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Side question. I’ve been always wondering: how has the American accent evolved? Where does it come from? Is there any region in Britain that sounds American? Or

by baxtr 9y ago

Side question. I’ve been always wondering: how has the American accent evolved? Where does it come from? Is there any region in Britain that sounds American? Or did just evolve independently as a mix of British and something else? And: since when is it that different? Did Lincoln had an American accent?!

jcranmer 9y ago
There's not really any such thing as an "American accent" or a "British accent," particularly when you're looking at the evolution of accents. Accents tend to evolve based on regional tendencies; what people refer to as "General American" (effectively the Midwestern US, but not including the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) and "Received Pronunciation" are accents that lack any recognized regionalism markers, such as the Southern drawl or the New England non-rhoticism. Accents tend to shift based on contact with other linguistic groups and mixing from different accents that levels out pronunciation. You'll note, for example, that Canadian has more in common with the US accents than it does with British accents. I don't know the historical development of accents very well, but some US accents (I believe the southern one in particular) are closer to 16th and 17th century English than modern British accents. This isn't necessarily atypical--modern Icelandic is the closest in pronunciation to Old Norse, while modern Norwegian is closer in pronunciation to older varieties of Danish. Small, isolated communities are going to be able to better preserve pronunciation in a dialect.
- gilleain 9y ago
  As for a 'British' accent, there is huge diversity within the UK. Cornish, Northern Irish, Yorkshire, Aberdonian, etc. It used to be even more pronounced, with neighbouring villages in England having distinct accents. Nowadays, i suspect that the differences are disappearing - although perhaps some will always remain.
antirez 9y ago
It's somewhat the contrary if I remember correctly. It's the British accent that changed after the split.
- EGreg 9y ago
  How did Received Pronunciation catch on? It seems that Britain is chock-full of different accents, especially from the north, but all the English ones sort of contain elements of RP, like the unpronounced R's (Irish and Scottish don't.)
  - yardie 9y ago
    The split came about through formalised education. The British you hear today is upper middle class, noble English. Similar happened in France and French Quebec. Modern French is formalised Parisian french. While Canadian French is country French, according to a very posh friend, the most educated quebecois still sounds like a country hick the first time he hears them.
    - linguist_1 9y ago
      > Similar happened in France and French Quebec. Modern French is formalized Parisian french. While Canadian French is country French, according to a very posh friend, the most educated québécois still sounds like a country hick the first time he hears them. You got it backward. Modern French is bourgeois Parisian French. It was standardized more than a century after the French revolution (in the 1880's when public education became mandatory). When Québec was colonized in the 1600's, only a handful of territories in France spoke French, mostly around Paris. This was the language of the court, the nobility and a minority of peasants. The rest of the country spoke various languages, such as Caló, Catalan, Corsican, Franco-Provençal, Ligurian, Occitan, Flemish, Luxembourgish, Alsatian, Breton, and Basque [1]. Furthermore, Parisian French was only one of the d'Oïl languages spoken at the time [2]. The colonists that settled and explored Québec were mostly from northern France, the region where an Oïl language was spoken. The language spoken in the colony was standardized to match the one of the royal administration (Parisian French). Due to not being a French Territory when the revolution happened, Québec kept a fork of Royal French. Reading written french from the 1600's and 1700's out loud is striking, as it's almost identical the pronunciation of modern Québécois French. An example of this is the term "Moi", spelled Moé in the 1700's and pronounced Mo-a (Moi) by modern continental French and Mo-Hey (Moé) in Québécois French. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France#Minority_languages_and_endangered_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France#Mino... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl
yardie 9y ago
The Welsh sound eerily similar to the southern American twang. Except for colloquial words you wouldn’t think it was out of place if you heard them in Kentucky.
twobyfour 9y ago
They began to evolve separately as soon as the Mayflower arrived. And American accents have been influenced not only by a broad variety of English immigrants over time by also by immigrants from other parts of the world. For instance, the "standard" (TV broadcaster) accent originated in areas settled largely by German and Scandinavian immigrants. The "New York" and "New Jersey" accents have elements of Irish and Italian and Yiddish accents, and New York accents were influential due to being common among entertainers through the middle of the 20th century. And accents can evolve quickly. The New York accent you'll hear in films from the 1950s is very different from the one you'll hear today if you go deep enough into Queens to find strong accents. That said, IMO moderate Scottish accents sound extremely similar to the "standard" American accent. I think it's actually that the cadences are very similar, which for me at least is what makes other strong British accents (other than RP) often difficult to understand.

