4 ms·

American English is frankly archaic! The English accents of the modern US are far closer to the English accent of the 1700s than modern en_GB. I am a British a

American English is frankly archaic! The English accents of the modern US are far closer to the English accent of the 1700s than modern en_GB. I am a British army brat and we used to watch a fair bit of Dutch TV when stationed in West Germany back in the '70s/'80s for that reason - subtitled. Mmmm ... Vara! The accent thing is very complicated. The US has had a lot of inputs over the last few centuries and don't forget the locals who were already there. I suggest that the Dutch accent informed the American one accents rather than the other way around. Belgium of course also contributes there. English spoken by a Belgian also sounds more left pondian than right. That said, I have met folk from both the Netherlands and Belgium who can deploy pretty convincing generic en_GB or en_US sounding accents as required. My dad's driver at our last posting in Bracht in Germany near to Roermond in the Netherlands was able to speak German, Dutch and English well enough to fool native speakers of all of them. We are still in touch nearly 40 years later 8)

cardiffspaceman 6y ago
It's my understanding (and if I'm wrong it looks like I'll be corrected) but Dutch English classes teach en_GB and you have to be an expat American child to have your en_US ways tolerated. So if Dutch people sound American they must not be getting it in class.
- jstsch 6y ago
  You are right. Back in the early 90ies, in primary and high school, I often got in conflict about this with my English teachers. Distinctly remember being around 10 years old, and arguing with my poor teacher, that US English would be a much more useful standard for Dutch students to learn :) PS: So starting age 8 I learned English from adventure games and a bit later from shows like Star Trek TNG (BBC!). Starting written versus verbal (often using a dictionary to find the right words to type with those Sierra text interfaces) did mean that some of my pronunciation was totally off — I'd simply never heard most words spoken before :)

cardiffspaceman 6y ago

It's my understanding (and if I'm wrong it looks like I'll be corrected) but Dutch English classes teach en_GB and you have to be an expat American child to have your en_US ways tolerated. So if Dutch people sound American they must not be getting it in class.

jstsch 6y ago
You are right. Back in the early 90ies, in primary and high school, I often got in conflict about this with my English teachers. Distinctly remember being around 10 years old, and arguing with my poor teacher, that US English would be a much more useful standard for Dutch students to learn :) PS: So starting age 8 I learned English from adventure games and a bit later from shows like Star Trek TNG (BBC!). Starting written versus verbal (often using a dictionary to find the right words to type with those Sierra text interfaces) did mean that some of my pronunciation was totally off — I'd simply never heard most words spoken before :)