Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British accents? | Hacker News Reader

Why are so many young Americans adopting fake British accents?

theguardian.com

162 pointsisomorph447 comments

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.

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

Would that it were, would that it were!

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.

Don’t give them ideas!

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.

That's at least half of what hacker news is now.

I disagree, but to give you the benefit of the doubt, I'd love to see examples if you have any.

Well, that's quite humerus

Hey, no puns allowed in this joint.

He didn’t mean any arm

That's really stretching it. I wouldn't go so far out on a limb.

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.

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

Whereas most (not all -I'm looking at you, Daniel Craig) British/Australian/Kiwi actors do a great job of adopting American accents.

My favorite is Margot Robbie's over-the-top "Brooklyn" accent for her Harley Quinn character.

I thought his Foghorn Leghorn impersonation was fantastic

There are ample rea$on$ why non-American actor$ can do decent American accent$.

It opens up American roles for them. Nobody is going to cast Brad Pitt as a Brit, an Australian, or a Kiwi. He's a fantastic actor, but they're going to use the homegrown talent. So there's no incentive for American actors to really learn another accent. Instead, we get a mountain of non-American actors doing mostly-good-but-sometimes-awful accents because that's where the money is.

> Nobody is going to cast Brad Pitt as a Brit, an Australian, or a Kiwi. He's a fantastic actor, but they're going to use the homegrown talent.

Except for Irish roles, for some reason.

Brad Pitt as a northern Irishman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2FjQQrxBhwQT

Brad Pitt as an Irish Traveller: https://youtu.be/9Jar2XkBboo?t=28

> Nobody (except Guy Ritchie) is going to cast Brad Pitt as a Brit (Irish is ok tho)

FTFY

It was a throwaway line on my part, but you're right.

Since you mentioned Pitt, a funny anecdote: he wanted to be in Snitch because he was a fan of Lock Stock. But his London accent was so terrible that they went and made up the whole indecipherable gypsy thing just so he could have a role to play in the film.

Not only that, but a lot of British films will make british-only casting decisions, eg the Harry Potter series. I've never heard of a major American film making that choice, and it would probably be blasted as xenophobic if it did.

Er how many American movies have a single non-American? The only foreigners that consistently find employment in American cinema are Britishers, and that’s because the British English accent is perceived to have an at least equal prestige to the American one. You’re not going to find many main characters that are, say, Middle Eastern or South Asian or African.

I have to wonder if it's related to subsidies by the government.

There are notable exceptions, of course. Spinal Tap springs to mind.

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?

The Surrey accent is close what most people most people consider middle class / standard English which is close to received pronunciation, but more natural sounding. In other areas other the country it's considered posh!?

Mummy Pig accent? Referring of course to Peppa Pig

Home Counties accent perhaps.

Estuary English [1] -- the English spoken around the Thames estuary. It has, arguably, been the "standard" non-posh British dialect for a while.

As a North American, I find it one of the harder accents to understand. It has undergone a lot of interesting sound changes in recent decades, not shared by many other dialects. Likely a result of dialect flattening from 20th century population movements. "Football" -> [ˈfʊʔbɔo] (sounds like "fuh-baoh" to me) or "bottle" -> ['bɒʔo] {"bah-oh"?) or "Tuesday" -> [tʃuːz.deɪ] ("choose day").

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estuary_English

“Bottle of water” is one that my French colleague used to make fun of. Ends up something like “boh-ooh a wa-uh”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GKRuG4oIu_o

"The water in Maiorca doesn't taste like what it ought to"

"THE WARTER IN MAJORKER DUNT TASTE LOIK WORRIT ORTER"

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!

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.

> I think the average American doesn't / can't distinguish Michael Caine's Cockney accent and David Attenborough's RP.

You really think so? Maybe it's just me, but I can't imagine how anyone could mistake the two. (Possibly different people have different ears for accents.)

I can hear them and tell that they're different accents, but I don't really distinguish them, I would call them both "British" and I wouldn't know which one's more posh.

I think most of us just don't have a need to distinguish them, they go into the "English accent" bucket without further categorization.

Not in a million years would I have ever guessed Michael Caine's accent to be anything less than posh and sophisticated.

