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.

.."gotten" has always made me want to gouge my own eyes out. Have noticed it creeping into speech more and more here the last couple of years or so 🤢

Mo-ther
mo-m

also midlander. But why is it so annoying for you? Get over it lol.

i say Mom not mum. M-um just sounds odd to me but it doesn’t upset me when people use it 😅

Also, my school was called X high school. So why would I not call it a high school?

ps, the lower, middle school etc isn’t a Worcestershire thing only - some Yorkshire schools do it too

High school is used in Scotland. That's how our schools are often named. I went to Townname High School.

My user name says it all!
Lifelong Brummie here.

I mean, strictly speaking you DO give a shit what people call their mother, because you started a thread about it. You may not care what they call her to her face, but you care (some might say inexplicably?) what they call her on here.

I am Midlands which is why I use it. But in the past I would have stuck to the conventional "mum" on a forum like this. It's only recently I decided to embrace my dialect more and not be ashamed of it. That night be a common theme - people becoming more proud of their heritage and confident to use their dialect spelling on an informal forum like this.

My dear Dad was a scouser who migrated to the Midlands before fetching up in more coastal climes and meeting my Mum. He used Mom in written form until dementia robbed him of his words. He always said it was Liverpudlian.

That said, I've noticed it being used by people who aren't from either of those places. It's definitely creeping in. The derivation I dislike most though is Momma as in Momma Bear. Urgh. If the writers of the phrase think they're being cool and American, they're not. Americans may pronounce it Momma, but they write it Mama. At least that's what I observed while living in the southern states.

'Can I get?' also annoys me. It definitely arrived on these shores with Friends (which I adored) and Starbucks (which I didn't) in the 1990s.

Not everyone is British, and I went to high school and have a mom. Plus, I use loafs of words that are not commonly in use over here. It's just who I am and how I speak. I think of myself as a mom, not a mum. My kids call me mom. But use mum at school.

We're apparently bilingual.

I have a mom. My parents had moms. Dh has a mam. His mam had a mammy. None of us have mums.

Yep, I find it annoying too, OP. Note - but not if that’s naturally what they call their mother. Just emphasising that as some people seem to be missing the point. I know a number of people who’ve always called themselves Mum or Mummy, but are now referring to themselves as ‘Mom’. It sounds weird and Americanised because it’s not what they’d naturally say. I’ve also had parents write it on school forms or letters even though I know they’re a Mum or Mummy.

It’s another Americanism like ‘Good Job’ (hate that one!), ‘gotten’, etc, and my pet hate, the unnecessary verb additions, eg swap out, change up, etc.

And again for all the people who normally use the word Mom, I don’t mean you.

I went to a High School. Yes it was a secondary school but it was also 200+ years old and had always been called ”Tree Hil” High School

No we didn't.

Me too and how rude to tell people to stop spelling it how they like!

And the ability to spell it would seem.

@BreatheAndFocus I must admit, while detesting 'Can I get', I do use 'good job' to interchange with 'well done'. My children attended a pre school in Texas many moons ago (where mama not momma was prevalent). And I rather liked the teachers' use of 'good job'. It moved with me back across the Atlantic.

Completely agree. There are other examples too. The use of “super” instead of very annoys me too.
”I’m super excited to see my mom”

I have a mom, who had a mammy and I'm a mama. Hope that helps.

Telling people to 'stop it' and getting annoyed over it is quite the reaction.

I'm from the midlands and use mum - don't know anyone who uses mom, as an aside (never heard this was a thing for the midlands either).

If people use mom then I assume they are from America or somewhere else where that is the norm, or they just prefer it.

I debated this constantly with exH. His theory was man=a shortened version of mammary as in mammary glands. I say mum, simply because that's what my mum brought me up to speak and write. Mam and mum are the two most common words used where I am (north). Mom is an Americanism.

Have you missed the numerous posters in this thread explaining that mom is the common word where they are in the UK and has been for generations…

To reinforce the scousers-say-mom point, when Dad died I looked through lots of old family letters and found Dad's parents also used Mom. Grandad even called granny Mom. So it was at least across two generations of Liverpudlians in our family. Dad was born in 1937. I don't now if it's still a thing.

Where I grew up it was ‘me mam’ and now I live in a ‘mom’ area but my kids have taken to calling me ‘mama’ which I think they’ve picked up from a TV show, so I’ve never been ‘mum’. All in the UK, I think you just need to find out a bit more about your own country, the regional differences are fascinating.

The thing which gets my goat is the mispronouncing of plant names ending in "wort" by otherwise educated people. Like "St Johns Wort", "liverwort" and so on. There is a cluster of words with the grouping of letter "wor" in them. Word. work, world, worm, worse, worst, worth, which all have a 'wur' sound. Note the exceptions, worn, worry. 'wort', spelled in Old English 'wyrt' is not an exception. One botanist on TV, interviewing a traditional academic, picked up her correct form while with her, but slid back by the time he got back to his lab. I think the habit crept in with the use of St John's Wort for depression among people whose mum had not taken them through the countryside telling them the names of plants, and I think the US may be implicated.

But thanks to the poster who has explained that Sheldon's name for his grandmother is not a Sheldonism, but local dialect.

How would you even know though? I’ve never had to provide a candid voice sample with my pronunciation of Mum/Mom to MN so other posters can verify what I write. Even trawling through a poster’s history won’t help, as a lot of people will deliberately obfuscate their location and place of birth for anonymity reasons. I’ve never noticed more than a scant handful of ‘Mom’ posts on MN. I’ve seen considerably more posts complaining about the use of it.

@Watercoloursky , Mutti is a fine name but she doesn't need the umlaut.