y'all hear that? americanisms leaving america

The changes started slowly: swapping "sorry" for "my bad" and developing a sudden interest in basketball. Our English teachers dismissed Americanisms as “improper English” and mocked the accent as if it were a bad joke. Their tests demanded that we correct “socialize” to “socialise” and provide the British English equivalent of “pop.” In the classroom, American English was something foreign — something to be corrected.

Yet, despite their efforts, my South African school now has a full-fledged basketball team, and American English echoes through the quads, corridors, and classrooms.

A similar shift has taken place in my home. It’s no surprise that my siblings and I speak differently from our immigrant parents, having grown up with English instead of French. What’s more fascinating, though, is how different we sound from each other. My eldest sibling speaks with a British English accent, my middle sibling leans heavily American, and I land somewhere in between. Depending on the context, I'll say “dance” as dans or daans — the kids at my school dans, but the stars on Strictly Come Daansing definitely daans.

The Internet as a Linguistic Environment

I suspect this shift is linked to the increasing consumption of American media. Young people are turning to the internet for entertainment, with platforms like TikTok, YouTube, and Twitch dominating our screen time. The digital entertainment industry is overwhelmingly American, so it makes sense that those immersed in it from an early age would adopt American accents and slang.

More than ever, the internet shapes our linguistic development — likely because we spend more time engaging with people online than with those physically around us. And when we share something we saw on social media, we don’t filter it through our own accents or translate the slang into our mother tongues. We repeat what we’ve heard — intonation, pronunciation, and all.

The Effects of a Balanced Digital Diet

This is especially obvious in my family. My middle sibling, who consumes the most American content — from U.S. politics to culture wars — now speaks with an American accent. Meanwhile, my eldest sibling watches a mix of shows like The Real Housewives of Lagos and 90 Day Fiancé, and she gets most of her reality TV gossip from text-based Instagram posts. With less exposure to any one foreign accent, she has retained the British English she learned at school.

It’s interesting to think about how our digital diets don’t just shape our interests but also how we speak. Maybe, in the future, accents will reflect the corners of the internet we frequent rather than the corners of the world from which we originate.

Has media consumption influenced your local culture or language? Let’s talk in the comments!