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

@UserBot314
I can't wrap my head round it. Only time I use take is for a carry out / food takeaway. I tend to associate take with giving something up.

@tinse1

“Cheers to us Who is like us? Very few, and they are all dead.”

Wtf? Why would you want to be like dead people as a culture?

It’s a joke

In our culture we are partial to a wee laugh.

[quote UserBot314]@TrashyPanda ha ha, I like that. Sums it all up.[/quote]
Thank you!

@tinse1

“Cheers to us Who is like us? Very few, and they are all dead.”

Wtf? Why would you want to be like dead people as a culture?

It's obviously tongue in cheek, wry humour.

You don't take all sayings that literally do you? When someone says it's raining cats and dogs, do you accuse then of lying because you haven't seen any pets falling from the sky?

@TenGames

Agreed. In NI and Ireland bring and take are used differently to English English. I believe it is due to the Gaelic words. Another thing that is accused of being Americanism. Also "needs done" instead of "needs doing".

Totally.

Using the past participial is also a long established and well recognised regional variation of standard English in many areas

Eg my hair needs cut
The floor needs washed

It's obviously tongue in cheek, wry humour
Exactly.

It’s a bit like “may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you're dead”.

I think that one’s Irish.

The OP is talking rubbish. I have never seen anyone here saying regional accents are American.
It is simply not true that everyone in London and the south east speak RP. There are more people who speak estuary or cockney than RP. There are also people from all around the UK and the rest of the world in London (around 35% of Londoners were born abroad) so there are multiple accents.

Humour where I live can be similarly wry, maybe that's why it was obvious to me!

I found it interesting that although I'm not Scottish, I didn't need a translation of that saying (and found it surprising that anyone would). There may be more crossover between Scots/northern English dialect words & intonation than I thought?

*Yes, this one confused me. You take something to a party but you can only 'bring' it home? I think! I'm not even sure. Bring it with you. Take it with you. They both sound ok to my ear. This is one place where I just don't hear the mistake.

I notice that Americans do something different to us (and by ''us'', here, I mean the British and the Irish) with their conditional tense.

I wish I could identify what it is now but I just know that listening to a certain conditional tense, I think ''that doesn't sound right''.*

Growing up, it was used interchangeably in my region of the States (Midwest,Near the Great Lakes) because it implied something being moved regardless of where it was going. Saying that, I have family from the South and they would use “run this or walk this”.

You're absolutely right OP.

The one Americanism though, that really grates on me is their insistence on referring to a 'British accent'.

There's no such thing and it annoys me every time I hear it.

It does make me wonder what they're hearing when they hear people from various parts of Britain speak. Surely we don't all sound the same to them.

The OP is talking rubbish. I have never seen anyone here saying regional accents are American.

New here then?

In German, too, 'bringen' covers both bring and take in that sense (e.g. taking a child to school/taking the car to the garage).

I know the threads you mean, OP. The 'what words do you hate' ones invariably go that way. It's definitely more a class than a regional thing* - there's still a strong belief around that RP aka 'standard' English is synonymous with speaking 'properly' or 'well'.
*but it is also used to perpetuate regionally-based prejudices. Some of the anti-'haitch' threads on here have been quite shocking in their ignorance of the loaded history of this particular pronunciation difference in NI and in terms of revealing anti-Irish attitudes.

@MatildaIThink

In parts of ENGLAND - you are quite correct

In other parts of the UK it does not we take our Santa or Santy origins directly from SinterKlass

The origins of the name Santa do come from SinterKlass though, either via America, or from the Dutch.

Don't you think @MatildaIThink That the very strong Irish and Scottish waves of immigration into the USA may have carried Santa over there rather than the other way around? It's the same withHalloween

Both were established in regions of the UK long before they became an Americanism

Re bring Vs take:

This is a mistake my parents made so I'm hardwired to make it too.

I don't think this is a mistake at all, just dialect. It's certainly correct in Ireland anyway.

The OP is objecting to people making the wrong assumptions about dialect outside of the south because southerners make sweeping generalisations that accuse people elsewhere of adopting Americanisms and using the English language incorrectly but the OP is doing the exact same thing by declaring that all Southerners speak in the same way - RP which as others have pointed out, proper RP is UK wide. A regional London RP exists but that is London, home counties arguably. Accents in the south-east are really varied. I went to school with people that sound like they are on the set from Grange Hill if you are old enough to remember that drama. My nephews go to a well known private school and their accents are distinctly North London as opposed to RP as where they live is really multicultural. My husband is Jewish born in Camden and there are differences in his 'southern' accent compared to his Oxford relatives for example. It's not even that subtle so it demonstrates a lack of awareness the OP's end as well!

@MindyStClaire

Yes! The bring and take thing, I really struggle with that. The way I use them is very wrong apparently.

But they’re pretty much synonyms in Hiberno-English.

Oh yeah absolutely @Corbally - I'm Irish in case that wasn't clear. I was on here years before I realised that this is A Thing. Same with gotten.

It always amuses me that some English people complain about Americanisms (aka words used forever in other areas of the UK, including areas of England), when English itself is full of words that have origins elsewhere. That's just how language works.

Anyway, I'm team Santa.

@pigsDOfly

You're absolutely right OP.

The one Americanism though, that really grates on me is their insistence on referring to a 'British accent'.

There's no such thing and it annoys me every time I hear it.

It does make me wonder what they're hearing when they hear people from various parts of Britain speak. Surely we don't all sound the same to them.

Plenty of people would speak about an American accent in the same way, when they have regional variations too.

For the most part it doesn't bother me what people say! I'm welsh but have lived in England for over 10 years so I've experienced all sorts of accents and sayings. 'Mom' is very much American but when I went to uni I knew two people who uses 'mom' as well. It didn't bother me, why would it?!

@MindyStClaire

Oh yeah absolutely *@Corbally* - I'm Irish in case that wasn't clear. I was on here years before I realised that this is A Thing. Same with gotten.

Oh, I knew you were, and have seen you knocking around on baby name threads for aeons — I suppose I just meant that, despite over a quarter of a century living mostly in England, it would never occur to me to view my own Hiberno-English usage as incorrect!

FluffyBooBoo Yes, I almost put in my post that people here talk about an 'American accent' when really there isn't any such thing either but I imagine that's the case with most places.

I doubt there's a country in the world that doesn't have regional variations.

I think a lot of people don't appreciate the variations in different places.

I had a visitor staying with me years ago from abroad and part of her holiday included a visit to Wales, which according to her was not a separate country from England and it most definitely didn't have its own flag and language, apparently.

Another midlander team mom here. It bugs me I can't find it on christmas cards.

There's one heck of a lot of regional differences in the accents of people in the southern half of England too. Some of them are noticeably local between the half dozen towns within a 20-mile radius of where I am.

So please don't lump all southerners together, thanks.

@thatsallineed

There's one heck of a lot of regional differences in the accents of people in the southern half of England too. Some of them are noticeably local between the half dozen towns within a 20-mile radius of where I am.

So please don't lump all southerners together, thanks.

Agreed! I wish we could all just see how beautiful the differences are! I'm south west and the accents vary widely!