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Comment by rhymeswithjazz | Hacker News Reader

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.

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I assumed Peppa Pig is outdated and we would be getting Australian accents from Bluey.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

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