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When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?

198 points by Jagat 14y ago

aston 14y ago
The fascinating tl;dr: The British lost their English accents around the turn of the 19th century. As far as rhotic r's go, Americans still mostly speak the way Brits and Americans did in the 18th century.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  IMO, no discussion about the loss of "British accents" in America can be complete without including Canada, Australia and South Africa in the mix. I always found it fascinating that the US and Australia have such dramatically different "standard" accents despite both being former British colonies. Btw, anyone wanting to search for the "missing link" should visit Bermuda. Strange mix of GA and RP.
  - dmoo 14y ago
    Also interesting is how close the Newfoundland accent has stayed to the rural Irish one. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLuIXwsLDw
  - wluu 14y ago
    Ah, Australian "English"... :) I'd say (in Australia), our English was influenced to an extent by the local population (ie: Aboriginal Australians) to a degree in addition to British English. Here's a few references: * "history & accent change" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/history-accent-change http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/history-accent-chang... * "australian accent" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/voices/australian-accent http://clas.mq.edu.au/voices/australian-accent * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English Might also be a good idea (if you're curious) to contrast/compare Australian English with New Zealand English. Subtle differences, but they are there. It's a mighty big topic if you really want to delve into it in any detail.
    - toyg 14y ago
      "Subtle" is a relative term here: I'm Italian, not particularly trained in languages, and I can easily tell NZ and Aussies apart. NZ vowels are even crazier than the already-bonkers Australian ones.
- davidw 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents Interesting maps - significant portions of England were still rhotic in the 1950ies. Incidentally, it's fascinating how much accents and dialects can change in such a short distance in Europe. Within a few hours bicycling distance from Padova, people can tell that someone is from here and not whatever town they're in. Compare and contrast with my Oregon upbringing, which no one could place anywhere specific in the Western US with any degree of accuracy. Another fascinating tidbit is New Mexican Spanish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish Which became way more isolated from Spain than the US ever was from England.
  - arethuza 14y ago
    A few hours cycling is nothing - when I grew up in the North East of Scotland people from the coastal fishing villages had quite different accents to people from farms maybe 1 km or so inland. [NB When the BBC did a TV series featuring fishermen from near where I grew up they had to give the show subtitles so it could be understood in the rest of the UK ;-)] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29
    - deleted 14y ago
      [deleted]
  - petercooper 14y ago
    I live in Lincolnshire, a large county on the east coast of England, and after ten years of being here, I can distinguish a native of my town of Louth from one of Cleethorpes, 15 miles away. 35 miles south of here, in the original Boston, the local accent is rather different again. Most Brits would not notice the difference as Lincolnshire accents are broadly unrecognized nationally, though any Brit (and, perhaps, many Americans?) could distinguish a Scouse (Liverpool) accent from a Mancunian (Manchester) one - only 27 miles apart. Think Beatles vs Oasis here. Sadly, though, this does only work on true, thoroughbred natives - a small percentage of the population in most areas now due to the frequent movement of people around England.
- dmmalam 14y ago
  history of english http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s
- laumars 14y ago
  A Brit' here, most British dialects are heavy on the R's. Whether that's the rural accents ranging from the Cornish (south west) to Norfolk (south east). Then you have the harsher sounding dialects of the north east - who also seem quite rhotic (or at least, the thicker accents are). Then you have the Welsh and -as mentioned in the article- the Scottish and Irish who all also emphasise their R's (it's quite amusing when I hang out with some of my Scottish friends as they can't pronounce "Karl", so every time they call his name, my other friend "Carol" answers!) The ironic thing is, the way the English are perceived to speak isn't the way how 99% of English (let alone British) people speak. Even in London and it's overspills (the neighbouring counties), which is where our dialects are the least rhotic, most people don't pronounce themselves in the same way as they do in American TV. But I can understand why the stereotyped accent is used; it's a slower and more clearly spoken - which is ideal for broadcasting where the actor needs to be heard and understood by the audience. Many of the northern accents are spoken with such speed that it can be difficult for an untrained ear; even for some of us English! It's also a sexier dialect (few sane people would fall in love with a Geordie accent, Brummie or even Cockney, if they weren't already brought up in that area. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to find youtube videos for some of the more distinct dialects. [edit] Just been chatting to my wife about this. She's from the north east of England, I'm from the south. It seems I've overstated the amount of emphasis the north east places on their R's. I'm not sure if I'm alone about this, but the funny thing about pronunciation is the moment you're asked to think about the way you pronounce a word, you've instantly forgotten how you normally talk!
  - gcv 14y ago
    Please do! I'd be especially interested in some of the ones you mentioned: Geordie and Brummie. Also, some of the harder-to-understand ones. I can understand Yorkshire pretty well, but maybe some others would give me trouble.
    - laumars 14y ago
      This is taken from a British sitcom, 'Alan Partridge'. It features a Norfolk and a Geordie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc It's actually a pretty good example of a Newcastle (Geordie) accent despite being a comedy show. Finding a good example of a Brummie accent as proven more tricky as I'm either stumbling across paradises where they over accentuate the "twang", or TV personalities where the access is suppressed a little. Ozzy Osbourne is from that area and in his interviews you can sometimes hear the accent showing through. The pronunciation itself isn't hard to understand; I highlighted it because it's a unique accent. I think these days it's mellowed quite a bit though. This video isn't work safe, but it's the best example of a Welsh accent I could find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o (this is also probably the accent I hate the most - I couldn't explain why, but it just grinds) This is the Cornish (south west) accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 It's probably the closest to the old Shakespearian English that someone linked to in these comments.