As an American, I find it most noticeable/funny in Helen Mirren's Fast & Furious franchise role. You can tell she's having a blast putting on the intentionally worst working class accent she can (in a way that it sometimes seems like she assumes Americans aren't in on the joke and it is mostly just for herself) to fit her role as Jason Statham's "mum", and there are definite fun moments of "Is she intentionally parodying Michael Caine here?" that do give me (as an American) silly, brief moments of "Americans still think that sounds posh", plus it does serve to more directly connect Statham's accent to Caine's. I don't think a lot of Americans notice how close they are and yet do notice that Statham and Caine have very different stereotypes in American cinema.

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.

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

You're not being rude but dboreham is correct. Wyoming accents are not strong compared to most states in the US.

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.

I know a number of people who moved from across the pond that actually do American phonemes fairly well. What gives them away are minor inflections and sentence cadences that sound a little off. Hard to describe, but it makes them sound like the are trying to speak to everything “as a matter of fact” and towards the very front of their mouth. For an example, listen to Freddie Highmore in season 1 of Bates Motel.

I don’t buy that. I also find it funny the one example you use are comedians (not actors) who are probably doing something very stereotypical.

Dominic West and Idris Elba are both English and often cited as 2 examples of British actors everyone thought were American due to the wire.

There’s an interview with snoop dogg where he was allowed on the set of the wire and couldn’t believe idris was British when he introduced himself.

Damien Lewis is also English and often cited as a master of American accents.

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.

> 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

True, but sometimes people have trouble understanding that other people are as complex as they are.

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?

I mean "put four people from any one location into the same room"

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.

> 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).

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

It was also very quickly a self-reinforcing marker distinguishing one from the lower class.

My understanding is it was a constructed accent that took "upper class" elements from US and British English.

The Wikipedia article on this accent touches on this briefly and calls it "possible" [0] while discussing other topics in much more depth.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

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.

> 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.

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.

It’s also a very amusing accent. It can be made to sound like a British version of the “valley girl” accent pretty easily.

https://youtu.be/TbUSLOWbK4A

God that video is impossible to watch. He acts like he's trying to channel mitchell and webb https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bwAioN2mtsA

That's pretty much his personality/public persona...

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

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

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

It’s an American trying to do a “medieval” accent (which usually just means some flavor of British accent).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Roper_(video_game_produce...

That clip is indelibly etched in my brain.

> 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.

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 )

> 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.

Why is it disconcerting? Should people adopt a British accent simply because it’s closer geographically even if most English media they consume is American?

I can recognize my bias, but I grew up in the UK and so to me English is British-English.

Words like "fall" are something I've only heard on TV until moving here. (Or when visiting America.)

I appreciate American media is global these days, so people will pick up on the dialect, but it's still a little alien to me. I could hear "fall" a hundred times in films, but if everybody I ever spoke to about autumn holidays said "autumn" that's the one that feels more natural to hear.

One child in a family of my acquaintance uses Americanisms, despite heavy correction from their siblings. I think it's a 'Netflix Effect', it's cheaper to buy USA programming than make British-English voiced programmes.

Aside, try "Scotland the What" if you're interested in some different Scottish accents (I think they're mainly Highland, Doric Scots).

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.

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...

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

Politics, too.

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.

> 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.

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

Correction x2: it's called by both names.

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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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

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

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

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. :-)

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.

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.

> 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.

Based on the sample of children I know (my nephews) yes. None of them are engaging in conversations on such a regular basis with Brits that they would change their speech pattern to do so, and the media they consume is overwhelmingly not affected either.

That's not to say that they haven't ever heard a British, Scottish, Geordie or Irish accent; they definitely have not heard or used it enough to naturally inflect their speech in such a way.

Pirating taskmaster and the occasional tiktok is about as close as it gets.

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

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.

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.

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).

> 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.

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.

Or people can just not speak in uptalk.

That'd be nicesuhh?

> Or people can just not speak in uptalk.

What's uptalk?

Not much, what's up with you?

Or yall can just stop caring and put mental effort into worrying about things with substance instead of how people talk.

> 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.

So, I feel like I agree with that?

