
Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? - icey
http://www.nicholasjohnpatrick.com/post/767354896/did-americans-in-1776-have-british-accents
======
mahmud
Which explains why we can understand Aussies and Kiwis, but a random Nigel
from the UK would have a speech that baffles. It boggles the mind how two
people from different corners of London have different accents. Not to mention
Manc vs Scouser vs the myriads of tongue-twisting nasal hiccups uttered all
over them Shires.

It's like they almost take pride in differentiation. Throw an international
party and the two UKians that show up will have a verbal civil war that puts
us Somalis to shame. The shopkeepers maintain their peace with healthy and
frequent exchange of muted disdain and murmured resentment. That's, when the
other ethnic tonsils are not being inflamed (Scotts, Welsh, and the verile
Manx; consciously absent are the clover-wielding gentlemen of the east, left
out of the union for my own safety, and to keep membership of my drinking
club.)

All good people though. Except the Chavs; a meta-culture of mediocrity that
belongs on the next boat leaving for America, to plug the Gulf oil well.

[Edit:

Oh, this seems to have offended someone, most likely a fellow yank. No need to
be a hero; piss-taking is a national past-time of the Isles, and its cultural
debris scattered around the world, outside the U.S (we have escaped the wit
shrapnels I guess) I have deliberately disclosed my own heritage within that
rant above, expecting to be paid in kind ;-) When in doubt, stay out of it.
It's a bonding experience]

~~~
ErrantX
Try being a Brit _without_ an accent. It's so bloody boring I have to fake the
Queens English to get laid. ;)

~~~
zalew
Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football
Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool; while every Brit I've met in my
life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable (sorry, no
offence)? Actors of international-targetted movies use some other accent for a
certain effect?

Also, once I've met a guy AFAIR south London or sth, he spoke that his wife
told me even most of Brits don't get him (it was an accent, not just that he
was mumbling).

~~~
ErrantX
_Enlighten me, what's the the British accent popular in movies like Football
Factory, Human Traffic etc. which I find cool_

They will be London accents; of which there is quite a broad range anyway. It
can be a pretty strong accent.

* while every Brit I've met in my life had this 'royal' accent I personally don't find understandable*

Queens English should be pretty understandable; so it might not be what you've
heard (the whole point of it is precise pronunciation and erudition). "Normal"
baseline English can vary quite a lot; down in the south they tend to clip
words (my mother does this) and, if speaking quickly, it can be hard to
follow.

We also have a tendancy to mumble :)

~~~
zalew
Once I was on a trip and landed with a British family in one car, couldn't
understand a word, it was sth like (hard to write it) "Ncaaaw, intt!" and took
me 2 times repeat and focusing hard to get it was "Nice car, isn't it?". And
the whole family was talking like that all the time.

It wasn't any Scottish (this one I recognize). I have no problem understanding
and talking to most Brits, Americans, Canadians, but sometimes you (Brits)
really surprise me :D

~~~
ErrantX
Yeh, that's certainly not a common British accent or dialect.

I can't place it exactly but it sounds like a London or non-posh southern
accent.

------
Rod
Interestingly, it's also hypothesized that Brazilian Portuguese is closer to
Portuguese proper 500 years ago than Portuguese proper today. The fact that
the Portuguese spoken in former Portuguese colonies in Africa sounds more
Brazilian Portuguese than Portuguese proper suggests the hypothesis is right.
Moreover, Portuguese poetry of the Renaissance period only makes sense
phonetically if spoken with a Brazilian accent, which further strengthens the
hypothesis.

~~~
nandemo
For what is worth, African Portuguese sounds more like European Portuguese to
us Brazilians.

 _Portuguese poetry of the Renaissance period only makes sense phonetically if
spoken with a Brazilian accent_

In this case I wonder which Brazilian accent? I guess it would be Rio accent
or some Northeastern accent.

In case anyone is curious the hear the differences, this page contains
recordings of a Portuguese sentence spoken by people of several different
areas:

[http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/audio/compare-
accents.ht...](http://www.learningportuguese.co.uk/audio/compare-accents.html)

~~~
euccastro
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>

~~~
bocajuniors
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?

~~~
euccastro
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.

------
intellectronica
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 entirely possible that some of them were
non-rhotic still before the stipulated "divergence" began. While in England,
accents that are mostly non-rhotic were the most common, America had a large
community of immigrants from Ireland, where the accent is rhotic, from
southern Germany, where the accent is rhotic, and from many non-English
speaking countries (learners of English as a foreign language often default to
rhotic pronunciation since it's closer to the way the words are written). Most
importantly, there isn't such a thing as a British accent, but there is (with
only minor variation) such a thing as an American accent. 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.

