Why do so many people on MN say ‘mom’ instead of ‘mum’?

[Waitingforthesunnydays]

Yes I know this is the internet so there may be American users on here. The vast majority are British though. I also know there’s parts of England where ‘mom’ is used rather than ‘mum’ but those two things really don’t account for how often I see posters writing it as ‘mom’. Is this another Americanism that’s creeping in or are there much more parts of the country where mom is used than I thought?…

Irish, have been called mammy and later mam! Tho i know plenty Irish who use mom and mum!!!

No don't be sorry. I'm sorry. I am a bit of a drama queen sometimes!

Mom here, grew up near Birmingham

And yet, in spite of you not hearing it, Mom is used by many many people in the UK because, where they come from, it is the "right" word.

I'm merely noting my experience and I have never heard it in the UK in my real life. Not even from the few people I have met who are from the West Midlands.

I first heard it in the 90s when I met a couple of sisters from Startford upon Avon 🤷‍♀️

Granny is used g-grandmother in my family (all brummy).. its very def Nan for my parents moms.

Exactly. The Brummy side of my family all say "mom". Think alot of the West Midlands do. I think it's nice .
It's not always about the States, OP.

i'm a proper mess xD

Born in brum to a brummy family who all use Mom. So my mom is 'mom' and i call myself a Mom.

My ExH is welsh, his lot use 'Mam'

We both moved to shrewsbury end of Shropshire in our childhoods, so my kids grew up here, their friends use Mum or Mom depending on their parents preference.

They interchange between all three depending on the day/how they feel/if they've been with ExH for a few days. I accept all names... the oldest also refers to me as Mother or The Mothership.

Where is “here”?

I think you may be under estimating the size of the West Midlands. Huge number of folk there.

And thanks to @saraclarafor confirming that!! 6 million wow. That’s even more than I initially thought.

Is it possible you just don't hear it when used ie it's being used but you are not registering the difference becuase you know what is meant?

We found the kids autocorrect in their heads a lot of IL regional words - like snap for packed lunch they translate to snack and know is about food and fact IL use a different word passes them by till directly pointed out.

I mean in UK it's not unusal to have multiple words sometimes regional and well known sometimes not or slightly different pronunciations- and we tend to rely heavily on context for meaning compared to some US speakers.

I used to have US colleagues who seemed to flip out if one word in a sentance wasn't one they knew when it was bloody obvious to us Brits what was meant.

They said it in Stoke when I worked there, maybe it's spread! Mind that was ay up Duck on the teapot they got me (Stokie Ware). I'm from the north east and my parents generation said ay up but no duck. There's more that connects us than divides us :)

Seems like this same topic comes up every couple of months. Why is it so triggering to some that some UK regional dialects use different words? I grew up in the West Midlands (in the 70s and 80s) and we referred to our mothers as “mom” in my circle of childhood friends. Watch a few Lenny Henry (from Wolverhampton) sketches -you’ll see he talks about his “mom”.

Conversationally I'd used Mam but would write Mum - NE Scotland

Quite a few of the kids who said Mom in my primary school spelt it mum as that how school staff taught the spelling.

I think DH write mam now in cards but school I think it was usally mum as again it was seen as more correct by many school staff - despite the regional accent.

Not sure if that's changed since phonics started to be used widely- DH and I were 80s so whole word recognition was being used.

"Duck" is used outside of the East Midlands, I know because I live in a different part of the Midlands where I hear it frequently...generally by the OAPs.

I live in the West Midlands (Black Country). It’s Mom here.

@trappedCatAsleepOnMe I went to school in the 60s and 70s and anything regional was drummed out of us as being slang or incorrect.

Nowadays they're trying to encourage it as sadly more kids are likely to use American words than local ones.

This. ^

This whole attitude (from some) that any British person saying MOM is saying mum 'wrong' is the height of arrogance really. These threads come up every couple of months. So annoying.

As I said, no-one ever posts to say 'why do some people on Mumsnet say MUM instead of MOM. Everyone I know says 'mom!' Why do some people say it incorrectly?????!'

Im from Birmingham. I dont live there anymore but still use 'mom' and my kids, who were born here, use mom. Mum feels very unnatural to us!

Weird how it never used to be like this then, it's only in the last 5 years or so it's suddenly appeared so much on mumsnet. Birminghams population must have exploded, rather than a younger generation copying Americans though, I'm sure.

I'm a Brummie. Never used mum in my life. It's always been mom🤷

Yet I’ve been reading threads complaint about folk from Birmingham using mom for 20 years