> I feel like

This is just a bit of a vent (as a Gen-Z-er myself), because "I feel like" reminded my of something I've noticed in my fellow young peers:

"I was just going to say, <insert statement>." And,

"I was just going to ask, <insert question>."

This makes me sound curmudgeony, but I work with a non-negligible number of people that cannot avoid these constructions in any serious or professional setting. I'll hear it 10+ times in a half-hour meeting. It's so indirect, and I must admit I take the speaker less seriously when I notice it.

Just say the thing! Just ask the thing!

Has anyone else noticed this construction?

I'm guilty I think of 'I just wanted to [verb ...]' - softens what follows as if to say 'not a big deal but'. It hasn't bothered me/caught my attention particularly before now, but I'm sure it will henceforth.

(Not 'gen z' but 'millenial', I think, fwiw.)

I noticed someone say it at least three times in a meeting not long after writing that. Thanks a lot!

While I'm here, a similar one that does bug me (but at least for now I only hear Americans saying it, on Youtube or whatever) is 'I'm going to go ahead and [...]' or 'so I just went ahead and [...]' - why do you have to 'go ahead' before you do things over there, is there a problem with the Earth's gravitational pull?

To your first comment: I also use the “I was just going to <verb>” construction to soften a statement, I just don’t use it ubiquitously - sounds like you’re in the clear.

I haven’t thought about the going ahead/went ahead construction much. I loosely associate it with managerial talk. It does sound to my ears very subtly disingenuous. Now it’s my turn to be on the lookout for this.

Cheers

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

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...

(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).

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

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

That seems like a more organic evolution of language. It's across several generations and is not an intenional choice. It's also a bit far away from adopting an entire foreign accent.

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.

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

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

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

>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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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

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.

My solitary marker for a Canadian accent: "out" sounds like "boat". B ut I believe even that marker is restricted to central and western Canada.

/me a Brit; used to have a Canadian boss (from Ontario).

Me: I watched Titanic the other night.

Canadian: What's that about?

Me: Yes, a big one and it sank.

When Canada was founded, it was intended to be "Cnd", but the guy dictating the charter said "It's spelled C, eh? N, eh? D, eh?"

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.

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.

Canada is also Huuuge!

My limited experience is that differences inside these two countries (e.g. New Foundland accent to Winnipeg accent, or Texas to Boston) are way bigger than averaged difference between countries (i.e. Manitoba to Minnesota). Most "Canadian" English is broadly similar to most "American" English, especially the standardized TV / Movie kind.

Is "Emglish" a special term or just a typo?

LoL, typo, corrected thanks :-)

Yes. Central Canada is where 'eh' is said the most; I say and hear it a lot. Atlantic Canada certainly has the most distinctive dialect, and you can immediately hear it's gaelic roots. When a Canadian accent is being poked fun at, it's usually an extreme version of how the prairie provinces speak.

Then splash in some Quebecoise and that will really diversify things. Much of rural Quebec may not even speak English altogether. But you can tell the difference between Quebec French and France French pretty easily, with the latter sounding smoother. I've never been out west but I assume that BC and Alberta is the most 'normal' of the Canadian differing accents.

I got quite a few comments when I moved out to Alberta from Ontario. Not as much now, perhaps my accent has mellowed.

Even Ontario has regional accents, Toronto/Southern vs Eastern/Ottawa valley vs northern/western. I can't describe the differences but if you blindfolded me and had three different people speak, I'm pretty sure I could pick who is from where.

I've been shocked at the McKenzie brothers-esque quality of some of the rural accents outside WPG.

> I've never been out west but I assume that BC and Alberta is the most 'normal' of the Canadian differing accents

If Linus Tech Tips is anything to go by, this tracks. All of their hosts have very "generic American" sounding accents. They are very very close to Washington state which doesn't have a strong accent in my experience. Contrast this with Minnesota or northern Michigan and how "similar" they sound to the stereotypical Canadian accent.

Linus has a bit of a Valley Girl sometimes and wholly acknowledges it.

I once stopped in a small town in New Brunswick a couple hours drive south of the Quebec border. To my surprise, not only did they all speak French there, but the people we were trying to order lunch from didn't speak a word of English. I never realized that there were French-speaking places that far into New Brunswick.