- kafkaesque 14y ago
  This is slightly off topic, but here is a map of American and Canadian English dialects and accents: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ There are few major pronunciation differences, yet many subtle differences!
vor_ 14y ago
I didn't know that the British originally spoke with an rhotic accent. The General American accent is supposedly how the British used to sound. Perhaps the title should be "When did the British lose their original accents?" as the Americans are the ones who (apparently) retained their original British accents.
- mpyne 14y ago
  The title is good in that is always how we seem to see that question phrased on the Internet. That is, with the underlying assumption that the U.S. has once again deliberately gone out of their way to be different.
- jinushaun 14y ago
  The whole notion is nebulous because both nations lost their original accents. Just watch videos of Americans speaking from a few decades ago and you'll see how much "General American" has changed in such a short period. Secondly, given the abundance of regional accents in the UK, I doubt there was even a dominant accent in the American colonies at the time unless you're only counting the upper class.
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    Americans speak with wildly different accents. Oklahomans sound different from Arkansas natives; Georgians quite different from each. In New York there is more than one accent.
    - eric_bullington 14y ago
      Not only from state-to-state (as you allude to). I'm from SC and can easily distinguish the accent spoken in Upstate SC (which sounds much like the stereotypical "Georgia peach" accent) from one spoken by older people in the Low Country area around Charleston, from the accent spoken by the rest of the state. And move up just a few miles from Upstate SC into the mountains of NC (and tip of SC), and you have an entirely different accent. I suspect that these differences are being lost in younger generations, as everyone moves toward a more standardized accent, but I can still distinguish the difference in accents among most South Carolinians.
keyboardP 14y ago
A bit OT but hopefully interesting nevertheless. This is apparently the original pronunciation for the works of Shakespeare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s The entire video has some nice information but if you want to skip to an example of the original pronunciation, you can jump to 2:50.
duck 14y ago
Related thread from a couple years ago: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486017 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486017 And the follow-up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723
dirktheman 14y ago
On the same note, I find it equally intriguing how Dutch and South African languages are similar. Afrikaans is a lot like 17th century Dutch, which is a lot different than modern Dutch. Unlike English, which changed to a much lesser extend. But I don't have to try hard to follow Afrikaans.
- joe5150 14y ago
  Afrikaans is basically 17-century Dutch, though.
  - dirktheman 14y ago
    Parts of it are, but there's a good portion of loan words from other 'occupying countries' such as Portuguese, but also Malay (from the Dutch slave trade era) and some native African languages such as Khoisan.
petercooper 14y ago
Slightly related to this.. much study has been done into the pronunciation at the time when Shakespeare's plays were originally performed (in the 1600s) principally so that the effect can be recreated. You can check out what it sounded like at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s and various other videos. (Jump to 2m50s for the actual speech.) The odd thing about this to my English ear is that the 1600s English pronunciation has a lot of similarities to that of the South West of England today, but perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising given this map of rhoticism in modern British English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhoticEngland2.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhoticEngland2.png
- WA 14y ago
  That video is quite interesting. Unrelated: At first I thought: Hey, that's the voice of a physicist in Half Life 1, like "Good morning Mr. Freeman!" Then the picture of him comes up in the video and he does not only sound like the character, he even looks like him :)
- tunesmith 14y ago
  Really cool point in that video about how the original pronunciation of "hour" sounded just like the original pronunciation of "whore". Which led to puns that worked back then that do not work at all in modern english pronunciation.
- benihana 14y ago
  Just for future reference, if you right click on a video on youtube, you can click copy link at current time to lazy link to 2m50s so you don't have to say "jump to this time." http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gPlpphT7n9s#t=178s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
  - jpwagner 14y ago
    you can also just add &t=2m50s to the query string
mikestew 14y ago
What amazes me is that in a couple of generations the accents of all the regions change (including England itself with the hard r, apparently). In the case of the US I'm curious if accents stay the same once geographically stable. Once we became more mobile in the early-mid 20th century, are accents changing faster with the influx of diversity as folks move around?
- Hemospectrum 14y ago
  Mobility is something of a linguistic equalizer, especially at a young age. If children travel around the country (or the world) being exposed to many different accents, the dialect features start to blend together. See also: Radio and television.
kjackson2012 14y ago
I have a friend from Hong Kong, and she has an English accent, having being educated in British schools. For fun, I asked her to talk in an American accent, and what fascinated me, is that she talked with an almost exactly Southern accent. So maybe the Southern accent is a vestigial accent leftover from the transition from British to American accent.
- Yhippa 14y ago
  I don't have the source but I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that a Southern accent is mostly a slowed-down version of a British accent.
- olalonde 14y ago
  The Southern accent is probably the strongest and most "famous" regional American accent. That might be why your friend tried to imitate it.
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  Did you enquire further about it. I can probably, with effort, muster 3 distinct USA accents that I'd label Southern, New York and West-Coast - but they'd be based on mass media. I'd say people can often do several USA accents because they're used to hearing a lot en_US speakers from Hollywood movies. What always freaks me out a little is when you visit some out of the way place, Gambia say, and they talk in USA accents because they've learnt English either from films or Voice of America.
  - notahacker 14y ago
    Non-native English speakers attempting a general American accent they've picked up from media or US teachers is the rule rather than the exception. You know Britain has left behind a strong colonial legacy when they don't. What freaked me out was a Burmese English teacher speaking with the sort of Cockney accent that's only ever heard in low budget British gangster films.
