving English class stereotypes and internalizing them as different roles they can play.

tcfhgj• 3 years ago

British English is like music in my ears

mellosouls• 3 years ago

Without actual evidence of a significant increase in adoption of the accents (its all anecdotal here) this seems like a bit of a fluff article that is designed to reassure Brits we are still relevant and cool and influencing other cultures in a harmless way that Guardian readers can get behind.

JoshTko• 3 years ago

I'm mostly concerned on how this made it to Hacker news front page.

mmcgaha• 3 years ago

Forced accents have been going on for a long time with kids. Just yesterday I was watching local news from the area where I grew up and a girl from my high school years was being interviewed. In her teens, she had a non-local accent that I always envisioned as california stoner. Well apparently she was working hard faking that thing because she has a full on upstate south carolina accent now.

ilikecakeandpie• 3 years ago

I think NPR had something on this on "Wait, wait, don't tell me" a while ago. Some researchers were linking it to kids watching so much Peppa Pig that they developed at least a slight British accent

whimsicalism2• 3 years ago

I am Gen Z and pretty tuned into the cultural milieu.

This is not a thing, this is just a clickbait article. You can also tell by the fact that they are only interviewing reality show people & vloggers.

DontchaKnowit• 3 years ago

This is such a goofy take. I am a millennial and I remember doing a british accent all the time as a kid as a joke. And so did my boomer parents. It's not that complicated

thdespou• 3 years ago

How can someone fake an accent especially a UK one? you need to have lived in the UK to make it believable.

qingcharles2• 3 years ago

You definitely don't. It's called acting. I was married to an actor who had no problem with speaking in "RP". And when I was in jail here in the USA my American cellmate managed to impersonate me so well that he could talk for me through the walls to the other prisoners.

jmoak3• 3 years ago

(American here) I knew a girl in college who was very sheltered: she was homeschooled in a rural setting by wealthy ultra-religious parents up until college. Her only outlet was british television. She's spoken with a badly formed british accent as long as I've known her.

I learned katakana as a middle schooler because I would wake up at 4am to watch anime on youtube on the family computer, so none of this surprises me.

Indoor kids can get weird :)

I didn't see any data in the article on this but I'm under the impression that we're making more indoor kids.

ttjjtt• 3 years ago

I heard a young woman chatting to her colleague yesterday and switching between American and British, maintaining an hyped ultra affected tik tok influencer tone all the time.

I try to have no judgement on that but I can’t help but feel twinges of concern at people embodying what’s good for the platform algorithm . Taught and moulded by the platform.

This is obviously reflected in people paying for their irl faces to look much more the digital filter. This seemed to be case for the person I described tbh

jlarcombe• 3 years ago

been a thing since at least 2000, according to Don Caballero: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKN1Vwm29Vc

qingcharles2• 3 years ago

I can't speak for anyone else, but as a British male living in the USA I can testify that having my accent gets me a large amount of friendly attention from American women. I tell people all the time they should fake an accent for that reason alone.

Oddly, every American actually assumes I am Australian. Strewth!

userabchn• 3 years ago

I was once at a restaurant beside a girl and her parents and a friend of the parents. All were American, but the girl, who had just returned from spending one semester at a university in England, spoke with a strong RP accent. Similarly I met someone (who was starting graduate school) from Texas who had just spent a summer in Germany, and spoke with an exaggerated German accent. I don't understand how they didn't realise that it made them seem foolish, rather than, as they seemed to hope, interesting and sophisticated.

wolverine876• 3 years ago

At least they had a sense of humor.

DoreenMichele• 3 years ago

Some people just soak up accents and aren't intentionally trying to "have" one.

garbagecoder• 3 years ago

My daughter can do a flawless Peppa Pig and it's hilarious.

nobodyandproud2• 3 years ago

Boston accent 2.0?

mattlondon• 3 years ago

Peppa Pig. 'nuff said

bdcravens• 3 years ago

Probably for the same reason that some suburban US kids try to talk like they're from the hood.

whimsicalism2• 3 years ago

This is practically becoming a new dialect.

d--b2• 3 years ago

I blame Kit Harington, but really it doesn’t ma’’er…

notjustanymike• 3 years ago

This is not a new phenomenon; some thirty years ago I had moved from Europe to America only to be amused by my 12 year old punk friends ("Punk"...aka Green Day) putting on fake British accents.

zeristor2• 3 years ago

I suppose I’ve been living in London too long, but I can discern people who e grown up in Barnet, and others in Leytonstone.

I guess other parts of London have subtle dialects too, but I’ve not worked those out.

Can dialects like that survive the onslaught of Estuary English?

WalterBright2• 3 years ago

I'm working on my Ahnold accent. Too dah choppah!

WalterBright2• 3 years ago

Monty Python had this effect a couple generations ago.

ryanmcbride• 3 years ago

Every article about tiktok trends written by someone who doesn't use, or is a casual user of tiktok, always sounds so out of touch. This one included.

tracker1• 3 years ago

When I'm surrounded or talking to someone with an accent, I tend to take on that accent. I don't always realize it at the time and it's totally subconscious.