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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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 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.
> 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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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.
>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 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 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).
(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).
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
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.
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
"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.
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.
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 :)
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).
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?"
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
[+] [-] alexambarch|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] justinator|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] subsubzero|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] pjc50|2 years ago|reply
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).
[+] [-] helsinkiandrew|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] filoleg|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] asdfman123|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] foobarian|2 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q_A1GNx0M9M
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xeromal|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DrBazza|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] dboreham|2 years ago|reply
Disclosure: British person living close to Wyoming, in Montana, so I have a fake US accent.
[+] [-] 99_00|2 years ago|reply
>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.
[+] [-] GypsyKing716|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brightball|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Brajeshwar|2 years ago|reply
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. :-)
[+] [-] zdragnar|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] troad|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rsynnott|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] rsynnott|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MrOwnPut|2 years ago|reply
Valley/Uptalk is the most annoying. Everything is a questionnn. No matter whaatt.
Those are mostly regional accents btw, not generational.
[+] [-] bmitc|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] annoyingnoob|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zeynepevecen|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xxs|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] looping8|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BlackSwanMan|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] okonomiyaki3000|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] elliottkember|2 years ago|reply
Fortunately I can do a bit of California surfer dude right back and that usually gets the message across
[+] [-] inanutshellus|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] jonnycomputer|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] BerislavLopac|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ndsipa_pomu|2 years ago|reply
"Fush and chups" - New Zealand. "Feesh and cheeps" - Australian
[+] [-] slap_shot|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] seanmcdirmid|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ngngngng|2 years ago|reply
Seems pretty common.
[+] [-] unknown|2 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dmje|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mellosouls|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rhymeswithjazz|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkarl|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] igetspam|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xchip|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flanbiscuit|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] whimsicalism|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] wheybags|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kbos87|2 years ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] mmcgaha|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ilikecakeandpie|2 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andybak|2 years ago|reply