What's with everyone writing 'Mom?'

[Ottersmith]

Why is everyone writing Mom in their thread instead of 'mum'? Are you American? Are you from the Midlands? If neither of these then stop doing it. It's everywhere and it's so annoying.

I just don't know what to say now to make you feel better.

Now I find mom as heinous as the next snob, but...

Midlanders are sticking more to the Old English pronunciation. It went over to America as mom and stayed the same. It's the rest of us who changed.

Weirdly my midlander husband says mum even though his mum and brother don't. I'm leaving the region just so nobody can foist mom on me.

(Brummies will also bang on about the yam yam accent not being the brummy accent - they usually can't hear how similar it sounds to an outsider.)

Absolute tosh.

Mam and Mom are not different pronunciations of the 'standard' Mum.

People spell and pronounce the words M-o-m and M-a-m.

You completely misunderstood what i just wrote. Slow down.

It’s a comment on spelling, not pronunciation.

Maybe acknowledge that people living in NI are British, some happily, some not quite so happily, and that NI is part of the UK, while Ireland is not.

Sorry would be fine, thanks.

Just stop trying to twist things to pretend you didn't say what you did. And that others are wrrong and confused and mis-reading.

Like a sort of UN declaration by me, a complete stranger on mumsnet? I like it!!

I'm not sure I can confirm what you have just said really. I have no knowledge of what people think in NI?

No. I can't pander to the permanently unreasonably offended. And it's not good for you either. I'm doing you a kindness.

But, as gently as possible, you're the one who keeps talking about pronunciation. I think that's why some of us are confused by what you're saying.

"mum"
"mom"
"mam"

Three different words. One root. Three different standard vowel sounds. None of which is /a:/ (aaah) or a diphthong. /au/ (cow)

The first word has 2 variants for the vowel. Most northern accents pronounce it the same as the /u/ (sound, not letters) in "book". Most southern accents would use the vowel that lies halfway between an /æ/ (cat) and a /u/ (book)

The second is a bogstandard short /ɒ/ (dog)

The third, a bogstandard short /æ/ (cat)

I'm Irish and Mam doesn't sound like baa to me. Ma does, but Mam doesn’t.

You may be surprised to learn than some Irish people also pronounce Mam as mom.
This is because of the influence of the Irish language word Mamaí, which translates as Mammy but sounds more like mommy when spoken in Irish.

Most northern accents pronounce it the same as the /u/ (sound, not letters) in "book".

Oh don’t start bringing ‘book’ into it, otherwise you’ll have to explain that it isn’t pronounced ‘moom’!

😂
I'm kind of watching through my fingers in anticipation, but thought it was worth the risk.

I had the same thought. I'm American, but I have lived in the UK. 😄

Interesting @thomasinacat - I'm from the West Midlands (Bromsgrove)! I guess it is only certainly parts or I was just completely oblivious to it. I'll ask my brother when I speak to him (he still lives there). I've seriously never heard of it being a midlands thing.

Mine’s Moomin because she’s very cute, little and pale with big blue eyes.

As gently as possible. When you are writing out your dog, cat, etc - they will all be pronounced differently according to regional accents. That’s why it only works if you use more universal sounds to describe things, like the baa of a sheep (having said that, I’ve noticed that sheep in the Lake District seem to have a different accent from those in the West Country 😂).

For example, I would pronounce dog with a very short ‘oh’ like a short cough sound. Whereas someone from NI, would pronounce dog with a much longer au/or/aw sound. Daug/dorg/dawg.

It’s not a midlands thing? I’m from the East Midlands and nope we use mum! I mean does it matter anyway? Local dialect is a thing!

We use duck/chick/bird a lot to acknowledge other people but I can guarantee we don’t all have a love for feathered creatures

Liverpudlians say ‘book’ with a sound more like the hooting of an owl, not the short sound.

Indeed, as you say, it changes all the time; BUT it doesn't come out like a software update, where everybody is changed at the same time and the old way is completely discarded.

People saying that, because a word may be less commonly said nowadays (in some regions at least), that somehow makes it obsolete, need to come out of their little bubble and realise that English is spoken across the world, with billions of speakers.

You may as well declare words like 'hegemony', 'behemoth', 'geodynamics' or 'cloaca' as 'obsolete words that nobody says anymore', just because most people happen not to use them regularly, even though a sizeable minority regularly do and have done for a very long time indeed.

She sounds horrific and an absolute nightmare - she should be posting on MN about how much she hates you because you occasionally like to spend time with your son/her husband, threatening to never let you see any grandchildren, in case you love them just like she does, and going NC forthwith

I probably wouldn't say that as I like all those words apart from the last one. And they are still commonly used. Again apart from the last one which I haven't heard.

@OnTheRightSideOfGeography

Lol yes absolutely! Just like me the nightmare MIL😂

She is awesome actually and I am very grateful ☺️

I'm not personally offended by what you described as 'ethnocentric bias'. I do think MN posters come across as twats when they pounce on someone using regional/international spelling and phrasing variations.

On a thread about language, perhaps people should try not to confuse 'disagrees' with 'offended', like the OP did despite acting all kinds of offended herself.

As for the old 'mumsnet is a predominantly English site'... Facebook is an American site, almost every public group on there is dominated by Americans unless expressly created not to be. Would you like it if Americans pulled you up and corrected you on everything you posted there?

I don’t think this thread is about pulling up Americans on using American spellings, it’s about pulling up people from the UK using American spellings (and words), and then some people piping up, suggesting it is little Englander, small-minded ethnocentricity to suggest there is a consistent spelling across the UK of words (taking into account different pronunciations according to regional accents). Then we got into a silly thing of discussing regional accents as a way of saying ‘different but equal’, but then appealing to Received Pronunciation do describe what vowels sound like. 😂