
When did Americans lose their British accents? - reubn
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents
======
david_draco
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.

~~~
toyg
_> 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...?

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

~~~
Mediterraneo10
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).

~~~
scoot
Hence "influence".

~~~
Mediterraneo10
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.

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jeffadotio
This is an interesting read but the article cites no sources for its claims.
Even the claims that refer to linguistics debunking other theories have no
citation.

It also makes some suspect statements. I live in New England and saying that
it is hard to find someone who does not have an accent that links them to some
New England locale is just silly. Then there is the claim that the “general
American” accent heard on TV and radio is confined to a small region in the
Midwest. That just sounds weird on its face. I imagine NPR must recruit
reporters exclusively from this region because it would be difficult to find
the accent anywhere else, according to the article. Having lived in the Deep
South, far West, rural Midwest and urban East coast I have found that regional
accents are largely overblown by articles like this.

~~~
throwaway894345
> I imagine NPR must recruit reporters exclusively from this region because it
> would be difficult to find the accent anywhere else

People can learn other accents. In the UK, there is (was?) a "BBC accent"
which presumably didn't imply that every BBC personality was hired from a
particular region.

~~~
arethuza
I think it's been a very long time since there was a "BBC accent" \- I'm in my
50s and I can remember presenters from my youth (e.g. John Noakes) with very
distinct regional accents.

Not to mention the idea of BBC Scotland all talking in RP is quite amusing...

~~~
PaulDavisThe1st
John Noakes would never have been asked to read the news.

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abjecton
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.

~~~
rootbear
When I first learned about these OP (Original Pronunciation) productions of
Shakespeare, from a BBC news article on-line, they commented that it sounded
like the English of North Carolina! If you are interested in this, I recommend
"Pronouncing Shakespeare" by David Crystal. It documents how he worked with
the Globe company on an OP performance of "Romeo and Juliet".

~~~
leoc
Nice short video featuring the Crystals, the Globe and Shakespeare's OP:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiblRSqhL04)
.

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auiya
> GenAm now considered generally confined to a small section of the Midwest

The GenAm is way more prevalent than just a small section of the Midwest. It's
all over the West coast and generally every large metro area regardless of
region. Even in regions of heavily divergent accents, like New England or the
Southeast the GenAm is quite prevalent in the cities. Atlanta for instance
isn't made up of people who all sound like Scarlett O'Hara and Houston isn't
made up of people who all sound like Boomhauer from King of the Hill.

~~~
Spooky23
I think they confused origin with practice.

GenAm is the most common accent (probably 50-65% of speakers), and was
originally (1900-1930s) associated with the migration path through
Pennsylvania/Western Mass/Upstate NY as far west as the Upper Midwest.

That pattern has changed though, and there are some shifts in these regions.

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jackfoxy
No mention of the role of Noah Webster
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue-
backed_spell...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster#Blue-
backed_speller) 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.

------
fergie
A disproportionate number of immigrants to North America from the British
Isles came from Scotland and Ireland. You can still hear that mild
Canadian/Scottish/US/Irish accents can under some circumstances be really
close.

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PaulDavisThe1st
For folks who are genuinely interested in the relationship between British and
American English, it's worth checking out

[https://theprodigaltongue.com/](https://theprodigaltongue.com/)

The author has a blog that is no longer as active as it once was:

[https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/](https://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/)

------
mullen
I highly recommend the History of English Podcast for anyone interested in
this topic:

[https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/](https://historyofenglishpodcast.com/)

~~~
Tagbert
That is a delightful and informative podcast that gives historical trends and
context to the exploration of the language.

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poulsbohemian
While there were obviously many colonials who were English speaking and thus
had an accent to lose, this article like many about that time and place in
history fails to observe that English was by no means the only language in use
and the reason we do not have an official language in this country today. My
German-speaking family arrived on this continent before the revolution and
only switched to English around 1898, as near as we can tell.

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naasking
Technically, there is no "British accent". There are many accents. Even people
who grew up in different parts of London have different accents.

~~~
OJFord
The article opens by stating that since it is 'not a book' it is addressing
only RP vs. 'General American'/'GenAm' (new to me). So that there is a wealth
of non-RP British accents - and indeed non-GenAm American - is irrelevant to a
discussion that began by setting those aside.

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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.

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umichguy
American newscasters and classic film stars sported an accent half in between
the U.S.- UK accents, also called as Transatlantic accent.

Look back at old films even as late the end of 60s and you wil hear it.

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handelaar
Erm. OK, but there is at least one Irish accent which is obviously similar to
"generic American", but of all the UK accents _none_ persist in the US, nor
vice-versa.

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war1025
I guess I don't find it terribly surprising given that a majority of
immigrants to America didn't speak English and picked it up (sometimes several
generations) later.

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slashblake
Still alive in NC:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA)

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Merrill
Class must have been important, considering that many early colonists in the
mid-Atlantic and southern colonies were shipments of prisoners and indentured
servants.

After the War of Independence, a large number of other Europeans left traces
of their languages in the regional American accents. English are not the
largest ethnic group.

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enriquto
Most likely both accents evolved independently from a common one. It makes no
sense that evolution happened only on one side.

------
otterley
(2012)

~~~
ChrisArchitect
agreed. This is not news or even recent. Stop posting stuff like this

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mjh2539
Tldr: rhoticity was the norm, but the prestige dialect became non-rhotic at a
certain point.

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hateful
TL;DR: we didn't, they did.

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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...

~~~
dragonwriter
The first sentence of the article addresses that.

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dmos62
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 English accent as if it were something you
put on to be a more convicing villain on TV.

~~~
dragonwriter
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.

~~~
dmos62
That very well may be true, but whether or not the article acknowledges that
this isn't the right question is independent of whether or not this specific
wrong question makes you cringe.

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sundarurfriend
A good, enjoyable read. It's informative while remaining concise, a quality
mainstream media articles sorely lack - if this had been a newspaper article,
it would've been nearly twice as long, with unnecessary quotes from people
with long titles (which are watered down enough to be basically content-free),
and still managed to be somewhat less informative than this one is. Reminds me
of old (and possibly current) "How Stuff Works" articles.