jeremyswank 14y ago
when british english was transplanted to north america, a separate geographic context was created for one and the same language. a relative isolation was imposed by an ocean between them, and each continued to change over time. british and american english descend from a common ancestor.
kyllo 14y ago
This sort of thing is much easier to understand if you think of languages as living, changing organisms rather than as static constructs. They actually change rather quickly, from generation to generation. Large human migrations tend to homogenize in the sense that they result in a single dialect propagating over a large land mass. But then they continue to diverge regionally over time in rather random ways, to the point where every city in a given country, or even every neighborhood in every city in the country, will develop its own distinct dialect. London is a good example--it's a city that's been inhabited mostly by the same ethnic group for many centuries, and their language tree has branched to the point where people of different districts and social classes there use very different-sounding pronunciation.
louhong 14y ago
This might be an interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E) - its a video of Tangier, VA where they still speak English from when the town was settled in 1600s.
- cjensen 14y ago
  The notion that some areas still speak the original language was debunked in the linked article.
  - droithomme 14y ago
    The original article doesn't debunk it, it states without giving a single citation that "claims about the accents of the Appalachian Mountains, the Outer Banks, the Tidewater region and Virginia's Tangier Island sounding like an uncorrupted Elizabethan-era English accent have been busted as myths by linguists." Most likely his source is a single linguist, Dr. Michael Montgomery, who is from Knoxville and has written several articles on "Appalachian English", but which articles actually pertain only to East Tennessee rural english, and not other parts of the Appalachians. Here are all his articles on the topic: http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/articles.html http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/articles.html He does a good summary of the language of that region and can be reasonably considered an expert. He makes a convincing argument that much of the novel vocabulary is Scotch-Irish vocabulary from the early settlers of the area. He makes a less convincing argument that since the mountain people of the region are not familiar with idioms of Shakespeare, their speech is not related in any way to Elizabethan English. Elizabethan era people did not speak exactly the way Shakespeare wrote though. Pilgrims so desperate from religious oppression by the Church of England at the time to would not necessarily be experts in Shakespearean idioms. Dr. Montgomery's articles are certainly worth a read and make many reasonable arguments about the dialects he is familiar with. The notion that the idea that any archaic language dialects have influenced certain dialect pockets that have survived to the present has been debunked, and such an opinion is held by all linguists is not established, cited or proven by the article.
wololo 14y ago
it's a common question on r/linguistics and r/askhistorians: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k8t7s/when_did_americans_lose_their_british_accent/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k8t7s/when_did_am... http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/l1z1b/did_the_founding_fathers_have_american_accents/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/l1z1b/did_the_f... http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/vr14o/can_someone_from_rlinguistic_form_a_comprehensive/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/vr14o/can_someo... http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlv3j/would_americans_at_the_time_of_the_revolution http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlv3j/would_a... http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t9frm/differences_in_american_and_british_english http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t9frm/differe... http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/d82bv/did_americans_in_1776_have_british_accents/ http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/d82bv/did_americans... although how is this hacker news?
redwood 14y ago
I've always thought this kind of analysis doesn't look closely enough at the impact of non-English-native speakers on the dominant accent of American English. In other words, the vast majority of Americans are not from English-speaking countries, and the immigrants learned English when they arrived. Thus the English spoken in the key port/immigrant destinations, plus the impact of all those immigrants' accents, should massively impact modern American English. One theory I've come to is based on the fact that modern Dutch-speakers of English tend to have a very American (rather than Britsh) style accent. I propose that early New York, being Dutch and the most important immigrant gateway later on, probably had a bizarre Duthified English which had a scaled impact on generations of immigrants who came through New York. Similar stories are probably found elsewhere.
- sswezey 14y ago
  The number of Dutch in early New York was pretty much insignificant for influencing the pronunciation of English, especially since there are many similar phonemes. In regards to Dutch sounded more American, this a noticeable trend in a lot of younger Europeans (from my personal experience). Most Europeans learn British grammar and spelling, but get most of their audio from American movies, television, and songs. Therefore they end up having a 'Canadian' accent - speak similar to American English while spelling closer to British English.
- digitalWestie 14y ago
  oh, didn't see your comment - I was wondering the same!
dsrguru 14y ago
Informative article, but slightly inaccurate. General American is not "considered generally confined to a small section of the Midwest." This is a myth that I've heard a lot of Midwesterners propagate. Prior to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the most identifiable broadcaster accent was probably the Inland North dialect, which is spoken mostly in western New York, northern Ohio, Michigan, northern Illinois, and Wisconsin. That's presumably the source of the myth. But today, that accent sounds very different from most other dialects of American English (for example, their short 'o' as in "block" sounds almost like most American's short 'a' in "black" and their short 'a' sounds like the non-rhotic diphthong that speakers of RP use for "air"). I've heard Iowans claim that their accent is the most standard, but that couldn't be further from the truth, as most Iowans have backed 'o's and 'u's a la Minnesota, in addition to subscribing to the cot/caught merger, etc. The reality is that there are seven or so dialect regions in the U.S. with lots of variation from place to place within those regions. Some metropolitan areas have their own distinct accents. In my experience, broadcasters tend to use features from their native accent as long as they aren't from the South or a region heavily affected by the aforementioned Northern Cities Vowel Shift. One other inaccuracy is the article's claim that the British elite had much less influence in manufacturing hubs in the Mid Atlantic where Scots-Irish immigrants and nothern English speakers of rhotic dialects predominated. One specific example they give is New York. In reality, New York English was non-rhotic up until recently, and even now, a sizeable number of speakers either have a non-rhotic accent or drop their 'r's in certain environments. I don't know the history of the New York dialect or whether it become non-rhotic at the same time the Boston dialect did, but I'm assuming New York English was influenced more by Dutch, Italian, and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants than by Scots-Irish and northern English immigrants, which would explain why it didn't follow the rhotic trend of the other Mid Atlantic cities that the article talks about.
