AHC: Have american and british accents remain relatively similar
- Thread starter Malone
- Start date
I'm not sure how plausible this is, but you could have the sort of "transatlantic," upper-class WASP accents of the early-to-mid 20th Century (think FDR, or Katherine Hepburn) remain dominant among elites and perhaps become the television and radio standard, filtering down.
If that happens, much of the US, or at least the more educated professionals will speak with a non-rhotic, quasi-British accent.
I personally don't think that General American and Received British accents are all that different from each other. Speakers of the two accents are still perfectly understandable to each other, as compared to other accents/dialects that are almost unintelligible to most speakers of GA/RP. I have personal experience of people speaking English dialects so divergent, in phonology, cadence and vocabulary, that I could not understand a single word they were saying until I eventually became accustomed to their speech. This is not the case with GA and RP.
Driftless
Donor
That's a tough one.
The FDR uppercrust Mid-Atlantic accent is probably as close as you get from the US to Received Pronounciation English, and that's not all that close either.
Accent is such a regional thing, with cadence, local usage, local idiom, etc playing into accent. Also, much of the English speaking world is composed of a multitude of immigrants from other cultures.
I had a professor at college long ago, who could fairly accurately identify the part of US Midwest that each of us came from. He could pin it down to about a 50 mile radius with some accuracy.
Mass media, and wide scale travel nowdays perhaps blurs the regional lines somewhat.
The FDR uppercrust Mid-Atlantic accent is probably as close as you get from the US to Received Pronounciation English, and that's not all that close either.
Accent is such a regional thing, with cadence, local usage, local idiom, etc playing into accent. Also, much of the English speaking world is composed of a multitude of immigrants from other cultures.
I had a professor at college long ago, who could fairly accurately identify the part of US Midwest that each of us came from. He could pin it down to about a 50 mile radius with some accuracy.
Mass media, and wide scale travel nowdays perhaps blurs the regional lines somewhat.
Up until post-confederation most Newfoundland Accents and indeed even the vernacular were largely indistinguishable from West Country England, with the acceptation of some areas having a heavier Irish influence, and some unique vernacular developing. Allot of the Old Folks still sound like it. This however isn't to say that this can be the case for the rest of North American English, which isn't /nearly/ as isolated, homogeneous, or dependent on the British Isles as Newfoundland was.
IIRC (American Nations, Woodard), American accent is derived from how English common folks spoke before the British ruling class consolidated themselves after the Glorious Revolution and started to impose their standards, including their accent, over the previously unrestricted ordinary Britons and Americans.
So, had there been more political instability in Britain, or a more populist British politics, today's British Lingua Franca would sound much more like the American one (but there are still regional variations).
So, had there been more political instability in Britain, or a more populist British politics, today's British Lingua Franca would sound much more like the American one (but there are still regional variations).
One thing that amazed me when I was in Britain was the diversity of local accents. The old "BBC English" was a bit of a minority. It was pushed for years even in New Zealand, where "English" sounding voices were often preferred to homegrown talent in the public media right up to the 1960s and 70.
I don't know if its cultural cringe or a sence of youthful nationalistic headiness but such constipated sounding voices are now most amusing.
I don't know if its cultural cringe or a sence of youthful nationalistic headiness but such constipated sounding voices are now most amusing.
Driftless
Donor
It's a common perception in the US that people speaking with the British RP accent sound more intelligent. It doesns't seem to matter who they are, or where they are from, what they look like; it's the sound. The person speaking can be a complete idiot, but they are perceived otherwise.....
I'm from the American Midwest, and I tend to trust the folks less with the various New York accents, even though I have no rational reason to believe that. It is a cultural bias on my part.
I'm from the American Midwest, and I tend to trust the folks less with the various New York accents, even though I have no rational reason to believe that. It is a cultural bias on my part.
Somebody above highlighted the importance of local conditions and continued exposure to the British English accent, and that's a very good point. There isn't even a monolithic 'American' dialect. With a bloody big ocean in the way and an increasing politico-cultural gulf (even across regional American lines), I simply can't see how this could work.
Teejay
Gone Fishin'
The absence of the Trap-Bath split, along with the dropping of the r after vowels in at least Standard British English (Received Pronunciation) would be a plausible POD. In that scenario the Upper Classes would look on those features as vulgar regionalisms, rather like how H-Dropping is seen as. Because, despite H-Dropping being widespread in vernacular speech in England and Wales, it never made it's way into received pronunciation.
However Received Pronunciation is based on the speech of South-Eastern England (especially London), although it is more conservative than say those dialects are. Although developments which occur like the dropping of the r after vowels and the trap-bath split, which occurred first in the latter dialects, before making their way into Received Pronunciation (or it's ancestor).
