When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?

[frogmarch]

http://mentalfloss.com/article/29761/when-did-americans-lose-their-british-accents

Snip:

There are many, many evolving regional British and American accents, so the terms “British accent” and “American accent” are gross oversimplifications. What a lot of Americans think of as the typical "British accent” is what's called standardized Received Pronunciation (RP), also known as Public School English or BBC English. What most people think of as an "American accent," or most Americans think of as "no accent," is the General American (GenAm) accent, sometimes called a "newscaster accent" or "Network English." Because this is a blog post and not a book, we'll focus on these two general sounds for now and leave the regional accents for another time.

English colonists established their first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, sounding very much like their countrymen back home. By the time we had recordings of both Americans and Brits some three centuries later (the first audio recording of a human voice was made in 1860), the sounds of English as spoken in the Old World and New World were very different. We're looking at a silent gap of some 300 years, so we can't say exactly when Americans first started to sound noticeably different from the British.

As for the "why," though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don't pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, the English, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent. We don't know much more about said accent, though. Various 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.

Talk This Way

Around the turn of the 19th century, not long after the revolution, non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper and upper-middle classes. It was a signifier of class and status. This posh accent was standardized as Received Pronunciation and taught widely by pronunciation tutors to people who wanted to learn to speak fashionably. Because the Received Pronunciation accent was regionally "neutral" and easy to understand, it spread across England and the empire through the armed forces, the civil service and, later, the BBC.

Across the pond, many former colonists also adopted and imitated Received Pronunciation to show off their status. This happened especially in the port cities that still had close trading ties with England — Boston, Richmond, Charleston, and Savannah. From the Southeastern coast, the RP sound spread through much of the South along with plantation culture and wealth.

More at the link

I find this fascinating!

[1000words]

1. Related question:

Why do the British lose their accents when they sing?

[frogmarch]

3. Yes, why do they?

I often wonder the very same thing!

[NoGOPZone]

38. Just a guess, but it may be from trying to imitate the voices

of blues, rock and rockabilly singers

[Fumesucker]

10. Why did Jim Nabors not sound like a hillbilly when he sang? n/t

[1000words]

18. So, it's not an Anglo-Saxon speech pathology ...

as it is an overall arts and humanity occurrence.

I am interested in your ideas and would like to subscribe to your newsletter.

[former9thward]

21. His natural voice was not hillbilly.

[madokie]

23. Or Mel Tillis doesn't stutter when he sings

I had a friend, dead now, who stuttered until he got mad then he could talk as good as the best talker.

[House of Roberts]

28. Tillis didn't stammer when he sang because he knew the words ahead of time.

His problem was enunciating words as he was thinking them. He never really stuttered, there's a difference.

[Art_from_Ark]

29. Some of them don't

I think it might have more to do with marketing-- heavy British accents probably can't sell as well in the States.

Anyway, here are some Brits singing in their "native tongue":

[1000words]

33. Billy Bragg!

Some damn good examples you've chosen. Particularly enjoy Small Faces and Traffic.

[OwnedByCats]

85. I lived in Britain and it was always 50/50

as to whether you could hear their accent when they sang. Some accentuate their vowels more than others. You're right, there are many examples of British singers who actually sound British when they sing. For some reason some of them don't.

[Art_from_Ark]

87. I'll have to admit that I was surprised to find out that

the Everly Brothers, Leapy Lee, and Georgy Fame were/are all British, especially since I often heard songs by them (Walk Right Back, Little Arrows, Bonnie and Clyde, etc.) played on my local (American) country music radio station.

[OwnedByCats]

88. Yeah sometimes they

really fool you!

[Art_from_Ark]

89. They sure fooled me!

Georgy Fame especially-- He sounded like he had just gotten off the bus from the Louisiana backwoods

And then, there were the Beau Brummels, who I had always thought were part of the '60s British Invasion-- but they were actually from San Francisco!

Or maybe they just looked too much like the Beatle-stones

[starroute]

31. I don't think they do unless they're trying to sound American

If you're the Beatles trying to sing rock 'n' roll, you do your best to sound American. But there are plenty of British singers in more recent decades who are proud of their working class or regional accents and don't set them aside when they sing.

