The UK are not just southern England - in defence of Santa

[MajorCarolDanvers]

Week and week, day after day there is thread after thread complaining that we "Brits" don't all speak the same way and are falling prey to evil American influences.

Patiently, on each every thread, people from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Northern England explain that we have different accents, dialects and cultural identities.

We are told we are lazy, coarse, uneducated and American.

So for all those who say Santa, Guising, Outwith, Mom, Mam, or drop your Ts or your 'ings' or roll your Rs and whatever else it is that JARS and GRATES on delicate southern ears I celebrate you.

YABU - learn to speak RP like a proper Brit
YANBU - there is more to UK than the south of England

@AnFiaRuaNua

The snobbery is based on the belief that the way things are said/pronounced in the south of England is automatically the correct way, but the south of England is also a region, also susceptible to regional mistakes, bad pronunciation. Eg "lore and ordah" for law and order.

Aye and hospituw for hospital :)

I live in Southampton. Can't move for all those plums spilling out of my fellow Southerners' mouths. Not!

To be honest it’s everywhere try sending a birthday card to a Mam not a mum and you be lucky to find 3 on moonpig for example. I can’t send a mum card any more than I would send a mom one. Yet millions people just not catered for. I don’t know if shops much better in Ireland where it’s also used more?

I have said YABU purely because Santa is an Americanism rather than a regional variation. I love to hear different accents but wish we could keep the Americanisms out of our language.

🙄

It is not. Some of you need to venture around the U.K. or at least LISTEN to the countless British people who have said that it is what they’ve said for decades. This comes up every bloody year and still people sprout off “Americanism” nonsense. Will also point out where do you think the States got “Santa” from in the first place? Not exactly something they made up out of thin air.

I am from the South and say santa all the time and have never heard anyone mocking someone from elsewhere in the UK for saying it...didn't realise that was a regional thing.

However I do feel like I see posts all the time bashing southerners by seemingly 'Professional Northerners' who think the whole chance circumstance of where they were born and raised somehow makes them superior and yet also simultaneously constant victims...
So I suppose we all just remember more vividly the posts that feel more like attacks or comments on ourselves. Different perspectives- I would suggest learning to embrace that and celebrating diversity if accebts and regionalism rather than just trying to direct anger at one 'enemy' accent/dialect, and not feeling like you're a victim because some people don't understand your language and one or two minority individuals have been rude about it (which I am sorry that you have experienced. They shouldn't be rude but that also doesn't give you carte blanche to slate and direct anger at all southerners and suggest we all speak RP)

It could be worse - only a few decades ago you couldn't get a job or a promotion with a 'regional' accent and you certainly would not have had anyone working for the likes of the BBC who didn't speak RP.

@MajorCarolDanvers

You are incorrect about the origins of Santa

@Acrasia is completely correct. Call the Christmas myth what you like but the etymological origins of the Santa Claus name are Dutch via the USA then imported to the U.K. via Ireland (part of U.K. at the time) in the 19th century.

My kids use Father Christmas and Santa interchangeably because I'm a Londoner but they were brought up in the USA

Santa is not an Americanism whoever posted that just proved the Op point.

Generally agree.

I think Santa is via the US though? pre TV era mind you - coke ads etc.

@gogohm

I absolutely agree the origin of Santa is Dutch. I have never disputed that.

.... though I have never noticed Santa is used less in the South than anywhere else anyways.

YANBU that there is more to the UK than the south of England, and I say that as someone who grew up in Essex. However I'm going to chime in and say that a lot of people here conflate the south of England (and especially the southeast) solely with middle/upper class RP speakers, when the southeast English working class accent not only exists but is usually one of the first to be mocked on here. A lot of Mumsnetters will insist til they're blue in the face that the accent features of Estuary English or even Cockney aren't real accent features, but just working class people being uneducated/not knowing how to speak correctly. I don't see this attitude quite so much for other regional English accents, which I think are perceived as more legitimate and somehow more "real" that the th-fronting and glottal stops of Estuary! I get the impression a lot of people think that while Yorkshire or Geordie accents are (rightly) acceptable regional accents, all southeasterners should be speaking RP, even when it's not our native accent.

However I do agree that dialect features (words like Santa/Santy, outwith and gotten) are unfairly stigmatised because they're not familiar to those in southeast England.

Just let people speak what they speak! I love the variety of accents and dialects on these islands. It makes things interesting. I wouldn't want everyone to speak the same.

Just let people speak what they speak! I love the variety of accents and dialects on these islands. It makes things interesting. I wouldn't want everyone to speak the same

Completely agree

I posted this on another thread too, as I'm a word geek and love Google ngram. It charts how often words appear in books across time. Don't think you can pin point it to any particular country though.

It was FC when I grew up in Wales. My kids call him santa, in spite of us calling him FC.

Here it is.

What is the origin of Santa/Santy in other parts of the UK out of interest? Dutch originally, but then how did it become dominant here? And did it replace Father Christmas or was Father Christmas never used outside of the South/South east?

@MajorCarolDanvers If you have a link to the etymology of Santa in Scotland I would love to see it. As I said I love linguistics and always excited to learn new word origins, especially where words stem from. I guess there must be Gaelic origins that somehow coincide. That is something I find particularly interesting.

@NuffSaidSam

What is the origin of Santa/Santy in other parts of the UK out of interest? Dutch originally, but then how did it become dominant here? And did it replace Father Christmas or was Father Christmas never used outside of the South/South east?

The origin Santa in the rest of the UK is the dutch SinterKlaas.

It was never Father Christmas in Scotland, Ireland etc.

[quote Acrasia]@MajorCarolDanvers If you have a link to the etymology of Santa in Scotland I would love to see it. As I said I love linguistics and always excited to learn new word origins, especially where words stem from. I guess there must be Gaelic origins that somehow coincide. That is something I find particularly interesting.[/quote]
It is thought that the tradition of it being Santa Claus in Scotland comes of our historic trading and cultural links with the Low Countries particularly the Netherlands, and survived or post dated the most austere periods of Calvinist dominance during parts of the seventeenth century. Although the Dutch Feast of St. Nicholas does not fall at Christmas but earlier in December, which could also account why for Scottish children in the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, Santa visited with gifts at New Year. It is thought that it was originally a Dutch phenomenon which evolved and was acculturated to fit Scottish societal needs.

I’ve just seen this on twitter. I hope the matter is now settled.

@DismantledKing

Awesome

Can't decide if I prefer Daddy Chrimbo or Big Johnny Winter as alternatives to Father Christmas 😂

@Akire

To be honest it’s everywhere try sending a birthday card to a Mam not a mum and you be lucky to find 3 on moonpig for example. I can’t send a mum card any more than I would send a mom one. Yet millions people just not catered for. I don’t know if shops much better in Ireland where it’s also used more?

We had the opposite problem a couple of years ago. We were visiting my family in the North East and DH thought he would the opportunity to get some Christmas shopping done. He came out of the card shop empty handed as all the cards were to Mam and Dad and he needed Mum and Dad. I find it much easier to stock up on Grandma cards when in the NE as while there are a few in our local southern card shops Nan/Nanny are prevalent.

See also “but it’s not the school holidays, why aren’t your kids in school?” and “but it’s not cold/ wet/warm/dry”. Some people, naming no names as to where they tend to come from, seem to have no idea a whole world exists beyond their own and it might just vary a bit.

YABU to class all southerners as the same. Out here in the west we are barely intelligible to Londoners.

I’m here almost constantly and I don’t remember a thread getting abusive about differences in regional words.