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Several news items have surfaced today which report that North American children are adopting British accents at a very young age due to watching Peppa Pig episodes. The only source quoted is Romper which does not seem, to me, to be what I would term an 'academic' source.

Is there any other source for this ?

If it were true I would have expected comments to surface in the UK first, regarding a regional effect within the UK.

ITV NEWS

user56reinstatemonica8
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Nigel J
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    It seems to me that the effect of national broadcasting on regional accents had been noted in the UK for decades, so I would hardly expect Peppa Pig to attract special notice in that regard. – phoog Mar 05 '19 at 06:39

1 Answers1

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The Guardian did a short piece on this and the bottom line is straightforward:

American kids may have picked up a Britishism or two, but the claim that they’re developing a whole accent based off a cartoon is, according to linguistics experts, likely exaggerated.

The experts quoted in the article explain that mimicking specific words and developing an accent are two very different things.

Brian Z
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    My daughter, when talking about the show, says "baby Alexahnder" in a British accent, but besides that she has a very thick New Jersey accent, complete with the tensed vowel dipthongs in words like "pants" and "hand." She doesn't use a British accent when she isn't talking about the show. – Matt Samuel Jun 02 '19 at 20:36
  • Several of my favorite TV shows as a child were Canadian, but I never developed Canadian raising and still engage in Philadelphia short-A tensing similar to your daughter. – Robert Columbia Aug 12 '19 at 11:46