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When did Americans lose their British accents?

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Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#31

Post by dragonwriter »

dmos62 wrote: post #14

Anyone else cringe at the choice of words in the title? If you migrate and your pronunciation gradually mutates away from what you had originally, and if you then say that you lost what you had, you're invalidating the evolution you've gone through. Or, if the "americans lose their british accents" implies that [english accent = american accent + something you can lose], it's an American-centricity that treats the En…

No, the title asks a popular question and, like, the first sentence of the article directly addresses why the popular question isn't actually the right question to ask.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#32

Post by azangru »

gowld wrote: post #8
abjecton wrote: post #6

Original pronunciation Shakespeare is a good example of this. It's performed with the sorts of accents people had in 16th/17th century England. To my ear as an English person, it sounds like a Westcountry accent, an example of an English accent which is still rhotic today. But other people might perceive it as being slightly American or Irish sounding.

Related, it's such a farce that people will recite and listen to some of the best-regarded _poetry_ in history, and do it in a totally different accent from the original, ruining its auditory aesthetic, and then say that people who don't like it are boorish and low.

> and do it in a totally different accent from the original

Take William Blake's The Tyger:

  Tyger Tyger, burning bright, 
  In the forests of the night; 
  What immortal hand or eye, 
  Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
How are we to know how the word "symmetry" was supposed to be pronounced by Blake? No-one has recorded his pronunciation. Did it rhyme with the word "eye" (as such words must have done several centuries prior) or was it a completely "eye-rhyme" (and not very good at that, either), intended to be seen as a rhyme, but not pronounced as such?

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#33

Post by thrower123 »

foldr wrote: post #28
paleotrope wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, in a way you could consider modern British English to be largely an affectation to denote class distinctions.

Because class distinctions didn't exist in 15th century Britain?! This is simply nonsense.

In 15th century England, the class distinction would be between speaking French or speaking English, not between different dialects of English.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#34

Post by foldr »

dragonwriter wrote: post #30
foldr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because class distinctions didn't exist in 15th century Britain?! This is simply nonsense.

No, just the particular fads, e.g., the one that drove the change to the non-rhoticity of RP, didn't exist in 15th century Britain. That the current accent is driven by a particular fad aimed at highlighting upper class status doesn't imply that class distinctions are novel, just the particular effort to demarcate them (which wasn't durable, obviously, as RP isn't exclusive to the upper classes.)

Sure, accents are partly markers of social status, but it's quite wrong to ascribe the diversity of accents in Britain to this. There was never a period where everyone in Britain spoke with the same accent.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#36

Post by foldr »

thrower123 wrote: post #33
foldr wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because class distinctions didn't exist in 15th century Britain?! This is simply nonsense.

In 15th century England, the class distinction would be between speaking French or speaking English, not between different dialects of English.

If you are talking about speaking French as a first language, this is false, except possibly in relation to the upper reaches of the aristocracy. If you are talking about speaking French as a second language, then this continued to be a marker of class for a long time afterwards.

In a highly class-conscious society where the vast majority of people spoke English as their first language, it seems fairly unlikely that accent would have had no connotation of social status.

It thus seems hard to believe that the development of the modern diversity of English dialects would have been spurred by some sudden need to mark class distinctions.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#38

Post by jrochkind1 »

Why would you assume that American accent(s) changed, but not British ones? Maybe it's the British accent that changed since then, not the American one, so it's not that Americans lost their British accents, but that British accents changed and American ones stayed behind.

Or of course, both probably have changed.

After reading the article -- yup, in that vein.

But I think this is an important conceptual shift for us in even what questions we ask. We are inclined to think things are much more stable than they are, especially within geographic bounds. We assume British accents must be more stable in the British geography, and it must be American accents that changed. When in fact there's no reason to have this assumption, because that's not how things work, the right question in the first place, even before you know anything, is "Why have American and British accents diverged", without assuming one was stable but not the other.

Now, the trick is realizing this applies to culture in general, not just accents or even languages. Consider how this applies to those genetic tests telling people they "are" 35% German or something and what people think this means about the stability of the category of "German" over generations...

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#39

Post by dragonwriter »

jrochkind1 wrote: post #38

Why would you assume that American accent(s) changed, but not British ones? Maybe it's the British accent that changed since then, not the American one, so it's not that Americans lost their British accents, but that British accents changed and American ones stayed behind. Or of course, both probably have changed. After reading the article -- yup, in that vein. But I think this is an important conceptual shift for us…

The first sentence of the article addresses that.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#40

Post by toyg »

david_draco wrote: post #10

I read somewhere that the American accent is closer to what British was like in the 1700-1800s. Later the Queen's family, which came from a corner of England, established its accent as the norm. So the American pronounciation is original, and the British one changed in the meantime. Not sure if this is true.

> the Queen’s family, which came from a corner of England

First time I see Germany classified as “a corner of England”, lol.

(To be fair, before the current crop, the English aristocracy spoke mainly French, and I guess France could be classed as “a corner of England” by people still a bit hung-up on the loss of Brittany...)

RP English is heavily influenced by French and Germanic tones. Local dialects are very different. I still find it hard to compare British languages with what developed in North America, where the influence of non-English-speakers was clearly massive. Isn’t it more interesting to look at Australia and South Africa, where direct links with English natives are way more recent, and still the language departed markedly...?

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