So you're wife and kids are proper yanks then. Do you feel slightly ashamed when you hear them talk wtih the access
Yeah they're yanks, although my wife being a southern yank doesn't like being called a yank. To a southerner, 'yank' is an insulting term refering to someone from the NE. To them it's the equivalent of calling a Scottish person English... They don't like it one bit. The kids all sound American, especially the girls, but my son pronounces a number of words the British way instead of the American way and that confuses some people. They also, even from an early age first speaking, would use British terms when talking to me and then in next sentence use the American term speaking to my wife. They would do that before they were old enough to consciously know the difference.
I was in Derbyshire over the weekend, passed a farm advertising "Free range pork sausages". I had a good look but didn't see any- maybe they were hiding behind the trees.
Funny thing is... Genetically my wife and kids are probably more British than I am. My mum's family are German, Hungarian, Romanian mutts. My dad's side is English but has gypsy and German ancestors several generations back. That makes me genetically less than half English. My wife obviously doesn't know all her ancestors but all the ones she knows of all originated from Britain. (all the other ancestors we know of all have British surnames too). Ironically my American wife is almost certainly more genetically British than I am. (same would therefore be true for kids)