I had an easier time communicating even in smaller towns in Quebec, where it seemed that most people were capable of speaking a little English, even if they spoke French all the time.

Midwestern accents seem to have a lot of Canadian influence and vice-verse. Of course, we’re nearby friendly countries, it would be weird if we didn’t share some accents.

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.

Not only are Cockney & Scouse less prevalent in entertainment, their standing is almost always represented as lower.

> nobody ever fakes Cockney or Scouse or something

The article specifically refers to faking an "Essex" accent. The Essex accent they're referring to is basically a cockney accent, softened a bit. When East London was gentrified, from roughly the 70s, many East Londoners moved out into Essex.

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

*Dick Van Dyke has entered the chat*

In a heartbeat, I would if I could.

There’s something endearing to me about working class and regional accents.

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.

this is a recent thing, the 1700s would like to have a word :-)

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

Or Stephen Fry.

"Fire the nucular weapons"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8xliaDUPwg

I raise you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfq3B9JvIcQ

Thanks to Paul Hollywood, I mentally hear baking terms in Liverpudlian, and I can't be the only one. ("It's oonderPROOVED!")

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.

Some British accents have implied a sort of eliteness in the US for much more than a couple decades. See the transatlantic accent. By the late 19’th century it a widespread enough sentiment that we made up an accent to copy it.

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

Americans used to have an inferiority complex vis-a-vis Europe (in general) and English. WWII put an end to that. People the world over started aping Americans, including the English. It is (strangely) after US decides to officially be ‘an empire’ that our propaganda organs started speaking posh language. (No one :) affects a cockney accent, ey?)

There used to be a trend to star Brits as villains in movies, of which Alan Rickman in Die Hard (doing a variety of accents) may be the peak example.

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.

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.

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

As a mathsematician, I have no problem with this.

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?

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

I don't think I can.

The pronunciation of "Gloucester" (gloster) and "Leicester" (lester) follow a similar scheme for the "-cester" bit which leads to "Worcester" being pronounced "wooster", but Worcestershire sauce is often pronounced "wooster sauce" which doesn't make much sense.

Apparently, Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce in England, though it certainly doesn't compare to some Welsh towns. (I say it as "froom")

I mean, Sir Terry was British after all. cf https://wiki.lspace.org/Jonathan_Teatime

It amuses me when english words are pronounced differently to make them seem posher. We have a nearby town called Yate (rhymes with gate), but the posh version rhymes with latte.

“It’s pronounced Bouquet” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_Up_Appearances

"It's spelled 'Raymond Luxury-Yacht', but it's pronounced 'Throat-Wobbler Mangrove'." https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7uv0n8

I think the sauce is either Worcestershire Sauce, or Worcester Sauce, either is acceptable.

Worcestershire and Worcester follow the same patter as Gloucestershire/Gloucester, Leicestershire/Leicester and (Towcestershire doesn't exist)/Towcester. Towcester, incidentally, being the same pronunciation as "toaster".

The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster".

Just found a Devon town called Woolfardisworthy, but can be pronounced as "Woolzery"

I like the Northamptonshire village of Cogenhoe, which is obviously pronounced cook-no.

It sits on the River Nene, which is pronounced Neen or Nen depending on which bit of Northamptonshire you live in (Northamptonshire is not very big...)

I think the accepted authority on anything to do with Northamptonshire has to be Alan Moore.

> The one that annoys me is Cirencester, which is usually "sai-ren-ses-ta", and only occasionally "sai-ren-ster".

Or, according to my grandmother, "siss-iss-ter".

Locals just call it “Ciren”…

It took me a surprising amount of time to work out where (Ciren) they were talking about after moving to glow-sester-shire...

> "wooster sauce"

"That's just incorrect. It's pronounced "wooster-shuh". The double-O is short, as in "book". Worcestershire Sauce is sometimes simply called "woosters", as in "a dash of woosters".

> Frome in Somerset is one of the hardest place names to pronounce

Hardly. It's pronounced "froom". That's not so hard.

There’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh.

