TL;DR - Colonial English was different and did not sound like either modern Americans or modern Brits. If you want to skip to audio examples, go to the bottom of the post. If you want details, read on.

I have an interest in historical linguistics (I am not an academic, just a hobbyist) and I have often wondered how American colonists spoke English. This is where Ben Franklin enters.

Franklin, among a zillion other accomplishments, created a phonetic alphabet so that fellow Americans (and people in the future) would understand how he pronounced words. Franklin was born and raised in Boston, so his alphabet is probably only illustrative of Bostonian speech at the time. It seems highly likely accents varied somewhat across the colonies, probably from north to south. We see evidence of this from writers like Noah Webster who noted there were dialect differences in the 13 colonies.

Today many British people speak with "received pronunciation" which is defined mostly by how they treat "R's" after vowels. So something like "Park my car" would become "P-ahh-k mah c-aah-h." Other differences would be in words like "bath." Instead of pronouncing it like we Yanks as "b-aa-th" they say "b-ahh-th."

But most linguists agree that received pronunciation did not exist in England at the time. There is some evidence for "R dropping" but it was not widespread at all. RP wouldn't really start spreading until the Victorian era (early 1800's). So if you see movies with colonists (or the Brits) sounding like a newscaster on the BBC network, you can laugh because it's utter bullshite. No one talked like that back then.

Anyway, here's some interesting pronunciations according to Franklin:

quote:
About/Out. About was pronounced a-boat and "out" sounded more like "oat." So, yes, many American colonists sounded like Canadians, at least in this regard.

Father. This word did not rhyme with "bother." It was pronounced fae-ther (fay-ther). There are recordings from the early 1900's of rural Englishmen pronouncing this word the same way, so it survived in England longer than it did here.

Palm. Words like this did not have the "ah" sound, but would have sounded like "P-eeh-lm" and somewhat rhymed with "Pam." Another example is "spa" - this would wouldn't have been "sp-aahh" but more like "sp-eeh."

"AR" words (Arm/Large, etc). Words like this did not have the "are" sound. They would have more of an "air" sound. So arm would have been "air-rrm" and large would have been "lairr-ge."

Unrounded /wa/ -- This means words like "war" would NOT rhyme with "wore" like today. The word "war" would rhyme with "ware" or "air." We have other evidence for this besides Franklin. There is a poem written at the time that rhymes the words "war" and "air." (Doesn't rhyme today, but it did then).

High/Price/Kite/Fight (etc.) -- These words had a different vowel sound. High would have sounded more like "Hoi", price more like "pr-oi-ce", Kite more like "k-oi-t", and fight more like "f-oi-t." There are some good ole baws that live on the "outer banks" of North Carolina and on the islands of Virginia (Tangier Island) who still pronounce those vowels this way. Their accent is dying fast, though.

"OW" words like Power/Tower/Flower, etc - These words did not sound like "Pie-wer" but more like "pooo-wer." Another example would be the word "endowed" - it sounded like "en-doe-d."

Line-Loin merger: These words would have sounded the same. "My essay was 56 loins long." You must be careful here, because "line" wouldn't have been quite as rounded as "loin" but it would sound much closer to loin than it does to our modern "line."

Horse-Hoarse: These words were not homonyms and did not rhyme. Horse sounded sorta like "hah-ss" while hoarse sounded basically like it does now.

"AI" words - Stain/Pain/Rain, etc. -- Franklin makes it clear that "stain" was pronounced "steen." He also says words like "fair" were pronounced "feer."

R sounds -- Franklin actually says that many R's were trilled with "vibration." This means a lot of R's would have been pronounced like modern Scotsmen pronounce them. In other words, many R's would have (almost) been rolled.

Conclusion:

Anyone who has paid attention might notice something right away. The colonists (and a lot of British) would have sounded like pirates. So, you might hear "We're going to wair on the hoi seas against the British. They have a lairge fleet heading our way, mateys, but we will take great peehns to kick them oat of our lands."

Oh, and why do we associate such speech with pirates anyway? Well it's because the actor on Treasure Island (Robert Newton) was from the West Country of England which has a strong accent itself. But Newton, in preparing for his role, visited some remote fishing villages off the coast of Wales and listened to the old local speech. The West Country (still today) is considered old fashioned in their speech and actually made fun of as being "hicks."

Some people also comment that it sounds Irish. This is true, but it's NOT because of Irish influence on the colonies (not many Irish were around then). No, it's simply a fact that England itself would have sounded somewhat Irish back then (Ireland has simply retained an older way of speaking).

Examples and sources:

There is a linguist who studied Franklin's alphabet and pronunciations and decided to read the Declaration of Independence in the dialect. It's very interesting: Soundcloud

He also read a poem in mid 1700's English as spoken in London at the time. It sounds very similar to Franklin: LINK

I took most of my information from a blog post written by a professional linguist. You can read her post for a lot more technical of an explanation: LINK