~~~
jawngee
> 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.

------
nickpatrick
Hey everyone, I'm the author of the post. I'm a longtime HN lurker, so I was
very excited to see it shared here. I've really enjoyed reading the
discussion.

A quick disclaimer: I have zero background in linguistics. The only materials
I used for research were Wikipedia and Google Books
(<http://books.google.com/books?id=ia5tHVtQPn8C>). Moreover, this is nothing
more than a short post on my personal blog. So, don't expect an academic paper
on the subject. ;)

Anyway, thanks for reading!

~~~
joshkaufman
Thanks for writing - forwarded this to a famous dialect professor. Here's what
he added to your analysis: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723>

------
joe_the_user
As I recall from an article in Time a while back, the Southern American accent
is the most authentic representative of the pre-revolutionary war accent. The
Northern American accent has been changed more by waves of immigrants
(especially those coming in the 1890-1920).

I've heard that the French-Canadian accent is closer to pre-Revolutionary
French as well.

It seems that those areas with the least upheavals are where language stays
the most constant.

~~~
stan_rogers
Canadian French is actually close to what is (or was, at least until shortly
after WWII) spoken in Normandy. Our soldiers were better able to communicate
with the locals on D-Day than even the Free French.

"Standard" French was once just the local dialect of Isle-de-France, a small
region including Paris, but "French", even in France today, is but a loose
collection of mutually-comprehensible dialects. Canadian French has its own
little quirks, though, in that it had to create its own vocabulary not only
for the uniquely North American flora, fauna and landscape, but also for new
items of technology that emerged while we were almost without communication
with France. F'rinstance, to the French ear, a French Canadian would seem to
indicate that he had just created a park (in the public gardens sense) out of
his tank (armoured and armed military vehicle) rather than that he'd just
parked his car.

~~~
saint-loup
>>> but "French", even in France today, is but a loose collection of mutually-
comprehensible dialects.

That's simply not the case. A lot of effort has been made by the French
Republic to spread the standard french language (mandatory school with class
in french, even for kids speaking regional dialects). Nowadays, there are
still local expressions and idioms, but the vocabulary is quite homogeneous.

------
wooster
Well, there's Tangier, Virginia:

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E>

Which has an accent thought to have remained unchanged since Colonial times.

------
davidedicillo
I always been fascinated by accents and dialects, coming from a very young
country like Italy, built on top of thousands of city-states, where it's
enough to drive 30 minutes to encounter a completely different dialect and
culture.

~~~
bocajuniors
I read somewhere that before 1960 less than 50% of italians spoke Italian.

~~~
davidw
Here in the Veneto, the former Republic of Venice, the dialect is still very
alive and well, and in many situations is more prevalent than Italian. And it
really is quite different than Italian in many ways:

"She's a beautiful girl"

Italian: E` una bella ragazza.

Venetian Dialect (at least one version of it): Xe na bea tosa.

Lots of words change, and even the grammar a bit. Indeed, with many italian
"dialects" it's quite likely that they evolved from Latin on their own, rather
than there being some standard "Italian" that then diverged.

It's really amazing, too, how much it changes over short distances - I can't
hear it myself, I don't speak it that well, but you can ride an hour by
_bicycle_ from here and people recognize that you're from over there...

Edit: another good bit of dialect would be appropriate for the comment by
Mark_Book below, "xe un mona".

~~~
davidedicillo
Another good example is Bergamo, a city on the side of the Alps, where people
from higher part of the town has a different dialect from the people on the
lower one.

On top of developing independently from the Latin, the dialects where heavily
influenced by the different dominations each part of Italy had. North-west
dialects for example have a strong French influence while in south Italy the
influence is more Spanish.

