6 ms·

English has evolved more in England than in New England the past few hundred years. From what I've heard New England accents are closer to what English accents

English has evolved more in England than in New England the past few hundred years. From what I've heard New England accents are closer to what English accents used to be than modern English accents are. Perhaps lox fell out of use in England but not here.

asveikau 7y ago
I have heard similar claims, but I think I wouldn't look to New England for that. Example: Most English accents today don't pronounce an R if a vowel doesn't follow it ("non rhotic"). This is also true in accents of New York, New England, and parts of the US southeast. However, a few hundred years ago English accents were all rhotic, like the majority of the US. I had heard somewhere that the non-rhotacism was actually adopted in the northeast and affluent south after it became popular in England and also after colonization by people who would have pronounced all the Rs. That is to say some well to do US accents kept up with changes occurring in places like London.
- jrumbut 7y ago
  The R dropping accent in New England is limited to a surprisingly small group of people. Same with New York I believe. Outside of some parts of Boston we pick up those Rs our friends drop and put them to use.
  - ErikAugust 7y ago
    I grew up a few miles from Boston. No one had a Boston accent, save for people who moved from certain areas.
    - TravHatesMe 7y ago
      For me that is slightly disappointing, I find that there is some real character in that accent. From my (outsider's) perspective it is something classic to east coast American cities. An accent that brings forth unapologetic honesty and "bustin' your balls" kind of humour.
      - scottlocklin 7y ago
        It's a social class marker; plenty of people have it, but if you're hanging around a college with a lot of upper middle class teeth gritting cheesebags and hangers on, you may never hear it. I grew up with a western mass accent, which is a sort of lighter version of bahston with less non-rhoticity. I can turn it off, but lately choose not to, also for social class reasons.
    - Spooky23 7y ago
      Accent is defined based on where you grew up from age 10-12. Distinctive communities get broken up now and disrupted by media.
      - bin0 7y ago
        > Accent is defined based on where you grew up from age 10-12. Not so. Maybe this is true in many cases, but I personally know of at least one outlier: a relative who grew up in West Virginia, lost her accent to work in radio and news, and when older re-married to a man from Texas with a heavy accent and developed one herself. It is also the case that many people slip back into accents as they age.
    - code_duck 7y ago
      I moved from the southwest US to New England as a child, specifically Hartford, Connecticut. I definitely heard this accent… ‘cah’ for car.
    - gumby 7y ago
      I went to high school in the city of Boston with boys from all over the city. The different neighborhoods had different accents.
    - bin0 7y ago
      I have an old relative who has the classic, very thick Boston accent. It is always fun to have her say, "park the car in the Harvard Yard", and she is willing to humor us. You are correct that most younger people don't, though some have a less significant one. Accents are disappearing among the young, which is somewhat sad, albeit inevitable. Newscasters never have an accent, most characters do not (and when they do, it's a "difference" of some sort), and people move around too much for them to survive. A Texas accent used to be John Wayne, now it is used on comedy shows to represent the "uneducated, fat, cousin-marrying red-neck bumpkin". At least we have recording technology now, so future generations can hear them.
  - asveikau 7y ago
    I think it's dying out and seen as less prestigious. Shame, because it sounds pretty cool.
barberousse 7y ago
Not just English in England wrt New England, but everywhere in the new world this is the case: Quebecois descends from an older form of French, Brazilian Portuguese from an older form of Portuguese (modern European Portuguese is insane to listen to next to Brazilian Portuguese), same for Spanish. The wonders of isolation!
- asveikau 7y ago
  Spanish also has interesting geographical stories alongside that narrative. Eg. Latin America lacks an /θ/ sound because the colonizers came from places like Seville.
- solipsism 7y ago
  The claim wasn't about New England English deriving from an older form of the language. The claim is that today's New England English more closely resembles that older form than today's England English.
  - barberousse 7y ago
    Those aren't equivocal? We're just putting the emphasis on one end or the other it looks like
- mixmastamyk 7y ago
  Weirder, after hearing Brits scoff at "Americanisms" for years I was pretty surprised to learn that 90% of them actually came from Britain. They even changed their accent late in the millennium. You can go to see Shakespeare in its original accent and it sounds closer to Welsh/Irish/American than the Queeen's English. The more you know…
  - NeedMoreTea 7y ago
    If you ignore Webster's aberrations - as every attempt to simplify spelling historically, has ended up complicating it, and he was no exception there... Like the 16th century attempt to simplify the language that had scholars adding letters so it was more internally consistent with Latin or Greek roots. Thus debt was created from det, doubt from dowt, scythe from sythe and hundreds of others, and a few got shorter - warre becoming war is the only one I can remember. The other reforms and "simplifications" weren't prettier. A surprising amount of Americanisms, and even spellings - like recognize instead of recognise - not only started here, but were once preferred as more correct! It's only fairly recently that The Times - last 20 or 30 years - dropped "Oxford spelling" (As the OED goes that way too). Nowadays if you use that variant someone will inevitably cry Americanism. Web spell checker is, of course, whining about -ize above as it's in GB mode. Yet it cuts both ways - there's a lot of real Americanisms that have been forgotten in the US and are never identified as such in the UK. Got/gotten - British laziness or fashion decided gotten was no longer necessary somewhere along the line. Yet we still use forgot and forgotten. Go figure. Given the sheer quantity of English that's been begged, borrowed and stolen from other parts of the world, I don't understand the singular picking out of Americanisms. Though the US "I could care less" clearly only makes sense as GB's "I couldn't care less". Shakespeare's jokes and puns work SO much better in original pronunciation. Received pronunciation needs to die in a fire. Peace. :)
Accacin 7y ago
No, this isn't true at all and is a complete oversimplificiation. The whole rhotic 'R' is just one small part of an accent. Secondly, what is 'a British accent'? They change so often over here. It's just one of those 'facts' that seems sensible until you think about it a little bit.
caymanjim 7y ago
Appalachian English dialects in the US are supposed to be closest to those of London at the time of American colonization. Lox is a yiddish word, though, and while it may phonetically be widespread (as the article claims), the spelling and exact pronunciation in modern English likely spread with German Jewish immigrants. That's particular true in the northeastern US. The parent commenter was unfamiliar with the term, but anyone who grew up around New York would be familiar with it as a common deli item.
rmc 7y ago
Trying to define one English accent now or even 200 years ago is futile.

