AHC: Canandians have British Accent
- Thread starter YLi
- Start date
Accents can shift pretty quickly I think. Apparently the NZ accent shifted radically about the 1950s-early 60s into whatever it is today. Prior till that it did sound a fair bit more British.
God knows how you'd keep a country as big as Canada, next to a much bigger country like the US in line with the general UK English (?) without late 19th century spoken mass media and strict elocution lessons in a universal education system
God knows how you'd keep a country as big as Canada, next to a much bigger country like the US in line with the general UK English (?) without late 19th century spoken mass media and strict elocution lessons in a universal education system
Which would likely lead to a revolution in Quebec by the French Canadians, and most likely squashed, which means that there probably will be no Quebec Act of 1774, which helped influence the American to revolt against British tyranny....
Who knew that one change in language would lead to such a fuck up of history so much?
Language is a part of a deal - a language come also with culture...
We are not just peoples who happen to speak french - also, remember we (my ancestors) were catholics... opposed to anglicans and other protestants...
I think the problem is that Canadian English dialects share too much of a common heritage with U.S. English dialects, followed up by too much intermixing of populations, and too easy of communication across the border.
Thande
Donor
The modern British accent(s) developed after Canada was colonised so this is rather hard to do. The Canadian upper classes probably spoke with somewhat RP-like accents up until the World Wars but that was also true of a lesser extent of the United States.
One thing I've never understood is why Canadian accents switched from being very deep in tone pre-WW2 to being very high in tone post-WW2 (and older Canadians still seem to speak the former way).
One thing I've never understood is why Canadian accents switched from being very deep in tone pre-WW2 to being very high in tone post-WW2 (and older Canadians still seem to speak the former way).
That's what I was going to say - have heavy immigration to the Maritimes (or even Newfoundland) and have it spread out from there. That or a much heavier Scottish and Irish immigration than OTL.
As a student of Canadian history, trust me, I know how language and culture are linked together. French-Canadian culture was tied with language, Catholicism, as well as nationalism. Just look at the French-English school conflicts in Manitoba and New Brunswick at the end of 1800's.
If the British had their way and did try to assimilate/anglicize Quebec, to make it a proper English colony, it would mostly likely lead to a rebellion pretty quick. Which would probably effect the start of the American Revolution in turn.
I was also being sarcastic...I just forget to put the [
] smilie at the end.The Atlantic Canadian accent is definitely very Scotch-Irish, especially Newfoundland/Cape Breton. You might have the Canadian population more concentrated in Atlantic Canada, which could be accomplished if the coal mines of Cape Breton and the iron ore in Newfoundland were discovered sooner, which would necessitate an earlier immigration wave from the British Isles to develop the resources, and given the political climate at the time, they wouldn't be so inclined to recruit immigrants from the Mediterranean region. Maybe have more Loyalists relocate to Canada as well (a la Cape Breton Island, which was founded as a colony for Loyalists to go and lick their wounds), as well as an earlier Highland Clearances.
I've wondered about New Zealand... do they have any unique accent? Do they sound like Aussies or Brits or Americans? The few kiwis I've heard in movies/television don't seem to have any kind of accent, but I don't know about the majority of them...
IMO, the American Revolution was going to happen Quebec Act or no Quebec Act. By 1774, with the way politics were heading, it was pretty much a done deal.
Anyway, back on the subject, "Canadians with a British Accent" is pretty much impossible, unless Canada is some big empty space that doesn't get colonized until 1890 or so. Even massive immigration would only nudge the (Anglo) Canadian accent back towards the British one, since immigrants seem to pick up the accent of the population they're diffusing into much more than the other way around.
Also Scots and Highland Scots are British.....and I'm sure Scots don't find the Atlantic Canadian accent particularly Scottish sounding, you can hear it because you don't have a Scottish accent. It's like something I heard Craig Ferguson say on his show a couple weeks ago, when he goes back to Scotland everyone says he's starting to sound "American-y" but when he asks people in the US if it sounds like he's losing his accent, they always say "No."
It depends on where you are in Atlantic Canada. Newfoundland, I'm told, sounds rather Scottish-Irish, and Cape Breton does as well, which may have something to do with the long continued usage of Gaelic in certain towns. It certainly doesn't sound Scottish across the board, but there are certainly lots of words and phrases that still sound like the auld country.
For reference, they refer to this sometimes as a "Mid-Atlantic Accent" (as in, from somewhere in the middle of the atlantic, not the Mid-Atlantic States). FDR had it, and alot of old movie stars like Katherine Hepburn. Jim Backus used it on Gilligan's Island, and Kelsey Grammer on Cheers and Frasier -- but I'm not sure if those were just the characters, or if people actually do still speak like that.
This is probably the closest you'd see to a British Accent in North American culture.
I'm Australian and to me the NZ accent sounds basically Australian except for one important sound. They can not pronounce "i" they say it like "e" so for example instead of "fish" they say "fesh".
Also I've noticed that the previous 2 NZ Prime Ministers have very strong NZ accents where as most of the general population sound like Australians except for that important sound I mentioned.