>There’s a town in Massachusetts called Worcester, pronounced something like Wooster/Woostah/Woostuh.

And there's a Gloucester[0] (pronounced 'Gloster' or, more likely in MA 'Glostah') there as well. And there's one[1] in Virgnia too, (Wikipedia says it's pronounced 'Gloster', but I don't know the VA accent well enough to know if that's locally correct).

There are other similar place names around the US, mostly on the eastern seaboard, for obvious reasons, as well.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester,_Massachusetts

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gloucester_County,_Virginia

> The double-O is short, as in "book"

Bad example, since some accents pronounce "book" like "kook" (not like "suck") ;)

Fair do's; scousers indeed pronounce "book" as "bewk".

One of my ambitions in life is to make a pronunciation guide using example words that are pronounced differently by different people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockney_Alphabet

Also, this scene from Archer cracks me up: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_4jxLxZrMfs

I got Frome from here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-49813249

I agree that it's not tricky to pronounce, but the difficulty is pronouncing it correctly.

Worcestershire sauce can be called "wooster-shuh sauce" or "wooster sauce" or as you say, "woosters".

You start with a pinch of dyslexia and end with a bit of a lisp. Pretty straight forward when you imagine what it would sound like in a game of telephone between 10 5 year olds.

It's due to being invaded by many different counties over the years, and each of them only invade a portion.

Map men explain it best.

https://youtu.be/uYNzqgU7na4

Why is "Jack" short for Johnathan?

Jonathan -> John/Jan -> Jankin (adding -kin as a diminutive) -> Jack

That is at least the theory I've heard

Likewise, Why is 'Peggy' short for Margaret?

The pronunciation is what it is. The orthography is the problem.

(Many words place names long pre-date any kind of attempt to regularize English spelling, and in any case come from fusions of Brythonic, Norman, Roman, Norwegian etc languages. This is why it's difficult to predict the pronunciation of one word from the spelling of another.)

100% my point. Drawing a line at the purity of "maths" over "math" is the beginning of a rock fight in a village of glass houses.

Maybe, but 'we can't provide logical rules for names acquired over a millennium ago' seems like a poor reason to say 'therefore we shouldn't apply consistent rules to recent conventions'.

Someone asked about physic ... well people used to use physick in [late medieval?] British English... but that's for what we might call medicine now.

Before the Normans, "shire" in Britain was written in Roman letters as "scr".

Oh, defending the pronounciation is easy, because the problem is not with the pronounciation at all -- it's all about English language spelling not keeping pace with the changes with the pronounciation.

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 ...

> When you say "maths", how many do you mean?

All of them.

I mean this in the most genuinely curious and interested way possible.... but if you're doing geometry or trig... do you refer to it as "math" because you're just doing one type of mathematics? Is there every a point where it isn't plural. Is even 2+2=4 referred to as "maths".

I think its funny that terms like math v maths come about very organically and then after the fact everyone feels the need to back into a reasoning that was likely never there. Obviously neither are wrong because they are the "correct" way for a given dialect/region etc.

> Is even 2+2=4 referred to as "maths"

No, that's arithmetic (which is always singular, amusingly).

isn't arithmetic a branch of mathematics? i guess a mathematic?

Here in the UK, it's just called maths or mathematics and the term "math" is never used (or at least I can't think of an example).

I find it generally amusing to examine the differences between U.S. and British English and quite often get confused over whether I should be using "licence" or "license". It's the little quirks of language/spelling that make it interesting. (Though english, I'm a big fan of some of the U.S. contractions such as "y'all'd've")

> Obviously neither are wrong because they are the "correct" way for a given dialect/region etc.

I would say "math" is an objectively better shortening of "mathematics" as it preserves the singular collective meaning than "maths" which preserves more of the incidental textual form.

>I think its funny that terms like math v maths come about very organically and then after the fact everyone feels the need to back into a reasoning that was likely never there. Obviously neither are wrong because they are the "correct" way for a given dialect/region etc.

We Americans use the phrase "do the math," which means to go figure something out, not necessarily arithmetically.

Is there a similar phrase for the Brits? As in "do the maths?" Which seems unlikely. As such, I'd expect those using British style English to have different phrase for the same thing. Is that the case? If so, what might it be?

