[Ranald S. MacKenzie]

This piece of trivia is a little off topic, but Paul Johnson was on Dennis Prager's radio show yesterday and Prager asked him why or when American accents diverged from English accents. Johnson replied that it has been the English accent that has changed since the 17th century and that today's Americans sound more like the 17th century English than the modern English do. Pretty interesting, if true.

[DB]

Interesting, how would one know?

[Naomi4]

If today's Americans sound more like 17th century Englishman than modern day Englishman do, it does not explain the different Australian accent. Australia was colonized a bit after America and it has a very distinct accent different from either the mother country or America.

It is easy to hear cockney echoes in Australian speech.

[leilani]

I believe this to be true - so do many linguistic historians. And in fact, sometimes you can hear "american" in UC accents in the UK, just as in the American South, if you "squint your ears", you can hear a bit of Scotland in the cadence & pronunciation. And I've always found it fascinating that when the British sing, they sound completely "american" without trying to. Interestingly, linguistic historians also say that Cajun French (although the continental french roll their eyes at this) is much closer to old French than modern motherland french.They were so isolated in their diaspora first in Nova Scotia and later in SW Lousiana, that they weren't subjected to all the outside polyglot influences that morphed "true" (LOL-don't tell all the language police there now) french into what it is today.