[Codeine]

69. They don't.

I've very rarely heard an English singer who didn't sound English when singing. Hell, the sound of an English accent is so stereotypically part of punk and New Wave that some American singers in those genres adopted (perhaps unconsciously) such an accent when they sang -- Billy Joe Armstrong from Green Day has a bit of that going on, and Alain Jourgensen from Ministry was infamous for his fake accent on his first few recordings.

[MADem]

2. And now, some of 'em are starting to sound like US....

See "HOUSE," and the guy on the WIRE, and the guy on GOOD WIFE...British actors just LOVE to play Americans--it's like a right of passage!

[frogmarch]

5. And they do a great job,

don't they?

American actors seem to have a harder time faking British accents. I can't do a good one either, so I can relate.

[Spider Jerusalem]

11. That's because British actors usually have a background in theatre

and also because British (and Australian/Kiwi) actors who want film work need to learn to fake American. American actors generally don't need to learn to fake accents because American films will play well in other English-speaking countries anyway.

I've met people who'd been unaware that Hugh Laurie or Idris Elba were actually British and not American until told; I can't think of a single American actor who's done a British or Australian accent that would convince native Brits or Australians.

[frogmarch]

22. Interesting!

Hugh Laurie being British surprised me too!

As for American actors generally not needing to learn to fake British accents, I really wish Kevin Costner had at least tried when he was in that Robin Hood movie - even if the article is correct and the real RH, if there was one, may not have sounded British as we hear it today.

[OwnedByCats]

86. Having lived in the UK, I saw people like

Hugh Laurie long before he was on House and well known over here. I love informing my mom that someone is really British - such as Hugh and Andrew Lincoln on Walking Dead (along with David Morrissey), just to give another example. They do a really good job on American accents. Of course some of ours do really good British accents like Renee Zellweger and Gwyneth Paltrow. There was this one guy who was on the Buffy the Vampire tv series who played a British vampire, many were very surprised he wasn't really English he did so well.

[Codeine]

70. "Dags. D'ya like dags?"

[Ino]

74. I was married to a Brit...

He was surprised that Renee Zellwegger (Bridget Jones's Diary) and the cast of Spinal Tap were Americans. He thought the accents were spot-on.

[Jenoch]

82. Mel Gibson used to do a decent Austrailian accent.

[Spider Jerusalem]

84. Only because he acquired it naturally (he still has faint traces of it).

[MADem]

17. The problem with Americans is that they don't realize that the way the Queen speaks is

not the same as the way that 'Dot Cotton' on Eastenders speaks....that the BBC accent isn't the same as as TOWIE accent; they tend to mish-mash it because they don't understand the regional differences. People from overseas do understand that there's a difference in American accents in the south and the west (they sometimes convolute the two), and they do understand that there is a certain urgency to urban northern accents like NY, Chicago and Boston.

Beyond that, though, it's all down to good dialogue coaches. Repetition helps, too!!!

[frogmarch]

25. I can hear the regional

differences in British accents, but I can't imitate them well. All my mother's people live in England, and they all sound different from each other.

The first time I went over, they were shocked that I didn't sound like the "Texans" on Dallas, even though I was a South Dakotan. They all said I sounded like a Canadian when I spoke.

[MADem]

61. I'm pretty good with accents--I can bullshit in several languages for brief periods, anyway.

I usually learn an accent better, or at least faster, than I learn a language, so people think I know more than I actually do!

It's a characteristic that all my siblings possess as well--we moved around a lot as kids, and had to learn to adapt...! I kept moving as an adult and so have been exposed to a lot of different "voices." It's made for an interesting life!

[nyquil_man]

77. I'm reminded of this:

[MADem]

80. That is PRICELESS and thank you for posting it-I'd never seen it and it is a must-see!!! nt

[Hassin Bin Sober]

27. I HATE it when those sneaky Brits trick me!!!!

The cast of Battlestar Galactica, House, now Walking Dead!

Sneaky sneaky Brits!

Me and my boyfriend will be like "Oh no, not another one!!"

