The British Used to Sound Like We Did

New York times ^ | 4th June 2026 | John McWhorter

[Cronos]

You might think that early Americans sounded like Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren, and that the American accent developed after independence. It was probably the other way around. Up until the early 1800s, you couldn’t tell whether a person was British or American from their accents. When naval officers tried to free sailors who had been shanghaied into service in the War of 1812, they said they couldn’t tell for sure who was American or British by the way they spoke.

The hallmark of the British accent — pronouncing words like “path” and “fast” as “pahth” and “fahst” or “fah” for “far.” — developed only at the end of the 18th century. English in the United States and Canada sound so much alike because their language started as British English in the 1700s. Australian English sounds much like today’s British English because by the time British people were sent there after the 1820s, what we know as a British accent had emerged.

All of this allows some informed guesses on what the American language will be like in the future. Plenty of words are teetering into new meanings, the way “sensible,” which once meant “sensitive,” now means “having good sense.” Usages that were once derided as misimpressions become so common that we come to accept them and admit that the horse is out of the barn. For Americans in 2076, the first meaning of “aesthetic” that comes to mind may well be “attractive,” the way many young people use it today. Any sense that “nonplussed” means “perplexed” will be forgotten in favor of the common impression today that it means “unimpressed.” And the most intuitive meaning of “swipe” will relate to computer screens rather than stealing or a movement of the hand.

---

TOPICS: Travel
KEYWORDS: blm; crt; english; epigraphyandlanguage; godsgravesglyphs; johnmcwhorter; newyorktimes

[Does so]

“And don’t even get me started on how they say “zed” instead of Z.”
.
In the early 1960s US Navy, the “Z” was to spoken out as “Zug”.

Can’t say I ever heard it.

:-/

[blitz128]

My grandson would start every sentence with well and then I noticed that I did that often😂. Give me a minute was also thrown back at me😂😂

[stremba]

It literally made me scream when I read your post and didn’t see my personal pet peeve on it. I literally threw up in my mouth a bit. When I hear this one it literally makes my head explode!!

In case anyone didn’t get it, I have an issue with the drift in our language use where the world “literally” seems to have taken on almost (literally) the exact opposite of its original meaning.

[Winniesboy]

Australian English sounds much like today’s British English because by the time British people were sent there after the 1820s, what we know as a British accent had emerged.

Does it? To this Englishman brought up to speak 'RP' with a slight Hampshire twang, English spoken by an Australian sounds every bit as exotic as English spoken by an American.

[RP - 'Received Pronunciation', a standardised accent disseminated by BBC radio from the 1930s, based on the English spoken by the upper middle classes in the London area.]

[Chickensoup]

the western mountains of Maine, and New Hampshire mountains.

Better

Punctuation counts!

[packagingguy]

I went to university with a guy from Chincoteague Island. He had a friend who would translate what he said into modern English.

[Frank Drebin]

I believe that was the fake Mid-Atlantic or Transatlantic accent the “beautiful” people at the time created to set themselves above the “little” people.

[PA Presbyterian]

You’re correct. Another actress who talked that way was Grace Kelly. She and Katherine Hepburn in my opinion were the most overrated actresses in Hollywood. Kelly always set my teeth on edge with her fake plummy accent. She was an Irish Catholic from Philadelphia, and her father was a building contractor or brick layer if I’m remembering correctly. Nothing wrong with that, but don’t affect an accent that suggests you’re a member of the upper classes or British royalty. Then, to cement her “otherness” Grace Kelly married a prince and left Hollywood. Good riddance.

[Frank Drebin]

[HartleyMBaldwin]

Something I’ve noticed recently (in the last month or two) is that when I enter a restaurant or a convenience store, the workers will say, “Welcome in”. Seems odd to me (why not just say, “Welcome”?), but it appears to be a new usage, at least around here.

[Nik Naym]

It will be okay just as long as we eschew obfuscation.

[philled]

“By rights, she should be taken out and hung,
For the cold-blooded murder of the English tongue!”

[enumerated]

The r sound is only used when there is no r in the word.

Example: JFK used to pronounce “smart idea” as “smaht idear”.

The one that bothers me most is “I couldn’t care less” being replaced with “I could care less”.

It also bothers me that everyone answers “sure” when asked if they would mind something - when they mean the opposite.

I also hate “bring” and “take” being mixed up, or “come” and “go”.
Or using “anymore” when there is no implied negative.

[Cronos]

yes, that also didn’t sit quite right with me.

not another shrimp on the barbie!

[equaviator]

“I appreciate you” when “I appreciate it” would be sufficient and appropriate enough? It’s like they’re trying way too hard but at what, I have no idea.

[Cronos]

“The world is being dumbed down in so many ways; language is one facet of that.

We notice it, but can we stop it?”

I think not - what has amazed me since I started learning Latin and then Sanskrit in the late 90s was how language doesn’t get MORE complicated over the centuries but gets simpler.

so - if you take Indo-European languages - you have 8 declinations like in Latin, Sanskrit, Greek, Proto-slavic etc. - genitive, dative, locative, nominative, accusative, etc. but then it gets simpler:
Standard German has4, but proto-germanic had 6.

Romance languages have 2 or 3, but then you have the creole pidgin language of English (a germanic language with most of its vocabulary from Romance languages) which tossed out the cases, the gender itself

And now it is losing its perfective tenses etc.

[Sirius Lee]

Or my favorite, say "rather".

Limey: "Rathah."

So you can pronounce R's, but you're just too lazy to finish the task at hand.

[Cronos]

Kate Hep had a ‘trans atlantic’ accent.

[x]

I suppose that’s true so far as the “a” goes, but some older American dialects (mostly in the parts of the country that were settled earliest) drop the “r” at the end of a word, which makes me wonder if the American “r” isn’t a new development. To complicate things, some English regional (and presumably older) dialects also have a pronounced American “r”.

I think McWhorter told of how the upper-class NYC accent dropped the “r”, but then teachers tried to convince immigrant students that dropping “r”s was lower-class. At any rate, “far” pronounced “fah” may have had more to do with the “r” than the “a.”

[IYAS9YAS]

Frankly, finding fault for freepers following flowery, fantastic, fascinating forms feels foolishly fussy.

Your alliteracy is showing.