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.
> 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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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. :-)