Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? • Hacker News Board

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#161

Post by confuzatron » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 5:03 PM UTC

mahmud wrote: post #20

wwortiz wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Oh, a funny American. Did you get that humor in a legal settlement? -- Edit: Let me add that what you're noticing is probably my staccato diction, filled with code-words and verbal winks to deliver mild amusement to an invisible audience of masochists who I love oh so very much. Cultural and linguistic banter might not be appreciated in these "learned" circles; but to the objects of my affection, the working classes…

Mahmud, amusing yourself is not the same thing as being amusing. ;)

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#162

Post by nkassis » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 5:06 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #155

coderdude wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be, but I stand by my point that we mangle language the least when we speak. No pronouncing college like "callage" etc. I wonder if the schools really teach that.

Language's are impossible to mangle. Dictionaries only describe, not dictate. If the majority started to say "callage," then "callage" would become the "correct" (i.e standard) form.

Except if you live in a place like France or Quebec. They have white beards in some tall towers creating the one true French (I swear they look like Saruman). One such example is the crap they are trying to implement with the new spelling convention.

Wikipedia page about it:

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

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#163

Post by mahmud » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 5:40 PM UTC

nkassis wrote: post #162

lukev wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Language's are impossible to mangle. Dictionaries only describe, not dictate. If the majority started to say "callage," then "callage" would become the "correct" (i.e standard) form.

Except if you live in a place like France or Quebec. They have white beards in some tall towers creating the one true French (I swear they look like Saruman). One such example is the crap they are trying to implement with the new spelling convention. Wikipedia page about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reforms_of_French_orthography

Farsi needs a similar thing, at least on Wikipedia. There is absolutely no effort in translating words to Farsi, so they cheat and transliterate the English version. I have a habit of hovering the mouse over the "فارسي" links and always see the English title with Farsi conjugation, transliterated into Arabic script :-(

It's sad because it's such a beautiful and rich language; the young folks doing the translation are doing it a great disservice diluting it in their rush for volume.

For Arabic; almost every Arab is a gray-beard language nazi! All traces of foreign influence are removed with urgent and great prejudice. Which is good.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#164

Post by euccastro » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 6:07 PM UTC

bocajuniors wrote: post #151

euccastro wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For Galician (see [1] for the reason why this is relevant) speakers, Brazilian and African accents are easier to parse than "official" (not northern) Portuguese. Whatever the history there, it seems very clear to me that it's the central/southern Portuguese version that diverged the most from whatever was the original language. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galician_language

Maybe it has something to do with the fact that(due to its largely african(mores) population) some southern dialects are as much arabic as portugese dialects?

Portuguese and Castillian both had massive arabic influences in pronunciation and vocabulary, not only because of demographics, but also because the Muslims had a more advanced and refined culture at the time. Still,

- they both remained mostly latin languages, and

- that influence had already happened when American colonization began. In Spain, the Muslim and Jewish were banned the very year America was discovered.

So the only explanatory power of that fact may be that

- Portuguese colonies were repopulated mainly from the north of the country (as was the case at least for Brazil), and

- that the southern dialects of the language have been promoted as the standard and expanded throughout the country. This is true today, where mass media are washing away the northern phonetics (actually richer: they distinguish between x and ch and -om and -am), accents and vocabulary in new generations.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#165

Post by lkozma » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 7:23 PM UTC

lukev wrote: post #155

coderdude wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be, but I stand by my point that we mangle language the least when we speak. No pronouncing college like "callage" etc. I wonder if the schools really teach that.

Language's are impossible to mangle. Dictionaries only describe, not dictate. If the majority started to say "callage," then "callage" would become the "correct" (i.e standard) form.

There are examples of "mangling" which were successful. In Hungarian for example in the late 1700s a few writers have coined tens of thousands of new words. Today some thousands of these are so widely used that it's impossible to guess they were invented. Others failed and sound ridiculously funny today. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_reform

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#166

Post by davidw » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 7:55 PM UTC

euccastro wrote: post #103

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.

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.

I'm not arguing which one is better or original or anything. I simply don't know enough Spanish or enough about it; just expressing which one I think sounds nicer.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#167

Post by dtegart » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 8:15 PM UTC

goatforce5 wrote: post #149

wisty wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean a Californian accent? A New York accent? Boston? The accent of a hypothetical guy who immigrated from Mexico when he was 5, went to an all black school in Chicago for 3 years, then moved to South Africa till he finished high school, and now lives in New York? Because while he would have a "non-regional" accent, he will kinda sound a bit different.

Grew up in Australia and then moved to the UK for 10 years. English people think i'm Australian. Or sometimes American (too much time watching US TV, I think). When i'd return to Australia, people would think I was English. I then spent 2 years in Boston. And now 2 years in Toronto. My accent is completely mangled and jumps all over the place (ie, I might sound vaguely North American, but I know that you there's a 'h…

I have the same problem with Americans thinking my accent is English, and vice versa. My accent was originally South African, but it has changed into some sort of weird hybrid.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#168

Post by Locke1689 » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 8:37 PM UTC

intellectronica wrote: post #21

I can't say that this is entirely incorrect, but it's at least full of inaccuracies. RP has indeed been evolving as the accent of the English upper class, but it originated in the accent common in the English west midlands and as far as I know has been non-rhotic for quite a long time. Rhoticism in Germanic languages comes and goes, and since Britain always had many different regional and social accents, it's entirel…

Americans often don't realise how diverse the UK is simply because they're not used to this sort of diversity from their own country.

Hahahahahaha. Oh, good one.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#169

Post by wazoox » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 8:40 PM UTC

Amusingly, this hold equally true for Québec French, of which pronunciation remains closer to 17th century French than contemporary France's French.

Re: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?

#170

Post by jawngee » Mon, Jul 05, 2010, 9:09 PM UTC

intellectronica wrote: post #21

I can't say that this is entirely incorrect, but it's at least full of inaccuracies. RP has indeed been evolving as the accent of the English upper class, but it originated in the accent common in the English west midlands and as far as I know has been non-rhotic for quite a long time. Rhoticism in Germanic languages comes and goes, and since Britain always had many different regional and social accents, it's entirel…

> Americans often don't realise how diverse the UK is simply because they're not used to this sort of diversity from their own country.

Spoken like someone who has never been here. There are a ton of different accents: northeastern, midwestern, southern, californian, northwestern are the broad top level ones and the distill even further depending on where you are in those areas. For example, people from Minnesota and people from Indiana clearly sound different (Indiana having a slight twang or drawl, while Minnesota sounding mildly Norwegian). It's a big contrast with the likes of Strong Island in New York. Or with Texas.