Pity they can’t spell the word effect. Maybe they need to watch a bit more peppa pig
Affect can be a noun, and is probably intended in this case
Yes. It perfectly describes in one word what the lady did: deliberately pimp up her accent so it sounds even more British.
An outward display of emotion? I don’t see how that works in this context.
I originally took it to mean she has an effect on the children, but maybe they meant affectation ? That fits a lot better, but isn’t what they wrote.
Affect (noun): a set of observable manifestations of an experienced emotion : the facial expressions, gestures, postures, vocal intonations, etc., that typically accompany an emotion
So…you’re agreeing with me ?
lol @[email protected] already went through all this but I guess their comment is folded in because of all the downvotes they got, so you had to start it again?
I have nothing against people asking about words, but to do it in such an arrogant way and be wrong, …
Take a look in the mirror. Your arrogance and misplaced confidence is showing up like a lighthouse.
Oh my god, you don’t agree with someone on the internet, so rather than reply to what I said, and explain why you think I’m wrong, you just call me names and belittle me. How mature of you.
Tell your folks I says hi
…the toddlers are crossing the street by themselves in this story?
I walked to school with other kids starting in kindergarten, when I was five. But, I don’t think five years old is a “toddler”.
At the slightly busy road in front of the school there were swing out stop signs. I’ve never seen them anywhere else. Sixth graders manned the stop signs. They stood on the curb and pulled on a handle that would swing the overhead stop sign out over the road. A third kid walked out with a handheld stop sign after the cars stopped and then the kids crossed.
Something happened and that ended. They switched to an adult crossing guard. I’m guessing it was something bad.
Yeah that seems weird. A toddler is basically a 2-year-old, and as the term says, they’re not so good at walking by themselves. Maybe they use the term differently.
The rest of the story: absolutely feasible. And finding the origin can be fun.
No, there’s a crossing guard! Didn’t you read that part?
We did.
Toddlers are basically 2yo. They toddle, and they don’t have the situational awareness to be let into traffic at all. Even with a guard you would not typically let them cross the street without taking them by the hand. And I suspect that’s exactly what happened and OOP just didn’t mention it. Or they use the term differently. I, just like the commenter you replied to, got hung up on that because I work with kids that age.
That’s cute. It’s funny how being nice and caring for kids can have a lasting effect on them
Things that are totally real
effect*
Affect
transitive verb: to put on a false appearance of (something) : to pretend to feel, have, or do (something) : feign
You affect something and then you have had an effect on it.
In this case, “affect” and “affect” are two different words that are spelled the same but mean different things and are pronounced differently
How would you even know that?
Context. The story is about accents.
Never heard of the word but I’m not a native speaker so I assumed it was saying “she had an effect (on the children)”
To be fair, “affect” in this story isn’t a super common word
As mentioned elsewhere, it’s a shortening of “affectation”, and is pronounced a fair bit differently: where “affect” like you’re thinking has emphasis on the second syllable, the “affect” in the story has it on the first syllable, and even puts the “f” in the first syllable rather than the second.
Because I know enough English and recognize which word is being used based on which one actually fits
As a rule of thumb, that is correct. But there are exceptions to that rule and the example given is one of them.
I’d argue this isn’t an exception as this doesn’t fit the rule at all, as neither word is being used here, a word that’s spelled the same as one of them is causing confusion as it’s a fairly uncommon word
Yes, but also this usage was the noun form (basically a shortened variant of “affectation”).
Or, and hear me out, the fake British accent never sounded British in the first place. And the adults in the story just can’t tell accents apart?
Or, and hear me out, it’s fake. Have you ever met one parent of a kindergartener, let alone a whole class of kindergarteners walking to school without their parents? Yeah me neither.
I live near a grade school in Germany and see it all the time.
Wisconsin accents can be like Welsh (not really but). Bag is pronounced Baig, Bagel is pronounced baggel. They be crazy up there.
Mostly /s
“I lived in New York, Troy, I know what a baggel is” – Britta
They’re from Wisconsin, anyone who went to a boarding school probably sounds “English”
Ever try to speak with an Irish accent only to end up morphing into Jamaican?
There’s actually a strong connection between the Scottish accent and Jamaican. It’s wild, but apparently true.
According to Wikipedia, that connection is as simple as Scottish slaveholders and overseers:
I can do a variety of accents, but they all sound like a bad Scottish one.
I think they’d only really need to be worried if they start apologising to inanimate objects.
“Ope…”
And the rest of the world subjected to American accents in TV and movies.
People are weird about accents. I only wish there was more variety in American accents, if anything. Some of them are charming.
New York is distinctly different from Boston, is distinctly different from Northern Maine, and very different from Pennsylvania. Then we’ve got southern drawl, white trash, we’ve got Minnesotian, midwest, east coast, west coast, western, Texan…
At least, as far as the accents that we put in movies and TV and media that we send abroad.
Plus the media also has one universal accent that covers all Indigenous Americans. Black actors get two extra accent options, “inner city” and “French immigrant”.
A lot of those are great! And yes, it sounds like a lot of variety until you look at how many more distinct accents the UK packs into an area a fraction of the size.
My own accent comes pretty much out of Seattle and it’s always struck me as terribly boring and flat, very news anchor-y. I like the ones that have distinctiveness above all - British, American, or otherwise.
A lot to do with the history there.
Britain has a long history of isolated villages…America, not so much.
We might cone up with something worse than American southern accents.
I grew up in Wisconsin and never heard bag-le. We say bay-gil. But the NW part of the state is a bit unique and basically MN.
What do you call a seagull at the bay?
A bagle.
That’s how we pronounce it in the Northeast, at least. Wisconsin, as I understand, doesn’t have seas or bays, so that joke may not really land…
Wisconsin has a massive bay, made widely known across the states by their NFL team, Green Bay.
I have an amalgamated accent, like most terminally online people do.
It’s clearly Germanic based, but it’s neither a Danish, German, Dutch or Swedish accent. It’s just international with Germanic roots.
English, simplified
Very sensible toddlers.
I was kind of hoping the toddlers would create an ultra polite aristocracy as things escalated.
You’ve been added to the Best of Lemmy: https://sh.itjust.works/post/68909052
“Oh bother.” - Said in the accent of a pudgy stuffed bear
one of my most cherished books is a scots translation of winnie the pooh, it sparks joy
Maybe just Traditional English is their genes…
Wtf is a British accent, you’ll find no other country in the world with more accents
Americans have really shitty ears. Any white person who sounds anywhere between “Chimney Sweep in Mary Poppins” and “King George in Hamilton” is automatically classified as British.
And yes, I know both of those characters are originally portrayed by American performers.
Black, Indian, and Asian people with a British accent make our brains explode.
Probably their approximation of received pronunciation.
And she probably got it from peppa pig.