- bitwize 14y ago
  I'm to understand that the accent used in the area around Omaha, Nebraska is most likely to be perceived as "accentless" by most Americans, so the standard broadcast English accent for American TV is closest to Nebraskan.
  - 14y ago
digitalWestie 14y ago
Surprises me when I've seen this question that nobody brings up the topic of non-native English speakers. The Scandinavian, German, Italian, Polish, Gaelic, etc eventually stopped speaking their own language and took up English. Presumably there was a result from this inheritance?
- taejo 14y ago
  Also Irish people, who mostly spoke English but obviously with an Irish accent.
mynameisasecret 14y ago
A quick visit to Harkers Island, NC would have shown the author that not ALL Americans have lost their British accents. There's a perfectly thick Elizabethan British twang applied to American language by most of the inhabitants there.
phogster 14y ago
I don't mind it so much when British English speakers take out the 'r' in words. What bugs the hell out of me is when they add the 'r' in places where it doesn't belong. Why they do this, I have no idear.
- dredmorbius 14y ago
  There's also the 'w' as 'r' substitution, which I tend to think of as a speech defect. Prominent among several broadcasters.
- conks 14y ago
  I had a British co-worker once and that drove me insane. 'Hey, there's no 'r' in data' I would tell him.
- omaranto 14y ago
  Americans do that too, if you count New Englanders. :) I find it funny that Bostonians pronounce "Korea" and "career" close to swapped from the way I do.
jonmc12 14y ago
This article discusses Dialects of America English in terms of relation to British migration between (1607-1775): http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/Amer... Interesting that drawl in South of US came from drawl in South England. Also, interesting that Britain has more dialects than any US, Canada, Australia, combined. But I guess their dialect had more time to evolve before mass communication
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mikeash 14y ago
I'm always fascinated by the general obliviousness displayed by questions like these. I realize the headline is just a simplified way to introduce the topic, but there really are a lot of people out there who think that we all spoke like the Brits at some point before, and Americans "lost" the accent. The number of people who don't realize that there's no such thing as "no accent" always astounds me.
willf 14y ago
This is like asking when humans stopped being monkeys.
- drcube 14y ago
  Not quite, because people are still monkeys. :) I'd say we lost our British accent when we stopped being British.
HistoryInAction 14y ago
In West Virginia, they really didn't. If you want to know how high-class Englishmen sounded during the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s, go to backcountry WV. Varmint is the corruption of the upper-class pronunciation of vermin, as one example. The so-called mid-atlantic accent of modern Brits is a different phenomenon that is more often discussed, and its downfall can be traced to the collapse of the three broadcast networks. Individuals adopted the accent to come across as more trustworthy, similar to the Baskerville font trustworthiness: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-...
Zenst 14y ago
We had a girl at school whos family left for america when she was in the 2nd year at high school, she returned for a visit 2 years later and had a american accent. Two factors I believe that influence accents: 1) Climate - humidity mostly influencial - Manchester having a more nasal accent and also more rain than most parts of the UK being one important factor. 2) What we hear - more so younger age and I would say upto the age of 25 you are still influenced, maybe later or maybe younger for some people. But certianly what you hear when growing up, upto a point has a influence upon you. Call it the memeaccenting if you like, younger you are the more influenced you are. So even if they all had the same accents, the enviroment would be a factor and over time and influences external (America is not just legacy British people, germanic and others I'm sure above and beyond natives at the start). So can see over time it more a factor than anything for the changes, but in a World which has reduced travel from years, to months to weeks to days and hours, we have a more blured line ahead of us when it comes to accents in the not too distant future. Beyond spelling though, how would you define the differences between an American and a British accent as in some parts of America the difference is not that much in comparision to some parts of Britian. But I'm sure somebody will just say it is all down to dental care and as a British person I too will laugh at that one :).
mixmastamyk 14y ago
Interesting subject. As an avid traveler (from California) I've run into a few Brits and Aussies who (jokingly) looked down their noses at American pronunciation and spelling. I didn't know much about it at the time. The more I've read however, it turns out that most of these "Americanisms" came from Britain, and are in most cases were dominant before the split. It was (mostly) the British who changed (though some regions still do it the "old" way). The subject is a lot more complicated, and in a few cases the people I met were wrong. For example: * -ize (Greek, Oxford), -ise French! * Rhotic (R) pronunciation (Southwest Br., American, Irish, Scottish English, etc.) * RP took hold in the 19th century. (see the Shakespeare in OP video link on this page.)
greggman 14y ago
There's an 8 hour BBC documentary about the History of English if you're interested http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/ I found it pretty fascinating like spelling use to be all over the place but in the UK the most successful publisher of the King James Bible is basically what became the standard way. In the USA it was a textbook that was used in pretty much all schools for most if its history.
jebblue 14y ago
We used to do boomer patrols out of Holy Loch, we were there for a two week turnover period. By the end of the two weeks, half the crew had at least a slightly noticeable Scottish accent. Every time.
stretchwithme 14y ago
I've noticed that the Aborigines in Australia sound a lot like other Australians. No doubt these groups influenced each other. And that probably happened in the US too. And now they are being shaped by asian and Mexican immigrants too.

