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Did Americans in 1776 have British accents?
- settrans 16y ago> 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 16y agoI 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 16y agoI'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 16y agoJust 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 16y agoThe 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.
- anatoly 16y agoYeah, there're many. Here're a few examples: - the gas/pass divide: in many British accents pass is pronounced like 'pahs', but gas retains the same vowel as in American accents. gas and pass will basically always rhyme in America, but in Britain it'll depend on where you are. In RP they won't rhyme. In the 18th century, it was the same sound everywhere, the one Americans retained. - the long o, in words like go, home, etc. changed in many British accents from [ou] to [eu]. If you can imagine a very "British", RP pronunciation of home, that's the difference you hear.
- mahmud 16y agoWhich 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]
- wwortiz 16y agoYour typing comes off with a very thick accent, something you don't find often online.
- detst 16y agoRight, but which one? He says "us Somalis", "...the U.S (we...", mentions in his profile that he lives in Northern Virginia but also calls Sydney home yet the diction (i.e. "shopkeepers", "Chavs", "piss-taking", etc.) of his post screams British to me.
- mahmud 16y agoNapoleon called the English "a nation of shopkeepers".
- joe_the_user 16y agoAs 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.
- astine 16y agoI wouldn't describe the American South as having had few upheavals. It's actually had more than most places in the United States. Though, I would agree that it's had fewer lninguistic influences than other regions of the country.
- ghostwunder 16y agoshow me the fuckin receipts. fewer linguistic influences? between the french, dutch, spanish, portuguese, central african, west african, native americans, and british there are very few places in the world that have such of an unique stew of languages. safire died but the knowledge of american language did not die with him. upheavels? thats another post. but lets refrain from throwing around ignorant barbs and passing them as facts.
- keefe 16y agoangry poster is angry... immigration into the south is much less than the east/west coast, populations are still lower, less immigration, less languages, less influence?
- dtegart 16y agoNot to mention being influenced by French, Spanish, Portuguese, English, West African and native languages is hardly unique amongst the world's former colonies.
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- Rod 16y agoInterestingly, 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.
- jacquesm 16y agoSame for Spanish, Spanish as spoken in Colombia is very crisp and precise, Spanish spoken in Spain much less so.
- barredo 16y agoAlso, like in UK, you can find like twenty different accents only in Spain. Even in Canary Islands, with 7 main islands, have huge difference between them. Not to speak of Catalonia, Basque Country, Andalusia, Madrid, Zaragoza or Galicia (closer to Portuguese). Spain has now 6 official and co-official languages: Castilian/Spanish, Catalan/Valencian (Catalonia, Balearic Islands, Valencia, South of France), Basque (Basque Country and Navarra —Pamplona—, South of France), Galician (Galician and nortwest Castille), and Asturian (Asturias/Leon) and then Occitan (North Aragon, North Catalonia, South of France). Also, in Melilla and Ceuta (Spanish cities in North Africa) there are two "branches" of arab that are in the process of becoming co-official, "dariya" or "moroccan arab" in Ceuta and "tamazig", some sort of antique Bereber language in Melilla. So, that's 8 languages, also Portuguese and a myriad different accents in a peninsula with less the area of Texas. Edit: Bereber is older than arab, so it's not an 'arab branch'. Edit2: Add English to the list, as official language spoken in Gibraltar (UK colony).
- Rod 16y agoThanks for shedding light on this. Almost all Americans fail to realize that there's no such thing as a "Spanish language". There are many of them, Castilian being the "official" one (it's what it's written in the Spanish Constitution anyways). One could, perhaps, call them all Hispanic languages, since most of them (Basque is the notorious exception) are derived from Latin from the times of the Roman province of Hispania.
- davidedicillo 16y agoI 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 16y agoI read somewhere that before 1960 less than 50% of italians spoke Italian.
- Mark_Book 16y agoyessa de rest spoka de broken english
- Mark_Book 16y agoThe above comment of mine received a fair number of votes with the majority being negative. The comment was intended to be humorous and in my view if people downvoted because they were offended on behalf of Italians they need to lighten up. OTOH if they downvoted becaust they thought it was not funny, fair enough. I don't mind because it's not my joke I heard it on The Simpsons
- davidw 16y agoHere 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".
- russell 16y agoI 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 16y agoSeveral 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.
- motters 16y agoIt'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.
- sgt 16y agoHere 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 16y agoAs a non-Dutch speaker living in Belgium, I find Flemish much nicer to listen to than "real" Dutch too. :-)
- jrnkntl 16y agoAs a native Dutch-y I must upvote both of your comments. Afrikaans sounds more logical than the contemporary Dutch and Flemish sounds softer and 'more sweet' (to me :)
- bvi 16y agoIs there really that much of a difference between Flemish and Dutch?
- mtts 16y agoIt depends. Some Flemish dialects are nearly unintelligible for a speaker of standard Nothern Dutch, but standard Flemish and standard Nothern Dutch are fairly similar. Which isn't surprising because standard Nothern Dutch was heavily influenced by the Flemish of well to do Belgians that fled to the North during the sixteenth century.
