POSH LIKE PEPPA
Kids adopt cartoon pig’s accent
● Dumisani, Ria and Ronin all speak in posh British accents. The only thing that gives their accents away are the occasional snorts at the end of sentences.
The five- and six-year-olds are suffering from the Peppa Pig effect — a phenomenon that has surprised and worried parents around the globe as their children have adopted a posh British accent from their favourite cartoon character, Peppa Pig.
Parents started talking about the issue after parenting website Romper reported that one of its editors, Janet Manley, noticed that her two-year-old daughter had started speaking with a British accent after bingewatching Peppa Pig on a 21-hour trip to Australia.
Six-year-old Durban boy Dumisani Sibisi has been imitating the star of the long-running British children’s series — which follows the adventures of Peppa Pig, her brother George, their parents and other animal friends — for at least a year.
“He watches it often as the show is recorded so he watches the show every day. Obviously the show does have an impact as he snorts at the end of the sentences just like Peppa Pig does,” his mother, Olwethu Ndzamela, told the Sunday Times.
Dumisani’s accent is “concerning”.
“At a certain age you want your kids to speak fluently and we obviously don’t know the psychological impact it has on the child,” Ndzamela said.
Gauteng mom Sarisha Pillay is often embarrassed when her five-year-old son Ronin talks in the accent in public as people often ask her why he is speaking with a “British twang”.
Centurion five-year-old Ria Norris gets upset when her parents ask her to stop speaking like Peppa Pig.
“We have tried limiting her viewing of the series but it hasn’t seemed to work. We worry that her three-year-old brother will start copying her and then we will have two children who sound British,” her mother Alex Norris said.
The Pan South African Language Board said parents should be concerned if their children were always talking in the adopted accent as it could “affect speech, especially when the acquired accent is different from the home language”.
The board’s spokesperson Sibusiso Nkosi said there were different schools of thought about where children learn their accents.
“Traditionally, it has always been assumed or believed that accents are formed at school or home. However, there is also a view that accents begin to be formed by hearing those at playgroups and not their siblings or mother and father.
“So the accent being mimicked from Peppa Pig will closely be aligned to this conviction, which credits social context much more than people might think.”
He said it was interesting to note that black children in SA, especially those in multiracial schools, were shifting their accents to bring them in line with children of European descent, which has led to the pejorative terms “coconut” and “model C”.
“We see a decline in the disapproval by society because it is now widely accepted by the millennials as the cool accent and a sign of intelligence. There is a perception that employers are more likely hire a person with a cool accent than the traditional one.”
However, psychologists and parenting experts say parents should not be concerned when their children mimic cartoon characters.
Durban psychologist Rakhi Beekrum said parents should also not mock or admonish their children who imitate the accent.
“This can be likened to children imitating Disney princesses or superheroes by dressing like them and imagining that they have the same superpowers.”
Parents should allow children to develop naturally and should not be overly concerned unless children are using words that are inappropriate, Beekrum added.
Parenting expert Stephanie Dawson Cosser said children tested out accents, copied songs they heard and behaviours they observed. “However, predominantly we are influenced by our family group and peers.”
She said young children copying the “posh British accent” reflected the length of time they were watching TV and having screen time.
“If parents are disturbed, then they should rather read to their children, play games, board games, and have daily conversations about what happened in their day.
“This way parents will have the strongest influence on the way their children talk.”