198 points by Jagat 14y ago

aston 14y ago

The fascinating tl;dr: The British lost their English accents around the turn of the 19th century. As far as rhotic r's go, Americans still mostly speak the way Brits and Americans did in the 18th century.

jinushaun 14y ago
IMO, no discussion about the loss of "British accents" in America can be complete without including Canada, Australia and South Africa in the mix. I always found it fascinating that the US and Australia have such dramatically different "standard" accents despite both being former British colonies. Btw, anyone wanting to search for the "missing link" should visit Bermuda. Strange mix of GA and RP.
- dmoo 14y ago
  Also interesting is how close the Newfoundland accent has stayed to the rural Irish one. www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqLuIXwsLDw
- wluu 14y ago
  Ah, Australian "English"... :) I'd say (in Australia), our English was influenced to an extent by the local population (ie: Aboriginal Australians) to a degree in addition to British English. Here's a few references: * "history & accent change" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/history-accent-change http://clas.mq.edu.au/australian-voices/history-accent-chang... * "australian accent" - http://clas.mq.edu.au/voices/australian-accent http://clas.mq.edu.au/voices/australian-accent * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_English Might also be a good idea (if you're curious) to contrast/compare Australian English with New Zealand English. Subtle differences, but they are there. It's a mighty big topic if you really want to delve into it in any detail.
  - toyg 14y ago
    "Subtle" is a relative term here: I'm Italian, not particularly trained in languages, and I can easily tell NZ and Aussies apart. NZ vowels are even crazier than the already-bonkers Australian ones.
davidw 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_and_non-rhotic_accents Interesting maps - significant portions of England were still rhotic in the 1950ies. Incidentally, it's fascinating how much accents and dialects can change in such a short distance in Europe. Within a few hours bicycling distance from Padova, people can tell that someone is from here and not whatever town they're in. Compare and contrast with my Oregon upbringing, which no one could place anywhere specific in the Western US with any degree of accuracy. Another fascinating tidbit is New Mexican Spanish: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Mexican_Spanish Which became way more isolated from Spain than the US ever was from England.
- arethuza 14y ago
  A few hours cycling is nothing - when I grew up in the North East of Scotland people from the coastal fishing villages had quite different accents to people from farms maybe 1 km or so inland. [NB When the BBC did a TV series featuring fishermen from near where I grew up they had to give the show subtitles so it could be understood in the rest of the UK ;-)] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trawlermen_%28TV_series%29
  - deleted 14y ago
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- petercooper 14y ago
  I live in Lincolnshire, a large county on the east coast of England, and after ten years of being here, I can distinguish a native of my town of Louth from one of Cleethorpes, 15 miles away. 35 miles south of here, in the original Boston, the local accent is rather different again. Most Brits would not notice the difference as Lincolnshire accents are broadly unrecognized nationally, though any Brit (and, perhaps, many Americans?) could distinguish a Scouse (Liverpool) accent from a Mancunian (Manchester) one - only 27 miles apart. Think Beatles vs Oasis here. Sadly, though, this does only work on true, thoroughbred natives - a small percentage of the population in most areas now due to the frequent movement of people around England.
dmmalam 14y ago
history of english http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3r9bOkYW9s
laumars 14y ago
A Brit' here, most British dialects are heavy on the R's. Whether that's the rural accents ranging from the Cornish (south west) to Norfolk (south east). Then you have the harsher sounding dialects of the north east - who also seem quite rhotic (or at least, the thicker accents are). Then you have the Welsh and -as mentioned in the article- the Scottish and Irish who all also emphasise their R's (it's quite amusing when I hang out with some of my Scottish friends as they can't pronounce "Karl", so every time they call his name, my other friend "Carol" answers!) The ironic thing is, the way the English are perceived to speak isn't the way how 99% of English (let alone British) people speak. Even in London and it's overspills (the neighbouring counties), which is where our dialects are the least rhotic, most people don't pronounce themselves in the same way as they do in American TV. But I can understand why the stereotyped accent is used; it's a slower and more clearly spoken - which is ideal for broadcasting where the actor needs to be heard and understood by the audience. Many of the northern accents are spoken with such speed that it can be difficult for an untrained ear; even for some of us English! It's also a sexier dialect (few sane people would fall in love with a Geordie accent, Brummie or even Cockney, if they weren't already brought up in that area. If anyone is interested, I'd be happy to find youtube videos for some of the more distinct dialects. [edit] Just been chatting to my wife about this. She's from the north east of England, I'm from the south. It seems I've overstated the amount of emphasis the north east places on their R's. I'm not sure if I'm alone about this, but the funny thing about pronunciation is the moment you're asked to think about the way you pronounce a word, you've instantly forgotten how you normally talk!
- gcv 14y ago
  Please do! I'd be especially interested in some of the ones you mentioned: Geordie and Brummie. Also, some of the harder-to-understand ones. I can understand Yorkshire pretty well, but maybe some others would give me trouble.
  - laumars 14y ago
    This is taken from a British sitcom, 'Alan Partridge'. It features a Norfolk and a Geordie: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oSHHbfY6MVc It's actually a pretty good example of a Newcastle (Geordie) accent despite being a comedy show. Finding a good example of a Brummie accent as proven more tricky as I'm either stumbling across paradises where they over accentuate the "twang", or TV personalities where the access is suppressed a little. Ozzy Osbourne is from that area and in his interviews you can sometimes hear the accent showing through. The pronunciation itself isn't hard to understand; I highlighted it because it's a unique accent. I think these days it's mellowed quite a bit though. This video isn't work safe, but it's the best example of a Welsh accent I could find. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwUrMEZWj5o (this is also probably the accent I hate the most - I couldn't explain why, but it just grinds) This is the Cornish (south west) accent: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8jbxdZE3g80 It's probably the closest to the old Shakespearian English that someone linked to in these comments.
kafkaesque 14y ago
This is slightly off topic, but here is a map of American and Canadian English dialects and accents: http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ There are few major pronunciation differences, yet many subtle differences!

