"Peppa Pig" is causing American kids to speak with British accents

[jeff_lindqvist]

Is Neil Gaiman's accent a Mid-Atlantic accent? I absolutely LOOOOOVE his voice, and initially I thought he had a strange East-Coast accent until my husband told me that he's actually British. It's a really nice, almost spell-binding accent that I could listen to all day.

I used to have an English accent. These days I have a transatlantic accent, of the kind that the Americans think is probably English, the English think is probably American, and the Australians and New Zealanders know is neither an Australian nor a New Zealand accent.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2002/04/i ... accent.asp

[dampingwire]

Brits don’t talk about sail boats and race cars!

You don't appear to have heard of "Top Gear". lol

Mr. Clarkson has many faults, but I do think he can be relied on to say "racing cars" properly. I've not seen Top Gear often enough to be able to comment on whether they mispronounce "sailing boats" ...

[zjones]

Thanks Jeff!

As for the content of this post, how much Peppa Pig are these children watching?! I have more concerns about parents who will leave their kids in front of a TV show long enough for their child to pick up an entirely different accent, than I do about the accent itself. (Obviously I'm not talking about slight changes in pronunciation which is what I think MrsStarez is talking about -- that seems normal to me.)

Now I'm not an expert or a parent but I guess that it would take a lot of TV consumption, I'm talking about hours and hours per day, to pick up an entirely different accent. Kids are sponges but I don't think they are going to pick up a British accent just by listening to Peppa Pig for 30 minutes a day. Daily communication with other kids, parents, and teachers should be enough to keep any possible accent changes at bay. If these American kids are speaking with a full British accent, I would be extremely concerned about how much social interaction they are getting in real life.

[lowsocks]

There is an interesting report on a Finnish child who learned English to near-native levels from watching English language cartoons. (It is from 1994, so some of you may have seen this already.)

Learning by Viewing: cartoons as foreign language learning material for children‐‐a case study

It describes the case of "Laura", a six-year-old Finnish girl, who learned how to use her family's vcr to record her favourite cartoon shows (which happened to be in English). This allowed her to watch the same episodes as many times as she wished. By the age of ten, her English was at a near-native level, comparable to that of a native English speaking child of the same age.

Incidentally, I think it could be interesting to see some sort of follow-up done on her. It says she was six years old in 1986, so she would now (in 2019) be in her late thirties. I would be curious to know what sort of difference her English skills have made in her life.

(Btw, I am not sure if this post belongs here, or if it deserves a thread of its own. But it deals with children, cartoons, and language, so it's here for now.)

[Elexi]

I prefer Ben and Holly's Little Kingdom. Peppa and Ben and Holly were my starting cartoons for learning French and German.

[Michael204351]

I don't know about picking up the accent, but my kids watch a lot of Peppa Pig and they certainly have picked up some British expressions. I heard my son call his little sister a "cheeky little baby" the other day.... Not something Texans usually say.

[Ani]

My kids have picked up a ton from Peppa, both in English (when my mom puts it on with the regular TV) & French. My one yet old sings the song & oinks pretty much continuously all day.

I wouldn't say it's affecting anyone's accent, but my kids can put on a very very bad British accent thanks to Peppa if that counts.

[Dtmont]

I have heard that some children in Azerbaijan speak Turkish because the majority of children television programs are in Turkish. The languages are very very close so it makes sense.