What do you call your mother?

Toto Wolfcastle wrote: »

Mom. No connection to America. It would have been chosen by my mother, who certainly wouldn't have chosen it as an American thing. It's quite commonly used in Cork and Kerry and has been for a long time.

If you or anyone else can show me any Irish person referring to their mother as "mom" before say 1990 you can colour me beyond shocked. I certainly never heard it before then and if you hear it as Gaelige it's more of an ahh sound than the American Ohh.

Now let's say that it is a Cork and Kerry thing(though two older folks I know of that region, both native Irish speakers don't use it, though to be fair that may be a long term Dublin influence) there can be no denying that the wider usage is most certainly down to the spread of the mid atlantic drawl since the late 90's, particularly among younger women. Watch any box pops on Irish TV and said accent will be along shortly(even with that awful upward question inflection that is nowhere close to native). An accent that would have been laughed at, or at least commented upon before that time. I remember peers noting the accent with a woman we knew who was American and Billy Connelly joking about American "mom" was like "wow" upside down, a very different feel to the Scottish "mam" vibe(and something about getting an M tattooed on each arse cheek and bending over). It was a "foreign word" for us at the time.

And if anyone can find me a recording of any Irish person saying "mommy" before the mid 90's I'll buy a hat and eat it. They'd have been looked upon as daft as someone saying "bartender" after a weeks holiday in Florida.

As for older people using it? I know a woman in her early 80's, Dublin born and bred and far from "mom" was she raised that started using mom over mam(among other mid atlantisms), because her daughters and particularly her granddaughters were, so she picked it up from them.

Words and accents change and shift and that's great, but it's when reinvention of the past comes into it I do think "ah c'way outa that".