[JaneyVee]

4. The southern accent didn't exist until after the Civil War.

[frogmarch]

7. Really? Wow!

That is really something. I had no idea. :-O

[JaneyVee]

12. I read about it a few years back. Not sure of its accuracy though.

[former9thward]

26. Long before the Civil War.

According to the book, The Story of English, Black English played a large role in the development of what we call the Southern accent. This is a delicate subject among some Southerners, but nevertheless an historical fact. A paragraph from page 215 of The Story of English explains:

"The plantations of the deep South became the cradle of a new ingredient in American culture. The English of the slaves was having a decisive effect on the English of their White Anglo-Saxon masters. The Southern accent of the United States would almost certainly have been quite different without the influence of the Blacks. The influence of Black English was felt in the fields (where slave and overseer would mix), in the house (where master and mistress used Plantation Creole to communicate with their house slaves); but above all, it was found in the nursery. Up to the age of about six years, Black and White children grew up together, played together, and learned together. In these crucial years of their development the Whites were often outnumbered by the Black slave children. Furthermore, all the nursing -- as any reader of Southern literature knows -- was done by Blacks. As early as the mid-eighteenth century, it was reported that, 'the better sort, in this country, particularly, consign their children to the care of Negroes ...'"

Interestingly, English author Charles Dickens, while on an American tour, noticed that Southern women were most influenced by Black English.The reason for this was that young Southern women more often stayed on the plantations, while the young men of well-to-do families "were usually sent away to White schools, often in the Northern states."

[Igel]

34. Southern English was non-rhotic early on.

Northern English was rhotic.

For the same reason: They primarily came from areas of England that were rhotic or non-rhotic. There are still rhotic varieties of English, varieties of British English that sound more "American" (meaning mid-Atlantic) than others.

Think about where blacks in the South picked up English. From Southerners. Try as linguists may, they keep losing ground in trying to claim that AAVE is a creole. If it was--and a pidgin probably occurred early--it was certainly relexicalized and subject to a lot of acrolectal influence very early on. Most AAVE dialectal features are attested in older Southern dialects.

In fact, it's pretty much a slam dunk that African-American Vernacular English has increased its rate of change in the last 50 years or so. In other words, go back to 1920 and "black English" would sound a lot more like "Southern English" than it does now--and go back to 1820 and it would sound even more similar. De-segregation didn't speed up the rate of change; probably the desire to be distinct did (two Oaxacan villages that developed very hostile relations but spoke nearly identical dialects really changed quickly, in decades; the same has been observed in other areas, as well, from the Balkans to Australia).

Southern English, of course, has also had some changes in how it handles the replacement for /r/ and long vowels that resulted from diphthongs. It's not like either is unchanged--any more than British English is unchanged. (But most dialects have some archaisms.)

Dickens picked up on educated versus uneducated speech: Educated Southern speech tended to lose some of its features when Southerners went north for education.

It works the same in Latin American Spanish--there are large-scale dialectal features that derive from local Spanish features. Southern Spain didn't have the Castilian s/z distinction. So Latin American Spanish doesn't. In other cases, change went equally well in both areas--for example /j/ went from a "sh" to a "kh" sound.

[JaneyVee]

37. Fascinating. As someone who speaks 4 languages I'm always interested in

Origins of dialects. I have to admit though that I haven't done much research into modern American language as much as I have into ancient language. Thanks for info.

[Spider Jerusalem]

54. Southern English as in Southern US or the South of England, though?

The accent of the Southeast of England, and specifically London, was non-rhotic early on; the accent of the US South probably wasn't, as such, because most early Southern colonists came from the West Country (Devon and Cornwall and Gloucester) and from Scotland by way of Ulster. The Northern colonies were settled by people from East Anglia and the North Midlands of England. See here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed#Four_Folkways

[JaneyVee]

35. Very interesting! Thanks for the info.

[GeorgeGist]

67. But you posted it like it was a fact.

[Ohio Joe]

6. I don't usually have an accent but when high, I get a bit of a Basten accent

[frogmarch]

9. haha, well, do you

ever lose your khakis and can't use the kah finder to help you find where you packed your kah?

[DamnYankeeInHouston]

49. Ovuh heah deah - foah moah foaks.

My favorite Boston accent sample - a waitress in a restaurant.

My second favorite was when my nephew was running away and his sister said, "Make showah you pack yoah underwayah."

[Scootaloo]

53. Then there's people like me...

Born into a family that spoke with a standard White-southern dialect. Schooled and raised in a majority-black environment, so ended up combining African American vernacular with white-southern... then moved to Alaska, picked up the weird monotone they have up there (both the native groups and the Scandinavian immigrants have this sort of look-at-your-feet-and-mumble way of talking) and then, FINALLY i'm further south in the northwest, picking up all of that...

Said phonetically...

