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Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

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Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#101

Post by hcho »

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…

So that means we'll never get to know well educated upper classes accents as they'll have far fewer errors in their pronunciation. No?

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#102

Post by euccastro »

barredo wrote: post #74
Rod wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand the definition Castellano = Spanish , as it simplifies a lot of things. The danger of such definition is that it overshadows the other languages spoken in Spain. The definition British English = English proper is one thing, but British = English is another, as it obscures the fact that there are other languages spoken in Britain and, thus, is somewhat "imperialistic". In any case, I have never met a Span…

Totally agree with you. In Spain we usually say 'castellano' (as stated by the wikipedia), and almost everyone say 'castellano' in areas where there is more than one official language. In America is different, as there are no more 'Spanish languages' spoken there (apart from Portuguese being an 'Hispanic language') it's more fair to say 'Español' again: I guess. The difference between 'Spanish' and 'Hispanic' will fi…

And the truth is even more complex than that.

Roman "Hispania" included originally a good chunk of what today is southern France and of the north of Africa, territory that nowadays would be in Morocco and Algeria.

After the Muslim invasion, (I)spania it was the name the Christians gave to Al-Andalus, the Muslim part of the peninsula, while the Christian northwest preserved the name Gallaecia. In some of these maps, especially in the translation of arab ones, the opposition Gallaecia vs (H(i))spania/Al-Andalus can be observed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfcBE8iEYkc

The kingdom of Aragon, and therefore "Ispania", included Sicily and Naples too at some point.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#103

Post by euccastro »

davidw wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for Spanish, Spanish as spoken in Colombia is very crisp and precise, Spanish spoken in Spain much less so.

Spanish from Spain sounded really ... almost guttural to me the first time I heard it. Plus they do that lisp thing - thinco instead of sssinco. I think I prefer the new-world variety.

No matter what you prefer, thinco is the pronunciation that preserves the most information. A latin-american speaker can't distinguish phonetically between "cebo" and "sebo", for example. Therefore it's hard to argue that the american collapsing of 'th' sounds into 's' is closer to the original language.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#104

Post by Yaa101 »

bvi wrote: post #67
liedra wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a non-Dutch speaker living in Belgium, I find Flemish much nicer to listen to than "real" Dutch too. :-)

Is there really that much of a difference between Flemish and Dutch?

Most people mistake "Brabantian" with "Flemish" Flemish is spoken in East and West Flanders and sounds very much like Hollands, which is the dutch dialect spoken in the west of The Netherlands. This is not strange as it were Flanders monks that started to cultivate the peat bogs in the west of the Netherlands round 850 - 900 AD. In most other parts of dutch speaking Belgium they speak Brabantian or Limburgish (cross between Brabantian and Lower Saxon) which has a soft G and a lot of it is hard to understand for people of western Netherlands, but not hard for the people living in Dutch Brabant or Limburg, likewise the north eastern provinces in The Netherlands they speak "Nieder Saksisch" (Lower Saxon) which is closer to German than to Dutch. Like Belgium The Netherlands is situated exactly on the border of of 2 main language areas that is Lower Frankish and Lower Saxon. We have many crossing dialects between those 2 language groups and many people cannot understand each other when speaking in their native dialect, that is why the standardization of languages is so strong here. I live in Amsterdam and can understand Flemish without any trouble but when listening to somebody talking in dialect from Antwerpen where they have Brabants dialects it sound like they speak Russian or Chinese, no kidding.

Hollands and Flemish come from Middle Dutch which is exactly the same Language Group as Middle English.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Dutch

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_english

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#105

Post by zalew »

ErrantX wrote: post #41
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…

Try being a Brit without an accent. It's so bloody boring I have to fake the Queens English to get laid. ;)

Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool; while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable (sorry, no offence)? Actors of international-targetted movies use some other accent for a certain effect?

Also, once I've met a guy AFAIR south London or sth, he spoke that his wife told me even most of Brits don't get him (it was an accent, not just that he was mumbling).

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#106

Post by euccastro »

Mark_Book wrote: post #83
davidw wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Spanish from Spain sounded really ... almost guttural to me the first time I heard it. Plus they do that lisp thing - thinco instead of sssinco. I think I prefer the new-world variety.

And their best player at the world cup, David Villa's name is correctly pronounced Dabid Biya

'll' is not equivalent to 'y' in standard Spanish, although the confusion exists in some zones (not in Asturias, from where Villa is) and it's a decent approximation for a non-native speaker.

As opposed to nearby romances, Spanish never distinguished between 'b' and 'v'. This is probably a Basque influence. There was a Roman pun[1] on these lines that said "beati Hispani quibus vivere bibere est" (blessed are the Spaniards, for whom to live [vivere] is to drink [bibere]).

By the way, this joke was played on Aquitanians, who occupied land mostly outside of the peninsula (nowadays southwest of France). This links with other thread on the historical fluidity of the concept of 'Hispania.'

Whoever differentiates between b and v speaking Spanish nowadays is either:

- a native Catalan speaker,

- trying to appear more upper-class through imitation of the French, a fashion that started in the Illustration times, or

- a descendant of one of the above.

[1] http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=997178

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#107

Post by detst »

mahmud wrote: post #59
detst wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you do sound distinctively British? Similar to Americans that saw they have no accent but there's no mistaking they're American.

Ethnocentrism 101: Only other people have accents, never us.

I served this one up on a platter for someone to take but I think lkozma's reasoning is more plausible. I don't think ErrantX's comment was based in ethnocentrism. It's just a way of describing a non-regional accent in the US and apparently the UK.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#108

Post by korch »

Canada too! Their English speakers sound subtly more British than American.

The New World-Old World divergence also applies to French speakers in Quebec. If you take their perfect French from Montreal to Paris, to the Parisians much of it sounds like an antiquated form of French. I suppose it's equivalent to the way King James or Shakespearean English sounds antiquated to us now.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#109

Post by euccastro »

Rod wrote: post #69
barredo wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, Castilian (Castellano) is Spanish, and Spanish is Castilian according to definition. Although all of them are 'Spanish languages' because they are languages spoken in Spain. I guess difference, if we call it that way, between Spanish and Castellano as terms, is the similar of English and British. Right? I'm not sure, but I guess they are close. Check this map: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Castellano-Espa%C…

I understand the definition Castellano = Spanish , as it simplifies a lot of things. The danger of such definition is that it overshadows the other languages spoken in Spain. The definition British English = English proper is one thing, but British = English is another, as it obscures the fact that there are other languages spoken in Britain and, thus, is somewhat "imperialistic". In any case, I have never met a Span…

On the other hand, in Galicia it's independentist people who most often refer to Castillian as "Spanish", implying that Galicia/Basque Country/Catalonia not being Spain, and Asturian-Leonese and Aragonese being mostly extinct, the only language left in "Spain" is pretty much Castillian.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#110

Post by Scriptor »

bbgm wrote: post #91
intellectronica wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is relevant, since speakers in Asia rarely speak English as their mother tongue. Whatever accent they have is due to the sources they've been exposed to. Well educated speakers in India and Pakistan, for example, usually speak with an accent that is quite closed to RP. Other speakers often learn their pronunciation from American movies.

Agreed. Many of us who do speak English as a first language ( or are very fluent in it) are definitely closer to RP but for those who pick it up TV etc have a huge influence and that is getting more American

It's interesting how South Asian English uses many British words as well (such as "dustbin" instead of the American "trashcan"). I was young enough to relearn the American words when I moved to the US. However, it's still the British words that I use when English occasionally pops up in my native language.
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