- Yaa101 16y agoMost 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_Dutch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_english http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_english
- pbz 16y ago(I apologize for my ignorance, but) without audio recording how can we know what the accents were back then?
- eru 16y agoSpelling gives some hints. One technique is to look for common spelling mistakes. An especially interesting mistake is hypercorrection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/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 16y agoYou can also pick up clues in rhyming, jokes, slang and puns that wouldn't otherwise make sense.
- eru 16y agoAnd how words get adapted into foreign languages that happen to write phonetically.
- hugh3 16y agoJust 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 16y agoIn parts of Ireland, you'll still hear "reason" pronounced much like "raisin" is in much of the UK.
- intellectronica 16y agoI 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.
- Locke1689 16y agoAmericans often don't realise how diverse the UK is simply because they're not used to this sort of diversity from their own country. Hahahahahaha. Oh, good one.
- jawngee 16y ago> 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.
- jackfoxy 16y agoThis 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-America/dp/0465013708 http://www.amazon.com/Cousins-Wars-Religion-Politics-Anglo-A...
- thinker 16y agoI'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 16y agoI 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 16y agoAgreed. 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 16y agoIt'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 16y agoAustralians tend to use a funny mishmash. Cars have boots (not the American trunks), but they're smaller than trucks (not the British lorries).
- thinker 16y agoValid points. I was thinking of people like my grandfather (born 1920) who speak English fluently without a british accent, and wasn't influenced by American tv.
- liedra 16y agoI 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.
- weeksie 16y agoHrm. I never noticed a large difference until I left. Now that I'm in NY I can usually pick someone's state right away. Folks from Melbourne have the most pronounced accents, I reckon. Something about how the 'e' becomes all elongated when they Melbourne, it sounds like 'Mahlbourne' to my Sydney-sider ears. The difference is probably about as pronounced (if not moreso) as the difference between a middle class non-regional East Coast American versus the same on the West Coast.
- JacobAldridge 16y agoYou can always tell a Victorian, you just can't tell him much. As a Queesnlander, I find South Australians easiest to pick, slightly more refined vowel sounds, although my fellow cane toads do stand out when I'm at work in Sydney or Melbourne.
- weeksie 16y agoHeh, I've always thought that South Australians are like the Liverpudlians of Oz, accent wise :)
- brc 16y agoThere 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.
- wooster 16y agoWell, there's Tangier, Virginia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E Which has an accent thought to have remained unchanged since Colonial times.
- philwelch 16y agoFrom 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?
- martey 16y agoI do not think it is that surprising. Being part of the same political entity, there should have been a decent amount of intermingling and cross-travel in both directions. There was a NYTimes op-ed today about colonists from Massachusetts who returned to England to fight in the English Civil War in the mid-17th century: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04tinniswood.html http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/04/opinion/04tinniswood.html
- philwelch 16y agoOn the other hand, transatlantic travel was far more time-consuming, unpleasant, expensive, and difficult then than now. If you couldn't afford it outright, one-time passage was worth years of indentured servitude even if you were from a rich country. While the odd rich American aristocrat like Jefferson or Franklin could travel to France for a few years serving as a diplomat, and a group of Puritans could commission a ship to take them across for their latest religious crusade, transatlantic travel can't have been that common.
- sprout 16y agoMost of the population growth was fed by immigration, and most Americans traded regularly with British merchants even after 1776.
- philwelch 16y agoImmigration from lots of different countries, though I'm not sure how many immigrants standardized on English at the time. And while contact with British merchants may have been a factor in port cities where trade happened, there were a lot of farmers far away from that influence as well.
- Mark_Book 16y agoCan 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 16y ago>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.
- DanielBMarkham 16y ago"England and America are two countries divided by a common language" - George Bernard Shaw
- joeyo 16y agoConsidering 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.
- brc 16y agoA 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/0380715430 http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp/038071543...
- nickpatrick 16y agoHey 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 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 16y agoThanks for writing - forwarded this to a famous dialect professor. Here's what he added to your analysis: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723
- korch 16y agoCanada 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.
- silvertab 16y agoYup, I'm a French Canadian and I've heard it before from French people (from France)... Some also say it sounds more like the French that is spoken in the more remote or rural parts of the country...
- stan_rogers 16y agoWell, 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.
- allend 16y agoDoes this mean Kevin Costner didn't actually have a ridiculous accent in Robin Hood?
- hugh3 16y agoWell, 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.
- kmfrk 16y agoIf you are interested in the subject, you should check out Origins of the Specious: http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions-English-Language/dp/1400066603/ http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Specious-Misconceptions-Englis.... It also addresses this.
- goatforce5 16y agoMelvyn 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/ http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish/
- wazoox 16y agoAmusingly, this hold equally true for Québec French, of which pronunciation remains closer to 17th century French than contemporary France's French.
- joshkaufman 16y agoHere's a follow-up to this post by Rocco Dal Vera, a world-renowned dialect expert: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723