vor_ 14y ago

I didn't know that the British originally spoke with an rhotic accent. The General American accent is supposedly how the British used to sound. Perhaps the title should be "When did the British lose their original accents?" as the Americans are the ones who (apparently) retained their original British accents.

mpyne 14y ago
The title is good in that is always how we seem to see that question phrased on the Internet. That is, with the underlying assumption that the U.S. has once again deliberately gone out of their way to be different.
jinushaun 14y ago
The whole notion is nebulous because both nations lost their original accents. Just watch videos of Americans speaking from a few decades ago and you'll see how much "General American" has changed in such a short period. Secondly, given the abundance of regional accents in the UK, I doubt there was even a dominant accent in the American colonies at the time unless you're only counting the upper class.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  Americans speak with wildly different accents. Oklahomans sound different from Arkansas natives; Georgians quite different from each. In New York there is more than one accent.
  - eric_bullington 14y ago
    Not only from state-to-state (as you allude to). I'm from SC and can easily distinguish the accent spoken in Upstate SC (which sounds much like the stereotypical "Georgia peach" accent) from one spoken by older people in the Low Country area around Charleston, from the accent spoken by the rest of the state. And move up just a few miles from Upstate SC into the mountains of NC (and tip of SC), and you have an entirely different accent. I suspect that these differences are being lost in younger generations, as everyone moves toward a more standardized accent, but I can still distinguish the difference in accents among most South Carolinians.

keyboardP 14y ago

A bit OT but hopefully interesting nevertheless. This is apparently the original pronunciation for the works of Shakespeare http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s The entire video has some nice information but if you want to skip to an example of the original pronunciation, you can jump to 2:50.

duck 14y ago

Related thread from a couple years ago: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486017 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1486017 And the follow-up: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1489723

dirktheman 14y ago

On the same note, I find it equally intriguing how Dutch and South African languages are similar. Afrikaans is a lot like 17th century Dutch, which is a lot different than modern Dutch. Unlike English, which changed to a much lesser extend. But I don't have to try hard to follow Afrikaans.

joe5150 14y ago
Afrikaans is basically 17-century Dutch, though.
- dirktheman 14y ago
  Parts of it are, but there's a good portion of loan words from other 'occupying countries' such as Portuguese, but also Malay (from the Dutch slave trade era) and some native African languages such as Khoisan.

petercooper 14y ago

Slightly related to this.. much study has been done into the pronunciation at the time when Shakespeare's plays were originally performed (in the 1600s) principally so that the effect can be recreated. You can check out what it sounded like at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPlpphT7n9s and various other videos. (Jump to 2m50s for the actual speech.) The odd thing about this to my English ear is that the 1600s English pronunciation has a lot of similarities to that of the South West of England today, but perhaps this shouldn't be too surprising given this map of rhoticism in modern British English: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhoticEngland2.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:RhoticEngland2.png

WA 14y ago
That video is quite interesting. Unrelated: At first I thought: Hey, that's the voice of a physicist in Half Life 1, like "Good morning Mr. Freeman!" Then the picture of him comes up in the video and he does not only sound like the character, he even looks like him :)
tunesmith 14y ago
Really cool point in that video about how the original pronunciation of "hour" sounded just like the original pronunciation of "whore". Which led to puns that worked back then that do not work at all in modern english pronunciation.
benihana 14y ago
Just for future reference, if you right click on a video on youtube, you can click copy link at current time to lazy link to 2m50s so you don't have to say "jump to this time." http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gPlpphT7n9s#t=178s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- jpwagner 14y ago
  you can also just add &t=2m50s to the query string

mikestew 14y ago

What amazes me is that in a couple of generations the accents of all the regions change (including England itself with the hard r, apparently). In the case of the US I'm curious if accents stay the same once geographically stable. Once we became more mobile in the early-mid 20th century, are accents changing faster with the influx of diversity as folks move around?

Hemospectrum 14y ago
Mobility is something of a linguistic equalizer, especially at a young age. If children travel around the country (or the world) being exposed to many different accents, the dialect features start to blend together. See also: Radio and television.

kjackson2012 14y ago

I have a friend from Hong Kong, and she has an English accent, having being educated in British schools. For fun, I asked her to talk in an American accent, and what fascinated me, is that she talked with an almost exactly Southern accent. So maybe the Southern accent is a vestigial accent leftover from the transition from British to American accent.

Yhippa 14y ago
I don't have the source but I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that a Southern accent is mostly a slowed-down version of a British accent.
olalonde 14y ago
The Southern accent is probably the strongest and most "famous" regional American accent. That might be why your friend tried to imitate it.
pbhjpbhj 14y ago
Did you enquire further about it. I can probably, with effort, muster 3 distinct USA accents that I'd label Southern, New York and West-Coast - but they'd be based on mass media. I'd say people can often do several USA accents because they're used to hearing a lot en_US speakers from Hollywood movies. What always freaks me out a little is when you visit some out of the way place, Gambia say, and they talk in USA accents because they've learnt English either from films or Voice of America.
- notahacker 14y ago
  Non-native English speakers attempting a general American accent they've picked up from media or US teachers is the rule rather than the exception. You know Britain has left behind a strong colonial legacy when they don't. What freaked me out was a Burmese English teacher speaking with the sort of Cockney accent that's only ever heard in low budget British gangster films.

jeremyswank 14y ago

when british english was transplanted to north america, a separate geographic context was created for one and the same language. a relative isolation was imposed by an ocean between them, and each continued to change over time. british and american english descend from a common ancestor.

