3 ms·

There has been tons of sound change over the last 100 years. In old radio broadcasts you hear lots of sounds you don't hear any more, especially in regional dia

There has been tons of sound change over the last 100 years. In old radio broadcasts you hear lots of sounds you don't hear any more, especially in regional dialects that have either changed or been levelled out of existence. Check out this spellbinding speech from Calvin Coolidge in 1924: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfF-xv7rc20 We've got... * Non-rhotic dialect with "earnings" as [əjnɪŋz] * Final /ɪ/ as in British English, not /i/ as in modern American English. "Country" is [k@ntrɪ]. * /p/ is clearly unaspirated * "paid" is [pɛ:d], not [peɪd] as in modern American English * "grant" is [grɑnt] not [grænt] As another example, the Northern Cities vowel shift (for example "Chicago" pronounced [ʃɪkægo]) only really got going in the 1960s.

ajross 3y ago
Coolidge was born in 1872, so you're looking at more like 5-6 generations from the most modern forms. And I don't see that picking on accent specifics is all that interesting? It's true this isn't the accent that you hear most commonly on the streets of San Francisco, but it's a real one and it and variants still exist today in New England, where he's from. Again, I'm not saying there is no change at all, I'm saying this change is trivial when compared with language from people born c. 1750's. And that this seems to be reasonably due to the presence of audio recording technology.
klyrs 3y ago
The rhythm of his speech is notably foreign to me. His delivery of "industry" sounds like three words to me, "in dust ree."