Something I've always wondered about, especially after all those Disney movies/TV programs from the '50's and '60's.
Both accents have obviously diverged. I wonder if we woould be able to understand our sncestors.
A side note.
With the dramatic advancement of technology over the past two decades, regional centers have sprung up to handle calls from consumers with respect to different issues involving different products.
When I have need to call a service center for a particular product, I have enjoyed hearing the varied accents from different regions of our country. On many an occasion, I have complimented the individual on the beauty of their accent only to hear a polite, “thank you” in response.
Not once have I heard, “I don’t have an accent, you do”.
In 1991, while living in a Chinese City, a geologist from Edinburgh, Scotland visited our home. He had been out in the wilderness with Chinese geologists for some weeks, and was eager just to sit and drink tea with anyone who could speak English. When he heard about us, he ventured to our home.
We were just as delighted to have a visitor, and we listened to his accounts from having been in the field with Chinese scientists.
I finally had to tell him that I was amazed that his speech sounded more like a southern Virginian’s or like someone from Edenton, North Carolina, than what we expected a Scot to sound like.
He laughed and said that Englishmen used to sound like him, too, “300 years ago.”
Well, that Scot’s understanding of English accents fairly well corresponds with the information provided in this article.
It’s very interesting, and I will give this link to my son who is a linguist. We have talked about this several times.
Thanks for the info. This was something I hadn’t read about, but kind of wondered about.
Arrrrrrr!
“New York and Boston accents became non-rhotic, perhaps because of the region’s British connections in the post-Revolutionary War era...”
But NOBODY understands what happened to New Jersey:)
One way to seek out the accents is by reading letters written by somewhat uneducated folks. They spell phonetically and sometimes you can follow the accent by reading the letters aloud. This came to me in the Confederate Museum in Richmond, VA several years ago. Soldier letters home actually spoke with southern accents. Fascinating!!
bump
The same goes for the guy who played Dick Winters on "Band of Brothers",and half the cast of American soldiers too.
The funny thing is that I can't think of an American actor who can do a convincing British accent...go figure.
Yankee twang: In remote corners of East Anglia today, country folk still speak in a harsh, high-pitched, nasal accent unkindly called the "Norfolk whine." This dialect is the survivor of a family of accents that were heard throughout the east of England in the seventeenth century, from the fens of east Lincolnshire to the coast of Kent.In the Puritan great migration, these English speech ways were carried to Massachusetts, where they mixed with one another and merged with other elements. During the seventeenth century they spread rapidly throughout New England, and became the basis of a new regional accent called the Yankee twang.(1)
Southern drawl: The speech ways of Virginia were not invented on America. They derived from a family of regional dialects that have been spoken throughout the sough and west of England during the seventeenth century. Virtually all peculiarities of grammar, syntax, vocabulary and pronunciation which have been noted as typical of Virginia were recorded in the English counties of Sussex, Surrey , Hampshire, Dorset, Wiltshire, Somerset, Oxford, Gloucester, Warwick or Worcester.(1)
(1)Albion's Seed,David Hackett Fischer
The article makes the mistake of assuming there was/is a single British accent and a single American accent.
The pirate accent (heavy on the “r”) is alive and well in the small towns of Devon and Cornwall, UK. (Well, 20 years ago it was).
Hear various English accents recorded from the 1950’s through the ‘70s:
http://sounds.bl.uk/Browse.aspx?category=Accents-and-dialects&collection=Survey-of-English-dialects
LOL!
The United States of America, and the United Kingdom, two nations separated by a common language.
Where opportunities for confusion abound.
The rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain.
Proof that if you’re ugly and live in Spain, you’re also wet I guess.
I watched a program a while back that I had found on a UK torrent site. It was about captured British soldiers during WWI. German doctors had recorded their voices in what was a study on culture and regional language differences. The producers of this program decided to try to locate relatives of some of these men and compare the language from then and now. Most relatives were still living in the area their WWI ancestor had been from. They played the recordings for the relatives, and asked them if they recognized the pronunciation of some of the words and phrases. In most cases, the pronunciation and use of those same words or phrases differed from the way the present-day family members said them. It was pretty interesting to see how much the language in their region had changed since WWI.
later read ping
Just go get some of the old recordings from Ancient Amazon and listen. How do they know what any accent sounded like in 1776?