kyllo 14y ago

This sort of thing is much easier to understand if you think of languages as living, changing organisms rather than as static constructs. They actually change rather quickly, from generation to generation. Large human migrations tend to homogenize in the sense that they result in a single dialect propagating over a large land mass. But then they continue to diverge regionally over time in rather random ways, to the point where every city in a given country, or even every neighborhood in every city in the country, will develop its own distinct dialect. London is a good example--it's a city that's been inhabited mostly by the same ethnic group for many centuries, and their language tree has branched to the point where people of different districts and social classes there use very different-sounding pronunciation.

louhong 14y ago

This might be an interesting video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E) - its a video of Tangier, VA where they still speak English from when the town was settled in 1600s.

cjensen 14y ago
The notion that some areas still speak the original language was debunked in the linked article.
- droithomme 14y ago
  The original article doesn't debunk it, it states without giving a single citation that "claims about the accents of the Appalachian Mountains, the Outer Banks, the Tidewater region and Virginia's Tangier Island sounding like an uncorrupted Elizabethan-era English accent have been busted as myths by linguists." Most likely his source is a single linguist, Dr. Michael Montgomery, who is from Knoxville and has written several articles on "Appalachian English", but which articles actually pertain only to East Tennessee rural english, and not other parts of the Appalachians. Here are all his articles on the topic: http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/articles.html http://artsandsciences.sc.edu/engl/dictionary/articles.html He does a good summary of the language of that region and can be reasonably considered an expert. He makes a convincing argument that much of the novel vocabulary is Scotch-Irish vocabulary from the early settlers of the area. He makes a less convincing argument that since the mountain people of the region are not familiar with idioms of Shakespeare, their speech is not related in any way to Elizabethan English. Elizabethan era people did not speak exactly the way Shakespeare wrote though. Pilgrims so desperate from religious oppression by the Church of England at the time to would not necessarily be experts in Shakespearean idioms. Dr. Montgomery's articles are certainly worth a read and make many reasonable arguments about the dialects he is familiar with. The notion that the idea that any archaic language dialects have influenced certain dialect pockets that have survived to the present has been debunked, and such an opinion is held by all linguists is not established, cited or proven by the article.

wololo 14y ago

it's a common question on r/linguistics and r/askhistorians: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k8t7s/when_did_americans_lose_their_british_accent/ http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/k8t7s/when_did_am... http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/l1z1b/did_the_founding_fathers_have_american_accents/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/l1z1b/did_the_f... http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/vr14o/can_someone_from_rlinguistic_form_a_comprehensive/ http://www.reddit.com/r/linguistics/comments/vr14o/can_someo... http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlv3j/would_americans_at_the_time_of_the_revolution http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/rlv3j/would_a... http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t9frm/differences_in_american_and_british_english http://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/t9frm/differe... http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/d82bv/did_americans_in_1776_have_british_accents/ http://www.reddit.com/r/history/comments/d82bv/did_americans... although how is this hacker news?

redwood 14y ago

I've always thought this kind of analysis doesn't look closely enough at the impact of non-English-native speakers on the dominant accent of American English. In other words, the vast majority of Americans are not from English-speaking countries, and the immigrants learned English when they arrived. Thus the English spoken in the key port/immigrant destinations, plus the impact of all those immigrants' accents, should massively impact modern American English. One theory I've come to is based on the fact that modern Dutch-speakers of English tend to have a very American (rather than Britsh) style accent. I propose that early New York, being Dutch and the most important immigrant gateway later on, probably had a bizarre Duthified English which had a scaled impact on generations of immigrants who came through New York. Similar stories are probably found elsewhere.

sswezey 14y ago
The number of Dutch in early New York was pretty much insignificant for influencing the pronunciation of English, especially since there are many similar phonemes. In regards to Dutch sounded more American, this a noticeable trend in a lot of younger Europeans (from my personal experience). Most Europeans learn British grammar and spelling, but get most of their audio from American movies, television, and songs. Therefore they end up having a 'Canadian' accent - speak similar to American English while spelling closer to British English.
digitalWestie 14y ago
oh, didn't see your comment - I was wondering the same!

dsrguru 14y ago

Informative article, but slightly inaccurate. General American is not "considered generally confined to a small section of the Midwest." This is a myth that I've heard a lot of Midwesterners propagate. Prior to the Northern Cities Vowel Shift, the most identifiable broadcaster accent was probably the Inland North dialect, which is spoken mostly in western New York, northern Ohio, Michigan, northern Illinois, and Wisconsin. That's presumably the source of the myth. But today, that accent sounds very different from most other dialects of American English (for example, their short 'o' as in "block" sounds almost like most American's short 'a' in "black" and their short 'a' sounds like the non-rhotic diphthong that speakers of RP use for "air"). I've heard Iowans claim that their accent is the most standard, but that couldn't be further from the truth, as most Iowans have backed 'o's and 'u's a la Minnesota, in addition to subscribing to the cot/caught merger, etc. The reality is that there are seven or so dialect regions in the U.S. with lots of variation from place to place within those regions. Some metropolitan areas have their own distinct accents. In my experience, broadcasters tend to use features from their native accent as long as they aren't from the South or a region heavily affected by the aforementioned Northern Cities Vowel Shift. One other inaccuracy is the article's claim that the British elite had much less influence in manufacturing hubs in the Mid Atlantic where Scots-Irish immigrants and nothern English speakers of rhotic dialects predominated. One specific example they give is New York. In reality, New York English was non-rhotic up until recently, and even now, a sizeable number of speakers either have a non-rhotic accent or drop their 'r's in certain environments. I don't know the history of the New York dialect or whether it become non-rhotic at the same time the Boston dialect did, but I'm assuming New York English was influenced more by Dutch, Italian, and Ashkenazi Jewish immigrants than by Scots-Irish and northern English immigrants, which would explain why it didn't follow the rhotic trend of the other Mid Atlantic cities that the article talks about.