asveikau 7y ago

I have heard similar claims, but I think I wouldn't look to New England for that. Example: Most English accents today don't pronounce an R if a vowel doesn't follow it ("non rhotic"). This is also true in accents of New York, New England, and parts of the US southeast. However, a few hundred years ago English accents were all rhotic, like the majority of the US. I had heard somewhere that the non-rhotacism was actually adopted in the northeast and affluent south after it became popular in England and also after colonization by people who would have pronounced all the Rs. That is to say some well to do US accents kept up with changes occurring in places like London.

jrumbut 7y ago
The R dropping accent in New England is limited to a surprisingly small group of people. Same with New York I believe. Outside of some parts of Boston we pick up those Rs our friends drop and put them to use.
- ErikAugust 7y ago
  I grew up a few miles from Boston. No one had a Boston accent, save for people who moved from certain areas.
  - TravHatesMe 7y ago
    For me that is slightly disappointing, I find that there is some real character in that accent. From my (outsider's) perspective it is something classic to east coast American cities. An accent that brings forth unapologetic honesty and "bustin' your balls" kind of humour.
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      It's a social class marker; plenty of people have it, but if you're hanging around a college with a lot of upper middle class teeth gritting cheesebags and hangers on, you may never hear it. I grew up with a western mass accent, which is a sort of lighter version of bahston with less non-rhoticity. I can turn it off, but lately choose not to, also for social class reasons.
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    Accent is defined based on where you grew up from age 10-12. Distinctive communities get broken up now and disrupted by media.
    - bin0 7y ago
      > Accent is defined based on where you grew up from age 10-12. Not so. Maybe this is true in many cases, but I personally know of at least one outlier: a relative who grew up in West Virginia, lost her accent to work in radio and news, and when older re-married to a man from Texas with a heavy accent and developed one herself. It is also the case that many people slip back into accents as they age.
  - code_duck 7y ago
    I moved from the southwest US to New England as a child, specifically Hartford, Connecticut. I definitely heard this accent… ‘cah’ for car.
  - gumby 7y ago
    I went to high school in the city of Boston with boys from all over the city. The different neighborhoods had different accents.
  - bin0 7y ago
    I have an old relative who has the classic, very thick Boston accent. It is always fun to have her say, "park the car in the Harvard Yard", and she is willing to humor us. You are correct that most younger people don't, though some have a less significant one. Accents are disappearing among the young, which is somewhat sad, albeit inevitable. Newscasters never have an accent, most characters do not (and when they do, it's a "difference" of some sort), and people move around too much for them to survive. A Texas accent used to be John Wayne, now it is used on comedy shows to represent the "uneducated, fat, cousin-marrying red-neck bumpkin". At least we have recording technology now, so future generations can hear them.
- asveikau 7y ago
  I think it's dying out and seen as less prestigious. Shame, because it sounds pretty cool.