We just say 'do the math'. But yes, it's an American phrase. There's no direct British equivalent.

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?

Looks like we'll need some math to sort out all these maths!

As an American who doesn't say "maths", my assumption is that algebra is one math, geometry is another, calculus is one, discrete math is one, etc. Together, they are "the maths."

Probably a "just so" definition to satisfy my American ears. I bet they'd say that any one of those is still "maths" by itself.

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".

I don't think either one is a contraction.

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

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

Yeah, sorry - I should have put abbreviation for the U.S. version.

Americans are comfortable that ‘statistics’ abbreviates to ‘stats’

Brits are also comfortable that ‘economics’ abbreviates to ‘econ’.

Let’s not pretend either of us has a rational basis for this argument.

> 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.

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

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

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

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

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.

Fish is not the contraction of fishematics though.

And yet we have a "trouser press". Nobody refers to a "trousers press". Also "trouser suit".

I love the irregularity of English.

I have to object to trousers - that's because it's already plural - 'a pair of trousers'; we just don't use the singular much, but trouser leg, trouser press.

Indeed, and in the fashion world: "This year, kippers will be worn outside the trouser"

Luckily, there is no such thing as a fish.

Fish is the plural of fish only if all the fish are of the same species. If it's a mixed group of fish then the plural is fishes [0].

Same with maths - if you only have one type of mathematics then math would make sense. But there are many types of mathematics, so we call it maths.

[0] https://www.grammarly.com/blog/fish-fishes/

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

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

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

The Helvetica Scenario is another sign of the apocalypse.

Or worse: aluminium!

Or worse, Aluminium.

Titanum.

Platinum

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"

Disorientated

Burglarized

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

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

https://youtu.be/ZdVHZwI8pcA

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.

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 ;)

Well now I'm confused as Aussies tend to pronounce "ants" as "eents"

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

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.

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

Ha. My defense is that my west coast US accent is closer to what Brits sounded like at the time of the American revolutionary war than a typical London accent is today.

My defence was just by asking them how many "c's" were in literally.

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).

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.

I dunno. Aucklanders sound different to Christchruchians. Maori sound different to Pakeha. etc.

That's just more exposure tbh, many people haven't even met someone from NZ.

In tech you'll run into at least a few during your career. If you lived in Asia, you'll probably see more than that (more common than Australians for some reason).

Per Wikipedia, about 5% of people in Australia were born in NZ.

I'm in tech and have lived in Asia. I ran into 0 until I visited Sydney.

I ran into a few in Beijing. I guess it might just be a unique coincidence?

Uh? I get saying its resembles more of a midwest Canadian slant than sounding like pure midwest American english, but Southern English? Having lived in Mississippi and worked with plenty of New Zealanders, I don't see that.

Southern English here means southern England. Like London. Contrast that with something like Manchester.

Not the US south.

Oh ya, that makes more sense. The south of the USA doesn't, although supposedly they have similarities with accents in England somewhere.

I think the parallels that people draw with the American south are typically the northern UK, like the Scots Irish.

In terms of US-UK parallels, there's also the effect that geographical isolation has in making a sort of language "time capsule" where colonies stick with dated pronunciations or vocabulary. I've heard an attempted reconstruction of London accents from the early 1700s that sound a lot like General American or Canadian English. The same source had an early 1800s reconstruction that sounded rather Australian to my ears. One imagines that English people colonize either place at a given time, leave some trace of their time and place in speech patterns, and their relatives in England go on to evolve speech patterns in different ways.

Non rhotacism (lack of pronunciation of R) also left some traces in the American south (and northeast). That feature began in southern England after colonization, so I believe it was generally fashionable people keeping up with the latest English trends who brought it west.

Honestly, if a genie in a bottle gave me three wishes, one would be that all women speak with Australian accents.

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.

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

Of course, just the same as British. "American accent" for foreigners usually means "Southern Foghorn Leghorn" e.g. Daniel Craig in Knives Out, but can also mean New York, Boston, Chicago, Dakota (aka Fargo) or some other variation. To Americans it really means "unaccented" Midwestern English, aka broadcast (radio or TV) voice.

