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When did Americans lose their British accents?

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Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#91

Post by School-Cotton »

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.

People say this, but I've always thought it was just another piece of pop badlinguistics nonsense that you hear about practically every language. Do you have a reliable source?

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#92

Post by xbryanx »

If you want to know a whole lot more about this, I highly recommend the book "Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America." It's a deep and long book, but super enjoyable and easy to read. It explains in much more nuance, the origins of various American accents and their roots in different historical British cultures.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#95

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

beerandt wrote: post #85
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

> Most of the complaints I've seen have to do with what he gets wrong about other languages

Bryson gets many, many details about the history of English wrong as well.

> As an introductory book to a eccentric topic though, it works. It's biggest asset, imo, is that Bryson isn't a linguist.

No, Bryson is a hack writer and does more harm than good. You make it sound as if the only alternative to Bryson is eggheaded scholarly publications. In fact, there is a wide selection of popular-science treatments of the history of English and other languages that are both reliable and friendly and accessible for ordinary readers (for example, Melvyn Bragg’s The Adventure of English does right what Bryson set out to do).

It is like with archaeology: if an ordinary person wants to learn about the Pyramids, there is no need for someone to recommend Graham Hancock to them as if otherwise they would have to read obtuse archeological-dig reports and disputes among scholars.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#96

Post by danans »

School-Cotton wrote: post #90
awb wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> places in England where "r"s at the ends of words or before consonants are pronounced, like in America but unlike in RP

Specifically in the west country of England. This accent was borrowed by Hollywood to create what we know today as the "pirate" accent.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#97

Post by Mediterraneo10 »

scoot wrote: post #87
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

My point is that that influence is not necessarily Dutch if the features in question happened in Afrikaans only after its arrival on the Cape.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#99

Post by danans »

agumonkey wrote: post #71
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.

Interesting, for some reason I found England accents to have a strong historical feel. Also not to far away from germany (saxon tribes ?)

> Interesting, for some reason I found England accents to have a strong historical feel

This is mass broadcast media playing to Americans' biases around the eliteness of English accents. This effect is at least as old as cross Atlantic broadcast media, heard until a few decades ago in the artificial Mid-Atlantic accents of the east coast elites.

On the other hand, to many in the UK, when watching a show like Game of Thrones, the Northmen sound like modern blokes from Yorkshire, not some kind of medieval people.

Re: When did Americans lose their British accents?

#100

Post by atomi »

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.

An interesting aside, the Celts descended from Iberian fishermen.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/this-britain/celts-des...

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