barberousse 7y ago

Not just English in England wrt New England, but everywhere in the new world this is the case: Quebecois descends from an older form of French, Brazilian Portuguese from an older form of Portuguese (modern European Portuguese is insane to listen to next to Brazilian Portuguese), same for Spanish. The wonders of isolation!

asveikau 7y ago
Spanish also has interesting geographical stories alongside that narrative. Eg. Latin America lacks an /θ/ sound because the colonizers came from places like Seville.
solipsism 7y ago
The claim wasn't about New England English deriving from an older form of the language. The claim is that today's New England English more closely resembles that older form than today's England English.
- barberousse 7y ago
  Those aren't equivocal? We're just putting the emphasis on one end or the other it looks like
mixmastamyk 7y ago
Weirder, after hearing Brits scoff at "Americanisms" for years I was pretty surprised to learn that 90% of them actually came from Britain. They even changed their accent late in the millennium. You can go to see Shakespeare in its original accent and it sounds closer to Welsh/Irish/American than the Queeen's English. The more you know…
- NeedMoreTea 7y ago
  If you ignore Webster's aberrations - as every attempt to simplify spelling historically, has ended up complicating it, and he was no exception there... Like the 16th century attempt to simplify the language that had scholars adding letters so it was more internally consistent with Latin or Greek roots. Thus debt was created from det, doubt from dowt, scythe from sythe and hundreds of others, and a few got shorter - warre becoming war is the only one I can remember. The other reforms and "simplifications" weren't prettier. A surprising amount of Americanisms, and even spellings - like recognize instead of recognise - not only started here, but were once preferred as more correct! It's only fairly recently that The Times - last 20 or 30 years - dropped "Oxford spelling" (As the OED goes that way too). Nowadays if you use that variant someone will inevitably cry Americanism. Web spell checker is, of course, whining about -ize above as it's in GB mode. Yet it cuts both ways - there's a lot of real Americanisms that have been forgotten in the US and are never identified as such in the UK. Got/gotten - British laziness or fashion decided gotten was no longer necessary somewhere along the line. Yet we still use forgot and forgotten. Go figure. Given the sheer quantity of English that's been begged, borrowed and stolen from other parts of the world, I don't understand the singular picking out of Americanisms. Though the US "I could care less" clearly only makes sense as GB's "I couldn't care less". Shakespeare's jokes and puns work SO much better in original pronunciation. Received pronunciation needs to die in a fire. Peace. :)

Accacin 7y ago

No, this isn't true at all and is a complete oversimplificiation. The whole rhotic 'R' is just one small part of an accent. Secondly, what is 'a British accent'? They change so often over here. It's just one of those 'facts' that seems sensible until you think about it a little bit.

caymanjim 7y ago

Appalachian English dialects in the US are supposed to be closest to those of London at the time of American colonization. Lox is a yiddish word, though, and while it may phonetically be widespread (as the article claims), the spelling and exact pronunciation in modern English likely spread with German Jewish immigrants. That's particular true in the northeastern US. The parent commenter was unfamiliar with the term, but anyone who grew up around New York would be familiar with it as a common deli item.

rmc 7y ago

Trying to define one English accent now or even 200 years ago is futile.