Very interesting. I love the regional accent developments in the USA. The French and African influence in the south, mid European in the east, the spreading of the vowels as the settlers trod west, the Scandinavian influence still seen in the north and Canada. And my accent came from broadcasting. In the 1930s everyone in Los Angeles spoke English with an American twang, but broadcasting and the entertainment industry flattened out our vowels over the next three or so decades.
The part of Alabama I’m from, people have different accents in different parts of my county. I’d be very surprised if the “American” accent wasn’t very different from that of the Brits of the day.
In fact, I’d be very surprised if the accents of Philadelphians, for example, wasn’t very different from that of New Yorkers, and both were very different from Bostonians, or Virginians, etc.
Over decades ago, those who monitored the Brits were told that there were over 30 distinct accents.
Apparently, that was an under estimate:
How many accents are there in the British Isles and North America?
https://www.quora.com/How-many-accents-are-there-in-the-British-Isles-and-North-A...
There are about 56 main “accent types” in the British Isles (or less controversially the “Anglo-Celtic Isles”), but within each of those accent types there a. ... In parts of Yorkshire, England, the 2nd person singular pronouns and adjectives “thou, thee, thy” are still used even among young people, and they have a very distinctive ...
The reason being is that Americans are taught proper diction. Webster's dictionary is a great example of that.
Thank you. Fascinating.
I like to remind people that if George Washington had not defeated Lord Cornwallis in Yorktown in 1781 we would still be speaking English in this country.
Ebonics was popular then.
Interesting question. I was told by a professor that if we traveled back in time we would probably not understand a word our ancestors said. I tried it with some copies of written manuscripts and while I could get the gist of the writings I was a stumbling fool trying to read them aloud. LOL
Dave Gardner once observed that there is a North and South all over the world.
His example was that in northern Germany they say, “danke schoen”, whereas in southern Germany, it’s “donkie shane”. I don’t know if that’s true, but it is true in southern and northern Spain.
In southern Spain they tend to drop some of the consonants and the accent is much different from northern Spaniards and Castilian, which is more precise and “clipped”, like British Oxford English. The southern Spaniards were the ones who settled Latin America, hence the lack of Castilian accents in the New World. Nevertheless, you can still tell if someone is Mexican, Cuban, Puerto Rican or Argentinean by the way they speak.
Didja’ ever hear someone from Boston ask a waitress for a fork and knife? Talk about non-rhotic!
More like Sylvester the Cat: “Congrefs”
Of course
Southerners have closest intact Uk Dialect speak left
Appalachia in pockets really has it
The rest got inundated with non Anglo accents
Eh
Youse guys
Oy
And so on
In the new version of True Grit, they didn’t talk like all the old cowboys movies. I thought that was interesting and probably more correct than all that ain’t and won’t and everyone having a southern drawl stuff.
I wonder if English accents includes adding and dropping ‘aitches and haitches - one of my wife’s grandfathers, as well as Cockney
The Americans Who Still Speak with Regional British English Accents
The odd accent of Tangier VA - American Tongues episode #3