------
liedra
I think Australia will be an interesting country to watch accent-wise. At the
moment there are very obvious "city" (closer to British non-rhotic) vs.
"country" (Steve Irwin) accents, but it's much harder to tell which city and
which part of the country any particular Aussie is from. Considering the
distances needed to travel between towns and cities, it'll be interesting to
see if, over time, these accents become more localised or if (due to easy
transport, etc.) they remain fairly indistinguishable.

~~~
brc
There are a few clues. Queenslanders will say 'castle' with a short 'a',
rhyming with hassle. South Australians will always elongate the 'a' -
'caarstle'. Then there's the dialect differences - Victorians will go to the
'milk bar' to get some milk. Queenslanders will pack a 'port' to go
travelling.

It's true, though, it wasn't until I lived overseas that I could start to pick
up the differences. And as for the city/country difference, I would say it is
more a function of education level than geography.

That said, I think there will be no more divergence in Australian accents
because of high population mobility and nationalised TV broadcasting.

~~~
liedra
Yeah, I totally agree. You can tell some areas, most definitely! I grew up in
Sydney and can tell Melburnians, partly because they can have a bit more of a
nasal accent than us from Sydney. I bumped into some people from the Sunshine
Coast today in Luxembourg and they had quite a Queensland accent (a la Pauline
Hanson) but I couldn't really tell you what about it made it particularly
Queenslandery. (The different names for things definitely makes it more
obvious, but since we're talking about accents I didn't mention those :)

I do agree also on the city/country difference being education, you can
definitely hear the "country" accent in the outer suburbs of Sydney, for
example. Still, it's the best way I could really describe the two, since
that's more traditionally where they're from :)

------
settrans
> What is surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to
> today’s American accents than to today’s British accents. While both have
> changed over time, it’s actually British accents that have changed much more
> drastically since then.

He claims that RP has diverged much more than American English, but only goes
on to support this claim with the divergence of the (r) variable. Any other
variables that characterize the innovations of RP since American and British
English divergence?

~~~
rgrieselhuber
I remember hearing that there was a concerted effort in England (initiated by
some Queen) sometime after Shakespeare to modify the way that vowels were
pronounced and that this was largely responsible for the divergence we hear
today. I did a little searching but couldn't find anything. Any links would be
appreciated.

~~~
chc
I'm pretty sure you're thinking of the Great Vowel Shift, but as far as we
know that occurred naturally, not as a direct result of any royal dictate. At
any rate, it was basically over by the time the American colonies got going.
The oldest colonies might have been affected to some degree, but my (strictly
amateurish) feeling is that it doesn't really fit as the main explanation
(except in that the English accent was shown to be exceptionally malleable at
the time).

~~~
gcv
Just to add to this, the Great Vowel Shift happened at around the time of
Chaucer, which is why it takes a slight mental adjustment to read his text
(well worth it though, the guy is hilarious once you get on his wavelength).
Shakespeare used modern English.

~~~
anatoly
The Great Vowel Shift happened after Chaucer, but was mostly complete by
Shakespeare's time. One important change in vowels that didn't happen yet by
Shakespeare's time was the unrounding of short u, that is, the modern sound in
words like cut, but, knuckle, lust, blood, etc. All those words sounded like
"put" during Shakespeare's time, and of course move/love was a real rhyme.

------
sgt
Here in SA we are very proud of how much better (and some may say more poetic)
Afrikaans sounds than Dutch. But hey, that is a very subjective opinion indeed
:-)

~~~
liedra
As a non-Dutch speaker living in Belgium, I find Flemish much nicer to listen
to than "real" Dutch too. :-)

