Do kids do this in other languages, too?

Listening to my niece playing with a friend and it reminded me of something strange - Norwegian kids, when playing, switch dialects. It's like this over all of Norway - when kids play, their dialect changes into a southeastern Norwegian one. As our dialect is a North-western one, the difference is really damn stark.

It's so normal here I rarely think about how weird that is. Is this universal? 🤔

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SW-User

Whoa, this is fascinating!

🤔🤔🤔🤔

I think kids here don't necessarily change dialect but instead mimic what they think a character sounds like from TV or whatever.

SW-User

@SW-User I remember everyone talking like they were from California lol

SW-User

@SW-User I am not the best to answer probaby, because when I would play it would be so varied with voices and characters and such, and then animating my sister's stuffed animals to entertain her, I'd make up some odd voice I thought fit, so I was all over the map in this regard.

We always tried deeper voices to be adult, but I managed to be able to reproduce cartoon character voices over time.

SW-User

Hm. It’s not a thing here.

Dlrannie · 31-35, F

I can’t say I’ve noticed that here but my sisters and I used to speak in a mixture of English, Mandarin, Cantonese slang and the odd word of French 🙂

SW-User

I don't think it's a thing in English. I switch dialects when I'm talking to my family, but that's because we speak a different dialect from the local population.

Jammy · 51-55, M

My boys go from good French, slang and same phrase finish in English

DDonde · 31-35, M

We don't do this in American English (as far as I know), but we'll sometimes imitate accents of different regions, or imitate British English speakers and stuff like that. But it's usually just for comedic effect.

MartinTheFirst · 22-25, M

Our kids go from clean swedish to immigrant ghetto real quick when they see their friends.

MartinTheFirst · 22-25, M

@MartinTheFirst From "Hej, vill du göra något?" To "Shoo breh, haffat någon guzz elle?"

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