bitwize 14y ago
I'm to understand that the accent used in the area around Omaha, Nebraska is most likely to be perceived as "accentless" by most Americans, so the standard broadcast English accent for American TV is closest to Nebraskan.
- 14y ago

digitalWestie 14y ago

Surprises me when I've seen this question that nobody brings up the topic of non-native English speakers. The Scandinavian, German, Italian, Polish, Gaelic, etc eventually stopped speaking their own language and took up English. Presumably there was a result from this inheritance?

taejo 14y ago
Also Irish people, who mostly spoke English but obviously with an Irish accent.

mynameisasecret 14y ago

A quick visit to Harkers Island, NC would have shown the author that not ALL Americans have lost their British accents. There's a perfectly thick Elizabethan British twang applied to American language by most of the inhabitants there.

phogster 14y ago

I don't mind it so much when British English speakers take out the 'r' in words. What bugs the hell out of me is when they add the 'r' in places where it doesn't belong. Why they do this, I have no idear.

dredmorbius 14y ago
There's also the 'w' as 'r' substitution, which I tend to think of as a speech defect. Prominent among several broadcasters.
conks 14y ago
I had a British co-worker once and that drove me insane. 'Hey, there's no 'r' in data' I would tell him.
omaranto 14y ago
Americans do that too, if you count New Englanders. :) I find it funny that Bostonians pronounce "Korea" and "career" close to swapped from the way I do.

jonmc12 14y ago

This article discusses Dialects of America English in terms of relation to British migration between (1607-1775): http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/Amer... Interesting that drawl in South of US came from drawl in South England. Also, interesting that Britain has more dialects than any US, Canada, Australia, combined. But I guess their dialect had more time to evolve before mass communication

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mikeash 14y ago

I'm always fascinated by the general obliviousness displayed by questions like these. I realize the headline is just a simplified way to introduce the topic, but there really are a lot of people out there who think that we all spoke like the Brits at some point before, and Americans "lost" the accent. The number of people who don't realize that there's no such thing as "no accent" always astounds me.

willf 14y ago

This is like asking when humans stopped being monkeys.

drcube 14y ago
Not quite, because people are still monkeys. :) I'd say we lost our British accent when we stopped being British.

HistoryInAction 14y ago

In West Virginia, they really didn't. If you want to know how high-class Englishmen sounded during the Glorious Revolution of the 1680s, go to backcountry WV. Varmint is the corruption of the upper-class pronunciation of vermin, as one example. The so-called mid-atlantic accent of modern Brits is a different phenomenon that is more often discussed, and its downfall can be traced to the collapse of the three broadcast networks. Individuals adopted the accent to come across as more trustworthy, similar to the Baskerville font trustworthiness: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-people-hearken-o-earth/ http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/08/hear-all-ye-...

Zenst 14y ago

We had a girl at school whos family left for america when she was in the 2nd year at high school, she returned for a visit 2 years later and had a american accent. Two factors I believe that influence accents: 1) Climate - humidity mostly influencial - Manchester having a more nasal accent and also more rain than most parts of the UK being one important factor. 2) What we hear - more so younger age and I would say upto the age of 25 you are still influenced, maybe later or maybe younger for some people. But certianly what you hear when growing up, upto a point has a influence upon you. Call it the memeaccenting if you like, younger you are the more influenced you are. So even if they all had the same accents, the enviroment would be a factor and over time and influences external (America is not just legacy British people, germanic and others I'm sure above and beyond natives at the start). So can see over time it more a factor than anything for the changes, but in a World which has reduced travel from years, to months to weeks to days and hours, we have a more blured line ahead of us when it comes to accents in the not too distant future. Beyond spelling though, how would you define the differences between an American and a British accent as in some parts of America the difference is not that much in comparision to some parts of Britian. But I'm sure somebody will just say it is all down to dental care and as a British person I too will laugh at that one :).

mixmastamyk 14y ago

Interesting subject. As an avid traveler (from California) I've run into a few Brits and Aussies who (jokingly) looked down their noses at American pronunciation and spelling. I didn't know much about it at the time. The more I've read however, it turns out that most of these "Americanisms" came from Britain, and are in most cases were dominant before the split. It was (mostly) the British who changed (though some regions still do it the "old" way). The subject is a lot more complicated, and in a few cases the people I met were wrong. For example: * -ize (Greek, Oxford), -ise French! * Rhotic (R) pronunciation (Southwest Br., American, Irish, Scottish English, etc.) * RP took hold in the 19th century. (see the Shakespeare in OP video link on this page.)

greggman 14y ago

There's an 8 hour BBC documentary about the History of English if you're interested http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/ http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/story-of-english/ I found it pretty fascinating like spelling use to be all over the place but in the UK the most successful publisher of the King James Bible is basically what became the standard way. In the USA it was a textbook that was used in pretty much all schools for most if its history.

jebblue 14y ago

We used to do boomer patrols out of Holy Loch, we were there for a two week turnover period. By the end of the two weeks, half the crew had at least a slightly noticeable Scottish accent. Every time.

stretchwithme 14y ago

I've noticed that the Aborigines in Australia sound a lot like other Australians. No doubt these groups influenced each other. And that probably happened in the US too. And now they are being shaped by asian and Mexican immigrants too.