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Did British-English once sound American? An amateur YouTube linguist answers the question
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:36 am
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:36 am
Simon Roper is an excellent follow for those of you who are interested in the development of the English language over the centuries. In this video he explores the British-English accent most commonly associated with London from 2023 and takes it all the way back to 1673.
For those of you who want the answer posited in the OP: yes, kinda. By the time the video gets to 1773 you start to hear traces of the modern American accent in the British-English of the late-18th century. It becomes even more distinct in the 1723 version of the accent.
YouTube
For those of you who want the answer posited in the OP: yes, kinda. By the time the video gets to 1773 you start to hear traces of the modern American accent in the British-English of the late-18th century. It becomes even more distinct in the 1723 version of the accent.
YouTube
This post was edited on 2/27/24 at 6:49 am
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:46 am to RollTide1987
Fun fact also….English Ebonics/slang was invented by whites
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:52 am to RollTide1987
Not really but the British accent is entirely fake and was taught in school as proper pronunciation. There are many variations, however, as regional differences developed as well.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:53 am to RollTide1987
I refuse to believe that any member of the British royalty ever sounded like someone from modern day Backwoods Alabama.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:55 am to East Coast Band
But they did
The non rhotic “I cahn’t believe how fah away you ah” just randomly became vogue in London in the early 1800s iirc.
So yes. They did.
The non rhotic “I cahn’t believe how fah away you ah” just randomly became vogue in London in the early 1800s iirc.
So yes. They did.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 6:56 am to Landmass
quote:
the British accent is entirely fake
What do you mean by this?
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:03 am to East Coast Band
quote:
I refuse to believe that any member of the British royalty ever sounded like someone from modern day Backwoods Alabama.
An old southern accent is as close to a British accent as anything in America ever has been
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:17 am to East Coast Band
quote:
I refuse to believe that any member of the British royalty ever sounded like someone from modern day Backwoods Alabama
I mean, the incest is pretty similar
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:24 am to lsufball19
quote:
An old southern accent is as close to a British accent as anything in America ever has been
It's pretty well known that Brit actors find the Southern Accent to be the easiest to transition into
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:26 am to RollTide1987
It is not well known but Appalachian English is the closest living dialect in the world today to queens English. It is not an exact duplicate but it is closer to any English dialect is to actual English.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:28 am to East Coast Band
quote:
I refuse to believe that any member of the British royalty ever sounded like someone from modern day Backwoods Alabama.
Its pretty close. It is not an exact duplicate and is disappearing even in remote Appalachia but it is the closest existing dialect to actual English.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:31 am to East Coast Band
quote:
I refuse to believe that any member of the British royalty ever sounded like someone from modern day Backwoods Alabama.
It sounded more like a pirate than modern American English. That being said, the royals largely spoke French amongst themselves until the 1800s*
ETA: I was off by about 400 years...
This post was edited on 2/27/24 at 8:10 am
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:39 am to RollTide1987
Check out High Tider accents from the Outer Banks. Weird mashup of Southern and English...guessing that's pretty close to the OG accent of the settlers there.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:41 am to RollTide1987
I never thought I had an accent until I lived un MN for a while and they all told me I did. They all thought it was Southern. I still don't hear it.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:42 am to Bama Bird
quote:
That being said, the royals largely spoke French amongst themselves until the 1800s
Wrong.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:43 am to HempHead
quote:
Check out High Tider accents from the Outer Banks. Weird mashup of Southern and English...guessing that's pretty close to the OG accent of the settlers there.
Sad that these regional accents are quickly dying out. We're all going to sound like we're from fricking Ohio within a couple more generations.
This post was edited on 2/27/24 at 7:44 am
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:47 am to Bama Bird
quote:
the royals largely spoke French amongst themselves until the 1800s
Nah. From Henry V (1413-1422) onwards the British monarchs all spoke English. William of Orange (from the Netherlands) ruled England with his wife Mary from 1689 until his death in 1702, but likely spoke fluent English. George I (1714-1727) is the only monarch since the 15th century who didn't understand a lick of English (he spoke German), though his son George II (1727-1760) was a heavy German speaker as well.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:48 am to RollTide1987
The received pronunciation (RP) is considered proper British speech (what some people call "posh"). I think we all know what that sounds like (pretty much like the Queen or most British actors/TV presenters).
No one talked like that when America was settled because it didn't really exist. Remember, America was settled from 1600-1780 or so. (After the Revolution, Brits more or less stopped migrating here, so our dialects began diverging at about that point. We started taking on Germans and Irish as our main immigrant source in the 1800's).
In the 1950's some British researchers did a dialect study in rural parts of England. They found elderly people (because the elderly will have the oldest accents) and interviewed them. Most of them were born between the 1870's-1890's. There was one man who sounded like he was from the American south. Another old lady sounded like she was almost from Appalachia. And these were people who had never been to the U.S. and never were exposed to American media. They didn't sound exactly like southerners, but you can definitely tell that the southern accent was from England and didn't just crop up here out of nowhere.
There are people in the "Outer Banks" of NC and on Tangier Island who still speak old dialects. If you listen, all of them have Canadian raising (despite being a long way from Canada). They say aboot and hoose. This means that those kinds of vowel shifts were likely widespread in the US and England back in those days. Another thing they do is they pronounce words like "side" or "hide" as "soid" or "hoid." They pronounce all their R's just like all Americans. In fact, their R's are really enunciated hard to the point that they sound like Pirates.
So colonial Americans probably sounded like a mix of Pirates and Appalachia, depending on where you settled.
No one talked like that when America was settled because it didn't really exist. Remember, America was settled from 1600-1780 or so. (After the Revolution, Brits more or less stopped migrating here, so our dialects began diverging at about that point. We started taking on Germans and Irish as our main immigrant source in the 1800's).
In the 1950's some British researchers did a dialect study in rural parts of England. They found elderly people (because the elderly will have the oldest accents) and interviewed them. Most of them were born between the 1870's-1890's. There was one man who sounded like he was from the American south. Another old lady sounded like she was almost from Appalachia. And these were people who had never been to the U.S. and never were exposed to American media. They didn't sound exactly like southerners, but you can definitely tell that the southern accent was from England and didn't just crop up here out of nowhere.
There are people in the "Outer Banks" of NC and on Tangier Island who still speak old dialects. If you listen, all of them have Canadian raising (despite being a long way from Canada). They say aboot and hoose. This means that those kinds of vowel shifts were likely widespread in the US and England back in those days. Another thing they do is they pronounce words like "side" or "hide" as "soid" or "hoid." They pronounce all their R's just like all Americans. In fact, their R's are really enunciated hard to the point that they sound like Pirates.
So colonial Americans probably sounded like a mix of Pirates and Appalachia, depending on where you settled.
Posted on 2/27/24 at 7:51 am to RollTide1987
The British accent is contrived.
Proof- ISA was mostly established by English speaking people from England yet we don’t have their accent.
Proof- ISA was mostly established by English speaking people from England yet we don’t have their accent.
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