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?
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
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.
No, not really. I have no reason to fake other people’s accents.
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They’re from Wisconsin, anyone who went to a boarding school probably sounds “English”
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.
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That’s cute. It’s funny how being nice and caring for kids can have a lasting effect on them
“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
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.
im assuming that by “bag-le” you mean a pronounciation like “sadly” but the “b” and “g” of bag
as opposed to by “bay-gil” like “fable”
wtf
I think I’d genuinely rather hear a southern drawl over a Wisconsin twang. Have you heard how they pronounce bagel? The worst!
English, simplified
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.
“Fake British accent”. It’s just a Wisconsin accent…
When I moved to Los Angeles from N WI people would always ask where I was from; sometimes saying “no” when I said Wisconsin. When I married my wife, somebody at work said it was just so I could get a green card.
That is so absurd it’s hilarious. I can’t think of what it is about Wisconsin that people are so disbelieving.
You don’t know Winconsiners, Wisconsinites, whatever. They have standing blood alcohol level of .14 at all times.
The correct term is 'Sconnie.
That may be the state average for sure, but the scarry part is that there are more of us that don’t drink than do.
Wisconsin was only number 8 for alcohol consumption per capita in the US in 2025 (and number 10 for beer). It seems there are too many of you who don’t drink. Source: https://worldpopulationreview.com/state-rankings/alcohol-consumption-by-state
You don’t need a green card for Wisconsin, you need a green card from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Yoopers don’t count as Americans.
The funny thing about the green card comment is that my wife is Latina and I’m white as can be, so the person was basing their comment entirely on my accent.
Whatever you say, hope the green card was worth it
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
Alternative hypothesis: reincarnation.
The entire kindergarten class is reincarnated elderly British pensioners.
it’s the more plausable theory
What the dickens! you may be on to something.
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.
Well we can probably deduce that it wasn’t welsh due to the lack of consonants.
Edit: realised seconds after posting that welsh is probably considered a language.
Maybe just Traditional English is in their genes from a few generations back…
I think they’d only really need to be worried if they start apologising to inanimate objects.
“Ope…”
And she probably got it from peppa pig.
Is this like carcinization for accents?
Very sensible toddlers.
…the toddlers are crossing the street by themselves in this story?
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 got hung up on that because I work with kids that age.
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 OOP uses the term differently.
The rest of the story: absolutely feasible. And finding the origin can be fun.
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.
