5 ms·

It's even more recent than the norman french from a 1000 years ago. The standard english accent ( King's English ) was intentionally "effeminized" to mimic the

by joaksl 7y ago

It's even more recent than the norman french from a 1000 years ago. The standard english accent ( King's English ) was intentionally "effeminized" to mimic the french language in the 1800s ( when french was viewed as lingua franca and "cultured"). It's one of the reasons why Standard American accent and Standard British accent diverged. The standard american accent was the way the brits used to speak.

learc83 7y ago
The "Standard American accent" is just vaguely midwestern, and it's not how the British used to speak. There is some support for it being closer than some modern British accents, e.g., they are both rhotic.
- keiferski 7y ago
  By “standard American accent” I think he meant Southern accent.
  - squiggleblaz 7y ago
    He meant what he said, thinking about the accent you get on contemporary tv and in today's cinema. He's wrong, but the view that American English is a better guide to Early Modern English pronunciation than British pronunciation is widespread. I think there's many holes in the theory, based on a much-too-simple view, but there probably had been some enlightenment to be derived from the theory up till about seventy years ago (I don't mean the old American stage accent - the mid-Atlantic accent - I mean the normal American accent on the street). If you started with RP and then added standard AmE to that, you probably would have felt you made lots of progress to your understanding of EMnE - Americans retain lots of r's and their "a" had probably a more conservative distribution in some sense. Their accent is more strongly influenced by non-rhotic English than rhotic parts of Britain, though. Nowadays, their "o" has innovated and "a" has innovated in many respects too. Americans have kept reducing distinctions before r, so that they say "shirly" instead of "surely" and no distinction is made between long and short vowels before /r/. The length distinction has weakened further, so that the claim often seen "English doesn't have long-short vowels, but tense-lax vowels", though not accurate, is less unfair now than it would have been a century ago. The rounded vowels have caught up with, and in many cases overtaken, the drift forward started earlier in England. (I'm pretty sure America is planning to outdo Greek with the number of sounds that merge as /i/.) No language stands still, especially not in a highly mobile empire. Colonial lag applies to the periphery, but America is now surely the centre of English development.
- mcv 7y ago
  I would expect accents from New England to be closest to the original British accent, with more western accents being more strongly influenced by the many other cultures that came to the US.
squiggleblaz 7y ago
The claim behind this is fairly narrowly specific. Namely the distinction in pronunciation between "pass", "bath", "laugh" is sometimes attributed to French influence, since French also saw a lengthening of some sounds before at least -s. The s has since been removed, and the length distinction is weak in metropolitan France. Some example words and earlier English borrowings are castle — château, paste — pâte. It is unlikely to be correct. The environments, though related, are non-identical. The vowel systems were radically different - English had some long vowels and some short vowels. French had only one length. English actually had a bit of a whole in its vowel system at that location - long vowel and short vowels everywhere except for the area round "trap", "Goth", when there were two short vowels and, recently, no long vowels (since "name" had moved forwards and kept moving forwards till it was caught into the vortex of merging sounds that created the modern pronunciation of words like day, they, weigh, break - once all pronounced differently). At the exact same time, English was witnessing various other changes. The vowel in "Goth" was low at the time, and lengthened too. The vowel in "water", "what" (lengthend and) retracted. The vowel in "bar" failed to change when the vowel in "bat" moved forwards. Some of the changes were motivated at filling the hole introduced by the merger of "name" with "rain". Indeed, this means it actually happened _prior_ to the American split, since these changes are present in America too. And it is, partially, represented in American English ("father" if taken narrowly, or the fact that many Americans who distinguish "cot" and "caught" say "caugh", "long", "dog" as "cawff", "lawng", "dawg" — and indeed, if you believe one credible hypothesis, the fact that so many Americans have merged "cot" and "caught" because there was too much variation between those sounds). In both America and English, there was options. America ended up standardising on lengthened Goth, shortened path. England, to the extent that it standardised, did so on shortened Goth, lengthened path. But these happened at around the same time from roots planted prior to the linguistic separation of the two countries. So you can see it seems the English change was wholly internally motivated. The only possible exception is that another major source of the broad a - in words like "dance" and and "enchanted" - was indeed an attempt to mimic the French nasal vowels. Ever since these words were adopted in the middle ages, some people had said them as "daunce" and "enchaunted" and "laundry" and "haunted" and "aunt" and some people had said them as a "dance" and "enchanted" and "landry" and "hanted" and "ant". In those days, "au" was pronunced like in German - maybe how you say "how". And you can see that the spellings don't have any particular preference in coming from one pronunciation scheme or the other. The standard English accent derives from the pronunciations that did not always feed the spelling, and the standard American accent derives from pronunciations that di not always feed the spelling. The only reason it's slightly obscure is that the sound spelt "au" sometimes became "ah" and sometimes became the modern English "aw" sound. In "calm", it became "ah". In "walk", it became "aw". So the standard British choice was "daunce", "enchaunted", spelt as "dance", "enchanted", and pronounced with the variant of "calm". The only bit of copying the French came centuries before the American colonies. The true history of the Early Modern English low vowels remains to be written. But that's as fair a summary of it as you'll find on the social medias. The Americans deliberately copied the French meaning of "billion", and then the French, seeing the Americans were using it, threw it away and stole the British meaning of "billion". The British held onto their tradition for a while, but they have no strong desire to align with the French, so it was really only a matter of time till, in the last generations, they adopted the American meaning.

