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When did Americans lose their British accents?

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Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#81

Post by ajmurmann »

oblio wrote: post #13
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.

There is be a certain degree of irony to English going through the Great Vowel Shift† ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Vowel_Shift ) and then having a German dynasty which manages to distort the language again††. † Which made English less-Germanic sounding, at least to my ears. †† In my humble opinion modern British English sounds marginally more Germanic than American English.

The great vowel shift needs to be taught much more. Native English speakers commonly default to not taking the great vowel shift into account when encountering a new language. They'd be so much closer to the correct pronunciation by just pronouncing it like it was a word from any language other than English they might already know a little.

This should be one of the first things that gets hammered home when learning the first foreign language.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#82

Post by toyg »

jcranmer wrote: post #73
toyg wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 differ…

> (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...) Normandy, not Brittany. Brittany was never part of the English crown, and it was independent from the French crown for a long time as well (de jure not until the French Revolution, although it was de facto part of Fr…

> Normandy, not Brittany.

Fair point. In my head the two tend to merge into an unicuum, but that's not the case.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#83

Post by fredgrott »

toyg wrote: post #40
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 differ…

also by Danish..where do you think Anglo came from? yes, the term is Roman for what they called brits but the actual group that was not Saxon(Saxon ie German Saxony) came from the middle of Denmark..

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#84

Post by awb »

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.

> I read somewhere that the American accent is closer to what British was like in the 1700-1800s.

Wouldn't you then expect a small isolated town in England to still have an "American" accent?

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#85

Post by beerandt »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #63
beerandt wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Mother Tongue by Bill Bryson covers this pretty well. Along with covering many other quirks of the English language. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29.The_Mother_Tongue

Bill Bryson has no actual training in linguistics and The Mother Tongue features at least one factual error on every single page. (Some Goodreads reviews list these.) I would never recommend that book to any curious reader, it is as bad as pop-sci could possibly get.

Most of the complaints I've seen have to do with what he gets wrong about other languages, and often in the way that locals are offended when you misuse a localism. Or in the way a physicist complains about a grade schooler being wrong because their answer used the Bohr model.

As an introductory book to a eccentric topic though, it works.

It's biggest asset, imo, is that Bryson isn't a linguist, and manages to make some obtuse concepts relatable, without getting bogged down in technicalities. Similar to what Michael Crichton could do with cutting edge sciences. (Granted, he kept mostly to fiction.)

Whereas the most basic begginer's article written by a linguist is still indecipherable to me. And linguists seem to be ok, or even happy, about that.

Linguists writing about a linguistic Lockheed A-12 would be aghast that anyone could ever mistake it for an SR-71, let alone be willing to explain the differences to the casual observer, or even make the mental effort to see how someone might mistake the two.

So as an engineer that hates the casual misuse of technical terms, I get you. But like the model of the atom, sometimes teaching the simplified but wrong model has its benefits for a certain crowd, until they're ready to go deeper.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#86

Post by jackfoxy »

toyg wrote: post #40
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 differ…

I thought primary Norman French speaking died out with the Plantagenets. I'm sure almost all the royals after the first few Plantagentes were at least bilingual in English/French. George I could not speak English IIRC. His first language was German. Do you have a reference for the Tudors and later houses speaking primarily French? James I (of England, VI of Scotland), yep, I'll believe that without reference.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#87

Post by scoot »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #62
scoot wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The South African accent has a much stronger Dutch influence (from Afrikaans), despite the language being English.

Not quite that simple. Yes, SA English follows after certain features of Afrikaans, but some of those Afrikaans features were local innovations, not brought from the Netherlands (centralization of /i/ is one example).

Hence "influence".

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#88

Post by jackfoxy »

No mention of the role of Noah Webster https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue-backed_spell... in standardizing American grammar and spelling, and probably trickling down to bringing pronunciations closer together across the states and regions. Sure spelling is after the pronunciation fact, but his work must have had an influence on standardizing pronunciation.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#89

Post by jeromegv »

thefringthing wrote: post #18
jaratec wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not sure about these "facts". Why would quebec accent stay the same for centuries? Languages are unstable, especially their pronunciation. Consider also the extraordinary diversity of accents in uk. Did only one cross the Atlantic?

It's possible for both dialects to evolve, but at different rates. Present-day Quebecois French is not identical to 17th century French, but it's closer to it than present-day Parisian French is.

You can't just make that kind of statement as a fact without providing any kind of source. Read any text from 17th century, languages have evolved quite a bit on both sides of the atlantic. One big reason why Parisian french would be quite different is that colonization to New France did not come from Paris.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#90

Post by School-Cotton »

awb wrote: post #84
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.

> I read somewhere that the American accent is closer to what British was like in the 1700-1800s. Wouldn't you then expect a small isolated town in England to still have an "American" accent?

No, because that town's accent will have been changing since 1700, too.

But you definitely find, for example, places in England where "r"s at the ends of words or before consonants are pronounced, like in America but unlike in RP.

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