~~~
bvi
Is there really that much of a difference between Flemish and Dutch?

~~~
Yaa101
Most people mistake "Brabantian" with "Flemish" Flemish is spoken in East and
West Flanders and sounds very much like Hollands, which is the dutch dialect
spoken in the west of The Netherlands. This is not strange as it were Flanders
monks that started to cultivate the peat bogs in the west of the Netherlands
round 850 - 900 AD. In most other parts of dutch speaking Belgium they speak
Brabantian or Limburgish (cross between Brabantian and Lower Saxon) which has
a soft G and a lot of it is hard to understand for people of western
Netherlands, but not hard for the people living in Dutch Brabant or Limburg,
likewise the north eastern provinces in The Netherlands they speak "Nieder
Saksisch" (Lower Saxon) which is closer to German than to Dutch. Like Belgium
The Netherlands is situated exactly on the border of of 2 main language areas
that is Lower Frankish and Lower Saxon. We have many crossing dialects between
those 2 language groups and many people cannot understand each other when
speaking in their native dialect, that is why the standardization of languages
is so strong here. I live in Amsterdam and can understand Flemish without any
trouble but when listening to somebody talking in dialect from Antwerpen where
they have Brabants dialects it sound like they speak Russian or Chinese, no
kidding.

Hollands and Flemish come from Middle Dutch which is exactly the same Language
Group as Middle English.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Dutch>

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_english>

------
jackfoxy
This article's explanation is a little too curt. I think regional American
accents at the time of the Revolution matched up better with certain regional
British accents explains it a little better. For a more in depth study of not
just accents, but the micro English speaking cultures that came to make up the
United States I recommend "The Cousins' Wars: Religion, Politics, Civil
Warfare, And The Triumph Of Anglo-America" by Kevin Phillips.
[http://www.amazon.com/Cousins-Wars-Religion-Politics-
Anglo-A...](http://www.amazon.com/Cousins-Wars-Religion-Politics-Anglo-
America/dp/0465013708)

------
pbz
(I apologize for my ignorance, but) without audio recording how can we know
what the accents were back then?

~~~
eru
Spelling gives some hints. One technique is to look for common spelling
mistakes. An especially interesting mistake is hypercorrection
(<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypercorrection>).

For example, there was a time when the K in words like "knee" and "knight"
became silent. We can pinpoint this time by looking for Ks in front of words,
that never used to start with K. The writer doesn't pronounce the K in "kn"
any longer, but remembers that proper spelling has a K for some words. Since
pronunciation doesn't help, she has to rote learn those words. And
occasionally will make a mistake.

Another one, especially in fairly recent times, is too look for prescriptive
texts, that lament this or that development in the language.

~~~
barrkel
You can also pick up clues in rhyming, jokes, slang and puns that wouldn't
otherwise make sense.

~~~
hugh3
Just a couple of examples I happened to come across while researching for
another comment:

In _Julius Caesar_ , Shakespeare makes a pun which only works if "Rome" is
pronounced like "room".

Also, in _Henry IV, Part One_ , there's a pun resting on the similarity of
"reason" and "raisin".

~~~
barrkel
In parts of Ireland, you'll still hear "reason" pronounced much like "raisin"
is in much of the UK.

------
philwelch
From the article:

 _Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and
British accents hadn’t yet diverged. That’s not too surprising._

Really? Because that surprises the hell out of me. Americans were an ocean
away from Britain for maybe a century before 1776, and the accents still
hadn't diverged?

~~~
sprout
Most of the population growth was fed by immigration, and most Americans
traded regularly with British merchants even after 1776.

~~~
stoney
But as mentioned elsewhere, there was (and is) no one "British" accent - so
the immigrants would have had quite a mix of accents.

------
russell
I always thought that northern New England was the closest to the original
English. Why else would we subject ourselves to such ridicule from the rest of
the country?

~~~
btilly
Several hundred years ago England had different dialects in different parts of
the country.

New England was settled by a different group of English than various parts of
the South. Therefore the dialects were already different before they came
here.

------
joeyo
Considering that the Declaration of Independence was published virtually
simultaneously in German (July 9) as well as English (July 5), the accents in
1776 were probably quite varied.

------
allend
Does this mean Kevin Costner didn't actually have a ridiculous accent in Robin
Hood?

~~~
hugh3
Well, the Robin Hood stories are set about five centuries earlier, so I don't
think anybody knows how things were pronounced back then. If you wanted a
verbally authentic version of Robin Hood then it would be in a version of
English closer to Chaucer's than Shakespeare's, and it would be almost
completely incomprehensible.

------
thinker
I'd agree with the analysis that English is closer to how its spoken in the US
today accent-wise. If you look at how people speak English in British
colonies, the pronunciation isn't heavily accented to how its spoken in the UK
today. For example, South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh).