by joaksl 7y ago

learc83 7y ago

The "Standard American accent" is just vaguely midwestern, and it's not how the British used to speak. There is some support for it being closer than some modern British accents, e.g., they are both rhotic.

keiferski 7y ago
By “standard American accent” I think he meant Southern accent.
- squiggleblaz 7y ago
  He meant what he said, thinking about the accent you get on contemporary tv and in today's cinema. He's wrong, but the view that American English is a better guide to Early Modern English pronunciation than British pronunciation is widespread. I think there's many holes in the theory, based on a much-too-simple view, but there probably had been some enlightenment to be derived from the theory up till about seventy years ago (I don't mean the old American stage accent - the mid-Atlantic accent - I mean the normal American accent on the street). If you started with RP and then added standard AmE to that, you probably would have felt you made lots of progress to your understanding of EMnE - Americans retain lots of r's and their "a" had probably a more conservative distribution in some sense. Their accent is more strongly influenced by non-rhotic English than rhotic parts of Britain, though. Nowadays, their "o" has innovated and "a" has innovated in many respects too. Americans have kept reducing distinctions before r, so that they say "shirly" instead of "surely" and no distinction is made between long and short vowels before /r/. The length distinction has weakened further, so that the claim often seen "English doesn't have long-short vowels, but tense-lax vowels", though not accurate, is less unfair now than it would have been a century ago. The rounded vowels have caught up with, and in many cases overtaken, the drift forward started earlier in England. (I'm pretty sure America is planning to outdo Greek with the number of sounds that merge as /i/.) No language stands still, especially not in a highly mobile empire. Colonial lag applies to the periphery, but America is now surely the centre of English development.
mcv 7y ago
I would expect accents from New England to be closest to the original British accent, with more western accents being more strongly influenced by the many other cultures that came to the US.

squiggleblaz 7y ago

The claim behind this is fairly narrowly specific. Namely the distinction in pronunciation between "pass", "bath", "laugh" is sometimes attributed to French influence, since French also saw a lengthening of some sounds before at least -s. The s has since been removed, and the length distinction is weak in metropolitan France. Some example words and earlier English borrowings are castle — château, paste — pâte. It is unlikely to be correct. The environments, though related, are non-identical. The vowel systems were radically different - English had some long vowels and some short vowels. French had only one length. English actually had a bit of a whole in its vowel system at that location - long vowel and short vowels everywhere except for the area round "trap", "Goth", when there were two short vowels and, recently, no long vowels (since "name" had moved forwards and kept moving forwards till it was caught into the vortex of merging sounds that created the modern pronunciation of words like day, they, weigh, break - once all pronounced differently). At the exact same time, English was witnessing various other changes. The vowel in "Goth" was low at the time, and lengthened too. The vowel in "water", "what" (lengthend and) retracted. The vowel in "bar" failed to change when the vowel in "bat" moved forwards. Some of the changes were motivated at filling the hole introduced by the merger of "name" with "rain". Indeed, this means it actually happened _prior_ to the American split, since these changes are present in America too. And it is, partially, represented in American English ("father" if taken narrowly, or the fact that many Americans who distinguish "cot" and "caught" say "caugh", "long", "dog" as "cawff", "lawng", "dawg" — and indeed, if you believe one credible hypothesis, the fact that so many Americans have merged "cot" and "caught" because there was too much variation between those sounds). In both America and English, there was options. America ended up standardising on lengthened Goth, shortened path. England, to the extent that it standardised, did so on shortened Goth, lengthened path. But these happened at around the same time from roots planted prior to the linguistic separation of the two countries. So you can see it seems the English change was wholly internally motivated. The only possible exception is that another major source of the broad a - in words like "dance" and and "enchanted" - was indeed an attempt to mimic the French nasal vowels. Ever since these words were adopted in the middle ages, some people had said them as "daunce" and "enchaunted" and "laundry" and "haunted" and "aunt" and some people had said them as a "dance" and "enchanted" and "landry" and "hanted" and "ant". In those days, "au" was pronunced like in German - maybe how you say "how". And you can see that the spellings don't have any particular preference in coming from one pronunciation scheme or the other. The standard English accent derives from the pronunciations that did not always feed the spelling, and the standard American accent derives from pronunciations that di not always feed the spelling. The only reason it's slightly obscure is that the sound spelt "au" sometimes became "ah" and sometimes became the modern English "aw" sound. In "calm", it became "ah". In "walk", it became "aw". So the standard British choice was "daunce", "enchaunted", spelt as "dance", "enchanted", and pronounced with the variant of "calm". The only bit of copying the French came centuries before the American colonies. The true history of the Early Modern English low vowels remains to be written. But that's as fair a summary of it as you'll find on the social medias. The Americans deliberately copied the French meaning of "billion", and then the French, seeing the Americans were using it, threw it away and stole the British meaning of "billion". The British held onto their tradition for a while, but they have no strong desire to align with the French, so it was really only a matter of time till, in the last generations, they adopted the American meaning.