Americans know "American accent" from "British accent" by the same standard, the British "unaccented" voice is called RP and sounds posh or overly fancy to most Brits, but Americans don't distinguish RP from Cockney, Yorkie, Jordie or any of the other variants. RP is the broadcast voice.

To be clear: I used to be the same. "British" was one accent that Michael Caine, the Queen and Chris Ramsay all spoke. (For Americans: "Robert DeNiro, Harrison Ford and Dolly Parton have one accent" is equally wrong and hilarious.)

Geordie.

Thank you. I looked at it a few times, knew it was wrong, but couldn't for the life of me find a G.

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.

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.

Aren't [geographically] localised linguistic characteristics (different words, different pronunciation) pretty much the definition of "dialects"?

Not in Italy. Dialects here are languages. They basically belong to the same family of Italian but I won't be able to understand a dialect 50 km from where I live if speakers don't want to italianize it a little. What I was writing about is standard Italian with regional inflections in accent, phonetic, dictionary and syntax but still understandable by any Italian speaker.

Ah, interesting, thank you.

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.

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.

"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.

> 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...

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 :)

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I assumed Peppa Pig is outdated and we would be getting Australian accents from Bluey.

> 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/.

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.

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

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.

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'.

I'm struggling to think of a single word in an American accent (from American people I have listened to) that has a letter "o" pronounced correctly, as IPA "ɒ". If that's true, and Americans never learn to make that sound until they try to mimic another accent, then shouldn't this be described more as a speech impediment, rather than an accent?

But yes, it's "mahmmy", which is only very subtly different from a British "mummy" - in the American version, there's almost a hint of an "r" at the end of the vowel, whereas the British version has a straight (and short) "u".

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.

Jesus Danger Mouse. That brings back some memories.

Funny, that.

I ended up with Ted Kelsey, personally.

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

My favorite Greenback line is from "The Four Tasks of Danger Mouse". He was holding Penfold hostage in exchange for DM retrieving the components of an ancient alchemical formula to create a monster with which he could conquer the world: "I have always wanted to try the recipe, but the ingreeeeedients are so hard to come by."

The writing on that show was top tier and holds up well today.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

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

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.

Some of us late gen xers were ahead of the curve and had a very difficult time with strangers before the internet.

Born too soon I guess

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.

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

A British accent is often perceived to be more gentle

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.

Ah!

When I first visited Britain what stood out the most to me was how much chitchat there is between strangers in public places, especially on the train. Something I hadn’t witnessed anywhere else in Europe. Also, something that made me feel very inadequate as I just couldn’t keep up with that manner of communication. A Canadian friend had noticed the same.

Granted, it’s mostly the colder parts of Europe that I have the most non-tourist experiences with. So that’s that.

you haven't been on the tube, have you?

Aha, must have been a good day! In all my years of underground and trains I don't think I've said more than "Sorry, do you mind if I sit here?".

Im not so sure:

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

"Some UK accents will hold you back, no matter how smart you are" (2019)

With a Birmingham accent being worst.

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/uk-accen...

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.

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

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

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

Boo! Hiss! "On accident" is an abomination! </rant>

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.

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.

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.

Yes, that's probably a much better way to put it. Thank you :)

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

I was chatting to a French-born colleague and he mentioned visiting the camping store "Millets". He pronounced it as a French word (something like "mi-ey") and I had no idea what he was talking about. It was unusual as otherwise his english was flawless.

Hehe, or hearing Versace pronounced like ver-b and surf-ace ;) That also took a bit of thinking outside the box.

Brits can occasionally run into this problem with US or Canadian place names that look like they ought to be of French origin, but really aren't pronounced that way. (someone else can provide examples)

Surely not in Canada?

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...

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.

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?

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.

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.

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

Born and raised in Brooklyn, and old enough to remember when the Brooklyn accent was a detriment on job interviews, yet I've bumped into a bunch of people who sound almost like they're from Brooklyn, but they have only lived there for a few years from the midwest or other areas. Southerners tend to maintain their charming lilts. There are enough transplants, that it is not because they are being inundated with the accent, so I wonder what gives?