by baxtr 9y ago

jcranmer 9y ago

There's not really any such thing as an "American accent" or a "British accent," particularly when you're looking at the evolution of accents. Accents tend to evolve based on regional tendencies; what people refer to as "General American" (effectively the Midwestern US, but not including the Northern Cities Vowel Shift) and "Received Pronunciation" are accents that lack any recognized regionalism markers, such as the Southern drawl or the New England non-rhoticism. Accents tend to shift based on contact with other linguistic groups and mixing from different accents that levels out pronunciation. You'll note, for example, that Canadian has more in common with the US accents than it does with British accents. I don't know the historical development of accents very well, but some US accents (I believe the southern one in particular) are closer to 16th and 17th century English than modern British accents. This isn't necessarily atypical--modern Icelandic is the closest in pronunciation to Old Norse, while modern Norwegian is closer in pronunciation to older varieties of Danish. Small, isolated communities are going to be able to better preserve pronunciation in a dialect.

gilleain 9y ago
As for a 'British' accent, there is huge diversity within the UK. Cornish, Northern Irish, Yorkshire, Aberdonian, etc. It used to be even more pronounced, with neighbouring villages in England having distinct accents. Nowadays, i suspect that the differences are disappearing - although perhaps some will always remain.

antirez 9y ago

It's somewhat the contrary if I remember correctly. It's the British accent that changed after the split.

EGreg 9y ago
How did Received Pronunciation catch on? It seems that Britain is chock-full of different accents, especially from the north, but all the English ones sort of contain elements of RP, like the unpronounced R's (Irish and Scottish don't.)
- yardie 9y ago
  The split came about through formalised education. The British you hear today is upper middle class, noble English. Similar happened in France and French Quebec. Modern French is formalised Parisian french. While Canadian French is country French, according to a very posh friend, the most educated quebecois still sounds like a country hick the first time he hears them.
  - linguist_1 9y ago
    > Similar happened in France and French Quebec. Modern French is formalized Parisian french. While Canadian French is country French, according to a very posh friend, the most educated québécois still sounds like a country hick the first time he hears them. You got it backward. Modern French is bourgeois Parisian French. It was standardized more than a century after the French revolution (in the 1880's when public education became mandatory). When Québec was colonized in the 1600's, only a handful of territories in France spoke French, mostly around Paris. This was the language of the court, the nobility and a minority of peasants. The rest of the country spoke various languages, such as Caló, Catalan, Corsican, Franco-Provençal, Ligurian, Occitan, Flemish, Luxembourgish, Alsatian, Breton, and Basque [1]. Furthermore, Parisian French was only one of the d'Oïl languages spoken at the time [2]. The colonists that settled and explored Québec were mostly from northern France, the region where an Oïl language was spoken. The language spoken in the colony was standardized to match the one of the royal administration (Parisian French). Due to not being a French Territory when the revolution happened, Québec kept a fork of Royal French. Reading written french from the 1600's and 1700's out loud is striking, as it's almost identical the pronunciation of modern Québécois French. An example of this is the term "Moi", spelled Moé in the 1700's and pronounced Mo-a (Moi) by modern continental French and Mo-Hey (Moé) in Québécois French. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France#Minority_languages_and_endangered_languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy_in_France#Mino... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langues_d%27o%C3%AFl

yardie 9y ago

The Welsh sound eerily similar to the southern American twang. Except for colloquial words you wouldn’t think it was out of place if you heard them in Kentucky.

twobyfour 9y ago

They began to evolve separately as soon as the Mayflower arrived. And American accents have been influenced not only by a broad variety of English immigrants over time by also by immigrants from other parts of the world. For instance, the "standard" (TV broadcaster) accent originated in areas settled largely by German and Scandinavian immigrants. The "New York" and "New Jersey" accents have elements of Irish and Italian and Yiddish accents, and New York accents were influential due to being common among entertainers through the middle of the 20th century. And accents can evolve quickly. The New York accent you'll hear in films from the 1950s is very different from the one you'll hear today if you go deep enough into Queens to find strong accents. That said, IMO moderate Scottish accents sound extremely similar to the "standard" American accent. I think it's actually that the cadences are very similar, which for me at least is what makes other strong British accents (other than RP) often difficult to understand.