Born to uh famly tht spoke widda stannard white-suthern dialect. School'n raised inna majortee black 'vironment, soendedup combinin' Affrin'merican vernacular wit white-suthern... 'n moved to Alaska, picked up da weerd montone they have u' there (botha natif groups anda Skanninavian imgrants have this sorta lookicher-feet-n-mumble way talkin') and then, FINE-lee, 'm further south in da northwest, pickin' up alla that...

On top of two years of German, a spanish-speaking workplace, and an apparent inability to segregate languages in my head.

My mother says she can barely understand me. My dad hasn't left the south and ih haven't talked to him in years, but last time I did, every third sentence of his was "...what?"

I'm a linguistic monster.

[elleng]

8. Soon as we moved to Brooklyn!!!

[frogmarch]

16. Now, that is a

hard accent to try to do. I like it, but I can't do it.

[ReRe]

51. ...

[jwirr]

13. Some of us never had a british accent.

[frogmarch]

15. How very true!

Some of our ancestors didn't come from England.

America is a One Big Tossed Salad.

[jwirr]

19. Yes, mine came from Germany and today my family is primarily Native American and black. None of us

had English as our first language.

[etherealtruth]

14. Interesting article

[markpkessinger]

20. Actually, some researchers think it was the British accent that diverged in the 19th C

The most distinctive thing about most American accents is the rhotic 'r'. Many linguists believe that British accents began becoming increasingly non-rhotic in the 19th and 20th centuries.

[frogmarch]

32. The British "r" has always

made me wonder why their "r" is almost always pronounced "uh" even though it's spelled with an r. Why wasn't water originally spelled watuh if "r" wasn't meant to be pronounced as an r??

It's almost mind-boggling for me to grasp that the BBC British accent (the one I'm most familiar with) may be a fairly recent accent!

[Spider Jerusalem]

48. Non-rhotic "r" is a feature that originated in London speech

possibly as early as the 14th-15th century, and spread outward from there as it became the "prestige dialect". ("Bass", as in the fish, appears in a writing of c. 1500's as "barse", which shows that non-rhoticity was already occurring by then.)

[tiny elvis]

57. old english r was trilled (rolled)

then the normans came and in less than one hundred years old english became middle english
french was more readily absorbed by the upper classes while the more common of two old english
dialects persisted, with lots of french, to become modern english
a trill is still used for deliberate enunciation and to distinguish class when performing shakespeare
we know from the way samuel pepys spelled words in his diary that his seventeenth century
london accent resembled eliza doolittle's
cockney drops rs
the dropped r did not come out of nowhere
it is just a piece of one accent that has become prominent

[spooky3]

46. It also makes sense because the Irish and

Scottish accents sound so different from English accents--esp the rhotic pronunciation.

[HipChick]

24. American accents sound like lazy english...

[pipi_k]

30. Don't know how true this is, but...

I read/heard somewhere that most Massachusetts residents can tell when a non-native is trying to fake a Boston accent.

[hughee99]

43. That's because non-natives usually do it pretty shitty.

People who live in Boston for a little while can work a passable accent. The problem seems to be that most people who try to fake one, overdue it. Even with the best Boston accent, if you don't know what a "packy", "bubblah", or "grindah" are or what "Comm Ave", "the Fens", or "Southie" are, you're going to get called out.

[pipi_k]

65. Yeah, I've noticed

in movies that some of the non-native actors do tend to overdo the accent.

Oh, and even we, out here in the western part of the state, know what a "packy", "bubblah", "grindah", or a whole bunch of other Boston-centric words are...

Even though we don't pronounce them the same way.

[LiberalEsto]

66. True I lived on Worcester for half a year in the early 1970s

and everybody used packie, bubbler and the others. I also learned to say "frappe" for milkshake when I worked as a waitress.

One day when I was working, an elderly woman came in and ordered a coffee cabinet. I figured she was a few pancakes short of a stack, so I politely and gently explained to her that this was a restaurant, not a furniture store.

Oh, the hilarity as someone at the next table explained to me that she wanted a coffee frappe.

In Boston, which just HAS to be different, they said cabinet for milkshake.

Does anyone know if the word cabinet is still used there?

[hughee99]

73. I agree.

Knowing the lingo, sufficient exposure to the accent and a little bit of practice should be enough. Most people from MA, Southern NH and Northern RI should be able to swing it if they wanted to. Spending a couple of weeks in a bar in Southie and expecting you can fake it and blend in isn't going to work, though.