We used to mimic Monty Python episodes and movies when I grew up in 60s and 70s in Brooklyn. Hilarious stuff. Eerily relevant skit from The Life of Brian: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sFBOQzSk14c

(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.

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

I haven't seen it mentioned here, but Drill Rap from the UK has had an explosion in popularity in recent years. Hip-hop has always been a huge trend setter in American culture, and for once, one of the strongest influences to the current sound is coming from Brittain. I've heard the "drill rapper" accent filtering in over the last year especially as a lot of local artists and fans jump on the trend.

Just an anecdotal observation.

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.

Poor Dominic West, he'll never work again.

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.

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.

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.

Hmm. I suspected something like that.

I can't understand Snoop at all. I've watched this stuff more than once. I still can't make sense of what she says. I know the actress is the real thing.

I thought she was a bloke with a high-pitched voice the first couple of times I watched it. I guess her making like a bloke is part of the character's backstory.

> “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.

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

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

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).

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.

Also Damson Idris, Daniel Kaluuya (though somewhat known), Robert Pattinson, Andrew Garfield, Daniel Day Lewis, Chiwetel Ejiofor… Actually the list is very long if you keep going

I was surprised to find out that Aaron Taylor-Johnson is English - and he did a splendidly radge Scot!

Thanks. I'm surprised about Christian Bale, Millie Bobbie Brown and Henry Cavill. Can't say that I'm familiar with Dominic West (haven't watched The Wire).

The Wire even has a scene where Dominic West's character puts on a British accent. So a British man pretending to be an American pretending to be a Brit.

The Wire is very good.

It also features Idris Elba, so it has two British people playing Americans on either side of the law .

Reminds me of Hugh Laurie in Avenue 5 when his character puts on a U.S. accent to appear more reassuring to the passengers, but falls back into an english accent when he's panicking.

I believe this native-accent is a common gag; Laurie also in one episode of House MD did the American-faking-a-British accent when he telephoned an overpond doctor in GB to learn more about the medical history of a patient.

I also recall an episode of The Mentalist, where agent Rigsby (played by Welsh Owain Yeoman) says he can imitate a british accent and proceeds to do so, only to receive a “nah, not good enough” by the protagonist.

The issue I (as a non-native English speaker) sometimes have with British actors is: how to pronounce their names?! Examples: the aforementioned Owain Yeoman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Siobhan (pronounced Shivohn IIUC) Finneran…

> The issue I (as a non-native English speaker) sometimes have with British actors is: how to pronounce their names?! Examples: the aforementioned Owain Yeoman, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Siobhan (pronounced Shivohn IIUC) Finneran…

I don't think it's purely a non-native problem with those names, though they're not exactly English names.

I enjoy names such as Sean Bean ("Seen Been" or "Shorn Born"?) or even Mary Berry ("Merry Berry" or "Mary Bary").

Cara Delevingne, to name another. Each of the HP core cast have had unrelated roles where they do - Emma Watson (The Perks Of Being A Wallflower), Rupert Grint (Servant) and Daniel Radcliffe (Horns).

I was surprised hearing Gillian Anderson's amazing English accent, but apparently she's lived both sides of the pond.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gillian_Anderson

That's called acting.

i was thinking of pop and rock singers

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

"British actors are generally good at American accents[0], but not the other way round."

Probably helped by trying to get voice controlled technology working - particularly lifts.... ;-)

Ha, I still occasionally have to speak American to Siri - especially song titles or artists.

> Probably helped by trying to get voice controlled technology working - particularly lifts.... ;-)

Wait... there are voice controlled elevators?

Sorry - it was a reference to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HbDnxzrbxn4

> That new Zelda game what came out yesterday has surprisingly poorly directed voice acting in general

OK, so it's not just my wife; she sometimes directs voice actors, and within the first five minutes of the game as part of the big intro sequence everyone who plays the game has to see it got an "oof, that needed another take" out of her, LOL.

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

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!

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

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

This is much more like it.

“Old, Traditional British Accents (South East)”

https://youtu.be/5S8JR4eJAXA

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.

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.

At least they had a sense of humor.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

British English is like music in my ears

Globalisation and it's consequences

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