As you have got older has what you call your parents changed?
This may be different in America because I get the impression that ‘Mum’ and ‘Dad’ are generally the norm, but when did you stop calling your parents Mummy and Daddy and change to Mum and Dad?
Do you still call your parents Mummy and Daddy?
I bumped into a friend of my mum the other day (who is in her 50’s and very typically posh in an English Jollyhockeysticks kind of way) and she very loudly said ‘How is your Mummy?..Do send my love to Mummy’. I’m 24. That sounded kind of weird.
I’ve called my mother “Mom” since probably my early teen or the preteen years. It seems to me from my experience and wild guessing like the “Mommy/Daddy” to “Mom/Dad” shift happens for most kids around that time, though it seems like I hear teenage girls use “Mommy” when they’re trying to ‘butter up’ their mothers in anticipation of some bad news about the girl becoming known, or trying to convince them to allow the girl some privilege.
Around Mother’s Day last year, TV cooking show host Rachael Ray had her mother on her show, and was not just referring to her as her “mommy” but was directly addressing her with that term, like, “Mommy, could you stir that for me?” Weirded me the heck out.
It’s not like, if we were to attempt to pronounce the vowel in “mum”, it would come out as the vowel in “mom”; we have words like “gum”, “bum”, etc., which don’t rhyme with “mom”. On this one particular word, the pronunciation between the U.S. and the U.K. has diverged, to the point that perhaps one should consider it to now be two (synonymous, etymologically related) words. And, of course, the variant spelling matches the variant pronunciation.
Never called my parents anything other than Mom and Dad. Mommy and Daddy always seemed really babyish, even when I was a toddler. Perhaps because I have a sister who’s 3 years older than me, so she was probably already calling them Mom and Dad and I just followed suit.
And yeh, most Americans say “Mahm” (Mom)… Mum sounds really weird to my ears, even though I’ve heard it pronounced that way for decades by you limeys! Besides, this is a mummy. :eek:
I don’t think it can be considered an accent if we spell it differently too. Right?
I guess it depends on what we mean - when I read your comment about Americans spelling the word differently, my first thought was that they weren’t the same word. I can see that they are, really, but I always think of “Mum” as the “British version” of ‘Mom’ (or perhaps a flower), and pronounce the two words differently as well. If I was reading your OP aloud I’d pronounce “Mum” pretty closely to what you do, I suspect.
I’ll note that I think the word “Mom” can be drawn out in a more annoying fashion by a whining child than “Mum” can, I suspect. “But Moooooooooom…” :smack:
Eh, that’s just what you’re used to. I see no difficulty in doing the same thing with “But, Muuuuuuum…”.
Incidentally, my parents’ first language having not been English, I call my mother neither “Mom” nor “Mommy”. This was a cause for embarrassment for me one day in second grade: another student asked me something about my parents, and, remembering that typical Americans said either “Mom” or “Mommy” but not knowing which to go with, I opted for the latter. I was made fun of for still using the term “Mommy” at this late (?) age. I guess the switchover is rather young for some.
I am a 27-year-old Canadian. I call my mom Mom (pronunciation varies between Mom and Mum) and called my dad Dad. I am pretty sure I called them Mommy and Daddy when I was very small but I stopped when I was so young I can’t remember.
Not me, but my children, so I’m going through this now. My older two (14 and 11) have almost completely converted to Mom, although the older, a girl, says Mommy way more frequently than the 11-year-old boy.
Their quite-a-bit younger brother, through, at 4 has totally switched to Mom 100 percent of the time, and he’s about 60/40 on Dad/Daddy.
I remember a “Mama” phase with my own mother, between Mommy and Mom; in my head I think I thought I was saying “Mom-a.”
My parents have always been Jennifer and Michael. I cannot remember a time I ever called them anything else. I blame an overly precocious older brother.
I also think it is weird when I hear others calling their parents by their first names. I can’t explain the discrepancy. When considering what my (hypothetical) children might call me and my husband? I’m thinking mum and dad, but I’m willing to negotiate.
Point of note - my 60 year old aunt still refers to her parents (both deceased) as mummy and daddy. I find this weird. I still call them Gordon and Patsy…
Growing up, it was always “mom” and “dad” – even though my father is dead now, I still call him “dad” when talking about him. I call my mother by her first name when talking about her, or “the fucking psycho cunt that is the reason I am blind in my right eye.” Either way.