[SheilaT]

36. I understand that certain American accents are far more like

the original sounds of the language back home in England than the modern English accent. Or accents, plural. They diverged, not us.

[Brigid]

40. I have heard . . .

that many linguists say that if you want to hear the closest thing to Elizabethan English on the planet today, go to Appalachia.

[frogmarch]

41. How I wish

audio recordings could have been made way back then - and earlier!

[SheilaT]

68. Among the things I would do if I had a time machine

is exactly that: go back and film/record various things.

[fadedrose]

39. I like a British accent in movies, films...

But I hate them in some news broadcasters on CNN...unless they're talking about the Royal family . . .

I love the various American accents . . .

[frogmarch]

42. I like some of the British accents I hear,

and also some of the American ones, but some southern American accents drive me crazy because I have trouble understanding them.

[fadedrose]

44. Same here

That would be the Duck Dynasty accent, I think....I like the gentle western accent.

[hughee99]

45. You can find that with english accents too. I worked in Ireland for a brief period of time

and while I had no trouble understanding the people of Cork, I worked with two guys from Scotland and between the accents and the slang, could barely understand a word they said.

[fascisthunter]

47. Well, in Bahstin, we still pronounce word in a similiar fashion

"Pahk ya cah in hahvad yahd."

[MrModerate]

50. Sort of how the exaggerated upperclass accent in the UK . . .

Now seems to be entirely based on mumbling. Among my British colleagues, the more they mumble, the wealthier or more connected their families are.

[ReRe]

52. The only hint of British accent we have left is in...

... Massachusetts. Very pronounced in some of the Kennedys, for example. Thanks for this great article. It's very interesting!

[freshwest]

55. Just off the top of my head, it seems the British changed from mixing with other language, like us.

[Skittles]

56. I can do both accents

because I was raised by a Brit and lived in England a couple of times

[defacto7]

60. OK, translate this...

ehw, ats a swew peh-a brushes ye got eha! -> hint cockney

or.. Slewn fo the morh fihne t(h)astes. (only slightly spoken threw the lips) -> Sloan

[tiny elvis]

62. swell pet of brushes?

regular alphabet can only hint at sounds
i will ask miss brahms, if she is free

[dickthegrouch]

75. Literraly a "Swell pair of brushes you have here"

But the hint of cockney means "Brushes" is rhyming slang for some thing else

[defacto7]

78. Yep... that's it.

What are the brushes?

[Skittles]

83. sorry, I can do a fair English accent but not Cockney

that's another language / accent entirely!

[flamingdem]

58. Not enough bangers n' mash?

Bloody 'ell

[defacto7]

59. Just remember what Sarah Palin says....

American is a evolving language!

[joshcryer]

63. Ha! I saw the parody thread of this.

And this is what I mentioned there.

I too find it amazing, it blew my mind when I found out.

[Shrike47]

64. The second generation after the ancestor got here.

We can understand them but it's work. When they write, however, it's the same language.

[MineralMan]

72. Not entirely. There are differences in British and American

written English as well. Most are simple spelling differences (e.g.: colour vs. color), but there are some grammatical differences, as well. For example, collective plural nouns, such as General Motors, are handled differently in verb conjugation. In the U.S. we would write "General Motors predicts higher sales in 2014." In England, it would be "General Motors predict higher sales in 2014."

There are also differences in word meanings for many words, which can make it difficult for U.S. writers trying to write for British publications.

[B Calm]

71. Maybe the Brits lost their accent and we speak English correctly.

[northoftheborder]

76. How do you explain the Texas accent?????

It has a drawl, like the Southern accent, but, we speak the "r" clearly (except in East Texas, hence Lady Byrd's speaking). I always guessed it was from the influence of Spanish which actually has a trilled "r".

[Loudly]

79. Profane but talented video at link:

[nyquil_man]

81. I've always been fascinated with the Mid-Atlantic accent,

which was designed as a kind of Anglo-American hybrid. It was especially popular in Northeastern boarding/prep schools and used to be a fairly common accent for broadcasters. Like Received Pronunciation, it's non-rhotic.

Think Katherine Hepburn. Or FDR ("The only thing we have to feah is... feah itself!&quot .

Today, it's largely extinct, though it still crops up from time to time as a stereotypical hoity-toity accent.