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Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

nicholasjohnpatrick.com

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Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#31

Post by wildjim »

mahmud wrote: post #3

Which explains why we can understand Aussies and Kiwis, but a random Nigel from the UK would have a speech that baffles. It boggles the mind how two people from different corners of London have different accents. Not to mention Manc vs Scouser vs the myriads of tongue-twisting nasal hiccups uttered all over them Shires. It's like they almost take pride in differentiation. Throw an international party and the two UKia…

I seem to remember a statistic where UK is reputed to have a greater number of dialects than any other country in the world, which probably has a lot to do with the difficulty people have with understanding some accents (tried Glaswegian, anyone?)

Also, IIRC, the colonies tended to have a commonality in heritage of the colonists, too. E.g. at one time, Australia had a "large number" of criminals, there are quite a lot of Dutch in NZ -- there are large parts of NZ with very strong Scots heritage -- New York is famous for Irish heritage, other parts of USA are famous for German, etc. The UK hasn't really had the same homogenisation outside the big cities.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#32

Post by weeksie »

liedra wrote: post #27

I think Australia will be an interesting country to watch accent-wise. At the moment there are very obvious "city" (closer to British non-rhotic) vs. "country" (Steve Irwin) accents, but it's much harder to tell which city and which part of the country any particular Aussie is from. Considering the distances needed to travel between towns and cities, it'll be interesting to see if, over time, these accents become mor…

Hrm. I never noticed a large difference until I left. Now that I'm in NY I can usually pick someone's state right away. Folks from Melbourne have the most pronounced accents, I reckon. Something about how the 'e' becomes all elongated when they Melbourne, it sounds like 'Mahlbourne' to my Sydney-sider ears.

The difference is probably about as pronounced (if not moreso) as the difference between a middle class non-regional East Coast American versus the same on the West Coast.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#33

Post by barrkel »

eru wrote: post #26
pbz wrote: post #19

(I apologize for my ignorance, but) without audio recording how can we know what the accents were back then?

Spelling gives some hints. One technique is to look for common spelling mistakes. An especially interesting mistake is hypercorrection ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection ). For example, there was a time when the K in words like "knee" and "knight" became silent. We can pinpoint this time by looking for Ks in front of words, that never used to start with K. The writer doesn't pronounce the K in "kn" any lo…

You can also pick up clues in rhyming, jokes, slang and puns that wouldn't otherwise make sense.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#34

Post by wildjim »

mahmud wrote: post #22
detst wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, but which one? He says "us Somalis", "...the U.S (we...", mentions in his profile that he lives in Northern Virginia but also calls Sydney home yet the diction (i.e. "shopkeepers", "Chavs", "piss-taking", etc.) of his post screams British to me.

Napoleon called the English "a nation of shopkeepers".

> Napoleon called the English "a nation of shopkeepers".

Not a lot has changed, then...

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#35

Post by eru »

barrkel wrote: post #33
eru wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spelling gives some hints. One technique is to look for common spelling mistakes. An especially interesting mistake is hypercorrection ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection ). For example, there was a time when the K in words like "knee" and "knight" became silent. We can pinpoint this time by looking for Ks in front of words, that never used to start with K. The writer doesn't pronounce the K in "kn" any lo…

You can also pick up clues in rhyming, jokes, slang and puns that wouldn't otherwise make sense.

And how words get adapted into foreign languages that happen to write phonetically.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#37

Post by ghostwunder »

astine wrote: post #13
joe_the_user wrote: post #5

As I recall from an article in Time a while back, the Southern American accent is the most authentic representative of the pre-revolutionary war accent. The Northern American accent has been changed more by waves of immigrants (especially those coming in the 1890-1920). I've heard that the French-Canadian accent is closer to pre-Revolutionary French as well. It seems that those areas with the least upheavals are wher…

I wouldn't describe the American South as having had few upheavals. It's actually had more than most places in the United States. Though, I would agree that it's had fewer lninguistic influences than other regions of the country.

show me the fuckin receipts. fewer linguistic influences? between the french, dutch, spanish, portuguese, central african, west african, native americans, and british there are very few places in the world that have such of an unique stew of languages. safire died but the knowledge of american language did not die with him. upheavels? thats another post. but lets refrain from throwing around ignorant barbs and passing them as facts.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#38

Post by wildjim »

detst wrote: post #18
wwortiz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your typing comes off with a very thick accent, something you don't find often online.

Right, but which one? He says "us Somalis", "...the U.S (we...", mentions in his profile that he lives in Northern Virginia but also calls Sydney home yet the diction (i.e. "shopkeepers", "Chavs", "piss-taking", etc.) of his post screams British to me.

Most of the slang is also Australian, and some, like "Chavs", is becoming more recognised outside the UK. However, I'm sure it would only take a few years living in one country to pick-up local slang. With globalisation comes comes a greater migration of the work-force, after all.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#39

Post by barrkel »

wildjim wrote: post #31
mahmud wrote: post #3

Which explains why we can understand Aussies and Kiwis, but a random Nigel from the UK would have a speech that baffles. It boggles the mind how two people from different corners of London have different accents. Not to mention Manc vs Scouser vs the myriads of tongue-twisting nasal hiccups uttered all over them Shires. It's like they almost take pride in differentiation. Throw an international party and the two UKia…

I seem to remember a statistic where UK is reputed to have a greater number of dialects than any other country in the world, which probably has a lot to do with the difficulty people have with understanding some accents (tried Glaswegian, anyone?) Also, IIRC, the colonies tended to have a commonality in heritage of the colonists, too. E.g. at one time, Australia had a "large number" of criminals, there are quite a lo…

Ireland has a distinct accent for almost every county too. The fine differences can be subtle, but sampling Cork/Kerry sing-song, Northern Ireland ("Norn Iron"), northside / inner city Dublin and Dublin 4 / southside are all quite different range in the spectrum.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#40

Post by mahmud »

wildjim wrote: post #31
mahmud wrote: post #3

Which explains why we can understand Aussies and Kiwis, but a random Nigel from the UK would have a speech that baffles. It boggles the mind how two people from different corners of London have different accents. Not to mention Manc vs Scouser vs the myriads of tongue-twisting nasal hiccups uttered all over them Shires. It's like they almost take pride in differentiation. Throw an international party and the two UKia…

I seem to remember a statistic where UK is reputed to have a greater number of dialects than any other country in the world, which probably has a lot to do with the difficulty people have with understanding some accents (tried Glaswegian, anyone?) Also, IIRC, the colonies tended to have a commonality in heritage of the colonists, too. E.g. at one time, Australia had a "large number" of criminals, there are quite a lo…

The BBC has recordings of various dialects from the U.K. that you might find interesting:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/

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