Tuesday, May 12, 2009

ONLY ENGLISH-SPEAKING KIDS?


Léon
has reached that action figure age where he talks all day long to plastic dinosaurs and the likes and they speak back to him. If he asks you to play with him you can be assured that you are going to have to do the voice-over for some action packed dinosaur adventure. He often likes to ask his dinosaurs questions and have them answer him. Nothing profound... just what they are called, where they live, their favourite food etc. They sometimes fall off the dining room table and are heard to shout 'save me, save me!' Having reached this stage as his siblings did before him, it suddenly reminded me of something I can only assume is peculiar to English-speaking kids. Because they live in an English-speaking country much of the television, and in particular the Disney, Pixar etc movies are in American English, not British English. I have noticed with all my kids that despite not being exposed to much TV, as soon as they start role-playing adventure, they assume a (not very good) American accent, as if somehow all adventure is American! Now, if your kid only speaks French or Danish, I assume they are seeing Pixar dubbed into their native language so don't assume a peculiar accent for role play. Do other non-American English-speaking kids do this? New Zealanders? Australians? Or are my kids just weird?!

1 comment:

peter said...

Nope your kids aren't weird. My Josh is five (a New Zealander), loves dinosaurs - especially making them dance to the music on the radio - and at school they do not run "fast" as in the British (and Kiwi) sounding "fast", they run "fast" as in the American sounding "fast".