However Received Pronunciation is based on the speech of South-Eastern England (especially London), although it is more conservative than say those dialects are. Although developments which occur like the dropping of the r after vowels and the trap-bath split, which occurred first in the latter dialects, before making their way into Received Pronunciation (or it's ancestor).
More intermixing of populations e.g British actors in Hollywood. Listen to Emily Blunt interviews.
Language being as it is, the modern US and modern British dialects (all of them) have likely diverged equally from their common ancestor (assuming there ever was a single common accent shared by most inhabitants of Britain and its American colonies). I've read that the current soft "southern" dialect characteristic of Virginia and North Carolina may have been quite similar to a common British accent at the time of the American Revoultion.
Redhand
Banned
I remember from my short time in Britain that the hardest people to understand weren't the recent immigrants, who were hard to understand, but rather the people who spoke in a distinctive Scouser dialect. It sounds like theyre mumbling everything in a fast and incoherent manner. Liverpool is scary enough as it is without feeling like they're not even speaking English. You're definitely right on the whole BBC English thing though. It was not at all common to hear.
libbrit
Banned
Well, IIRC, the general American accent up until the early 1800s was a rather West Country/East Anglian accent. So not only do you have to keep that, but also you need to make that prominent in England.
Now, thats actually not as hard as you may imagine-people think of the classic English accent as modern day received pronunciation...not true. Queen Elizabeth I would apparently have sounded markedly like a farmer from Norfolk back in the day-so accents certainly are different.
Now, thats actually not as hard as you may imagine-people think of the classic English accent as modern day received pronunciation...not true. Queen Elizabeth I would apparently have sounded markedly like a farmer from Norfolk back in the day-so accents certainly are different.
libbrit
Banned
Liverpool is a distinct accent-some would even say a dialect. But then you could reasonably say Geordie and Yorkshire speech patterns are incomprehensible.
The accent of Liverpool is the bastard love child of Welsh-being only 15 miles away from Wales, Irish-said people accounting for a massive proportion of Liverpools population, Broad Lancastrian (Liverpool is historically part of Lancashire), Scottish-same reasons as Irish, German (German mariners in the heyday of the port, giving Liverpudlians their name `Scousers`-deriving from Labskaus, a Germanic stew which became the Liverpudlian dish, Scouse). Oh and of course, American, due to the presence of Americans in the port of Liverpool.
If you had spoken to a Scouser in 1700 they would have sounded like anyone else from that part of Lancashire. These days, not so much.
What a nice thing to say.
American accents have changed a lot gradually since the 1930's, regional accents have declined, the same in the UK
its basically a question of the media
its basically a question of the media
@libbrit
Well, FWIW I happen to like the Scouse dialect quite a bit, a-thankyuh very much. Really, anything but the Received Pronunciation (and its bastard New World equivalent, the Mid-Atlantic dialect) sounds good to my ears by comparison.
Of course you're right about early American English closely resembling those dialects spoken in Bristol, Canterbury or the lower Midlands (at least, in the coastal parts of America), but there are still traces of Celtic influence on American speech, as well as other immigrants bringing their own additions from across Europe. Those aspects, combined with the relative level of mutual isolation from both sides of the Atlantic (remember, Australia/NZ had a TON of Brit-born immigrants streaming in up until very recently, which helps explain their relative "closeness" to the metropole's dialects), makes for a goodly degree of difference between the two dialect sets. What am I getting at? Well, get rid of that level of mutual non-interaction, and you might at least get a more "Britishy" dialect to stick around in the West that coincides with a more "Americanish" twin set in Britain.
Well, FWIW I happen to like the Scouse dialect quite a bit, a-thankyuh very much. Really, anything but the Received Pronunciation (and its bastard New World equivalent, the Mid-Atlantic dialect) sounds good to my ears by comparison.
Of course you're right about early American English closely resembling those dialects spoken in Bristol, Canterbury or the lower Midlands (at least, in the coastal parts of America), but there are still traces of Celtic influence on American speech, as well as other immigrants bringing their own additions from across Europe. Those aspects, combined with the relative level of mutual isolation from both sides of the Atlantic (remember, Australia/NZ had a TON of Brit-born immigrants streaming in up until very recently, which helps explain their relative "closeness" to the metropole's dialects), makes for a goodly degree of difference between the two dialect sets. What am I getting at? Well, get rid of that level of mutual non-interaction, and you might at least get a more "Britishy" dialect to stick around in the West that coincides with a more "Americanish" twin set in Britain.
Well, I think that this might happen if there were some sort of deeper contact between Britain and the Colonial US. If I recall correctly, modern English accents had not yet developed, so you'd need constant communication between the two in order to foster a similar development in their accents. Though this might instead lead to both having American accents.