~~~
intellectronica
I don't think this is relevant, since speakers in Asia rarely speak English as
their mother tongue. Whatever accent they have is due to the sources they've
been exposed to. Well educated speakers in India and Pakistan, for example,
usually speak with an accent that is quite closed to RP. Other speakers often
learn their pronunciation from American movies.

~~~
bbgm
Agreed. Many of us who do speak English as a first language ( or are very
fluent in it) are definitely closer to RP but for those who pick it up TV etc
have a huge influence and that is getting more American

~~~
Scriptor
It's interesting how South Asian English uses many British words as well (such
as "dustbin" instead of the American "trashcan"). I was young enough to
relearn the American words when I moved to the US. However, it's still the
British words that I use when English occasionally pops up in my native
language.

~~~
andrewf
Australians tend to use a funny mishmash.

Cars have boots (not the American trunks), but they're smaller than trucks
(not the British lorries).

------
DanielBMarkham
"England and America are two countries divided by a common language" - George
Bernard Shaw

------
brc
A good book which also covers this (and is quite entertaining) is Mother
Tongue by Bill Bryson.

[http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-
Bryson/dp/038071543...](http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-
Bryson/dp/0380715430)

------
goatforce5
Melvyn Bragg (who is in possession of a beautiful accent himself) has done a
large number of BBC radio programmes on the recent evolution of the english
language, accents, etc.

Routes of English: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/>

------
kmfrk
If you are interested in the subject, you should check out Origins of the
Specious: [http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions-
Englis...](http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions-English-
Language/dp/1400066603/). It also addresses this.

------
joshkaufman
Here's a follow-up to this post by Rocco Dal Vera, a world-renowned dialect
expert: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723>

------
motters
It's an amusing thought that a couple of centuries ago we were all talking
like Americans. It just goes to show that accents, like everything else, are
subject to fashion.

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

------
Mark_Book
Can someone tell me when did english people start pronouncing sixth with a k
instead of an x. I've only noticed this phenomenon this decade. It's almost as
irritating as pronouncing 'three' as 'free' which at least has the merit of
being easier to say

~~~
pbhjpbhj
>It's almost as irritating as pronouncing 'three' as 'free' which at least has
the merit of being easier to say

Free vs Three has been a constant battle for me. I found these extremely
difficult to differentiate aurally and three very hard to make orally. This
was a constant source of me being corrected throughout school.

British people can certainly tell the difference and I've learnt it well
enough to make the difference in pronunciation and to hear it enough to teach
it to my son and correct him - he doesn't appear to have my problem with it
(he's in infant school).

Chav English and other dialects ignore the difference.

------
korch
Canada too! Their English speakers sound subtly more British than American.

The New World-Old World divergence also applies to French speakers in Quebec.
If you take their perfect French from Montreal to Paris, to the Parisians much
of it sounds like an antiquated form of French. I suppose it's equivalent to
the way King James or Shakespearean English sounds antiquated to us now.

~~~
stan_rogers
Well, until recently we've managed to avoid the vowel flattening and raising
that has been pretty much a constant throughout the US since independence.
We're accused of saying "oot", "aboot" and "hoose", but what we hear from our
neighbours to the south is "aot", "abaot" and "haose" -- the vowel being a
tail-rounded flat "a" to the Canadian ear. (We use the same vowel in "house",
the verb form, which is distinguished in Canadian speach by more than just the
zeddifying of the ess.)

That being said, one shouldn't be deceived into thinking that there is a
single Canadian English dialect or accent -- we have a number of regional
variants. The upper crust of both Ontario and Quebec (the former Upper and
Lower Canada) both spoke with an essentially North American vocabulary and a
"mid-Atlantic" accent (the sort of halfway meeting between RP and mid-American
that, say, Deutche Welle would use for its English-language world news
service). The lower classes in the same provinces were, like the American
south, far more heavily influenced by Cornish, Kentish, Geordie, Scots and
Scottish and Irish gaelic -- but without the black feedback loop. Nova Scotia
has several accents, ranging from the heavily Gaelic Cape Breton to the German
Lunenberg. Newfoundland "English" is a language of its own -- the accent is a
Gaelic-heavy mix, but the grammar is very much Irish Gaelic. British Columbia
speaks an odd mix of SoCal and Pacific Northwest with a tiny tinge of RP in
the mix. Manitoba and Saskatchewan are essentially indistinguishable from
rural Pennsylvania, but for an odd metre that leaked in from the local
aboriginal languages. And, well, Alberta is a State at heart -- I don't think
an American would have any difficulty picking out the new economic immigrants
to that province from the natives in a sentence or two. There is a lot of
overlap between political borders, of course, but there are several distinct
regional dialects.

