The letter R and vowels are the killer. Brits used to use R after a vowel (rhotic speech). When the upper class and fashionable city folk switched to no R, it trickled down over a few hundred years to everyone. In America we kept using the R, except in larger more trendy places like Boston, etc where some started to drop it. That's why many in the NE might say "Pahk the cah in the yahd" which if you sound out is very close to how a Brit might say it if you change the affectation. So places with a soft "R" are closer to modern "RP" British. Of course our local accents changed with time too so the Bronx ad Boston or new England tend to be distinct. It's hard to say who's closest because even listening to a regional accent across 2 generations of speakers you'll hear a big difference. America and Canada were colonized before the change to RP, Australia after. Comparing the 3 you can see some similarities and differences, but due to many influences on American regional speech it's open.
Sorry. Without context it didn't make sense to me. All the recordings I've heard from ww2 and 20th century British speakers had a distinct British accent. There are of course quite a few accents across Britain, individuals may have their own slight differences, and accents do change over time. That said it may help to provide a link to one of the recordings in question as there are quite a few recordings from that date range.
50 years ago was the 60’s, and my mental timeline stretches back to the beginning of the 20th century. But films like The Birds shows a distinction between their accent and ours.
Accents change quite a bit even over short times, and regional dialects further complicate things. If you listen to a London accent as spoken by someone who is now 80 years old it's very different than what a 20 year old today sounds like. Accent change tends to be accelerated in population dense areas, rural areas don't usually have the same exposure to new influences in language, however mass media and telecommunications trends have changed this much so that once relatively isolated areas are now readily exposed to outside influences. There is no single American or British accent per se, and both in general sound very different from a British accent of the 1600's, when discussing "American accent" it is usually assumed that a "broadcast accent" is the default. Areas like New England and the NE have influence from the later more modern British, hence why they sound so distinct from other American accents.
2Reply
deleted
· 6 years ago
Doesn’t the American accent have a lot of Irish influences?
One point of contention- Shakespeare actually would have been spoken in what can best be described as an odd brogue. Linguists have recreated their best approximation and if you search online you can find re readings of Shakespeare done in it. A lot of the rhymes in Shakespeare that are contested work perfectly in it without need for justification, and many word plays based on homonyms can be experienced where before lines didn't make sense. The meaning and subtext is restored to the legendary word play Shakespeare is known for.
This was really interesting but until I saw what they were saying written down there were some bits I didn't understand, and the whore joke went straight over my head until he explained that in OP the h would be dropped.
This is a mess. There is no "British Accent" is known as "Received Pronunciation", or "The Queen's English". And yes, it is basically the result of the Aristocrats trying to sound like their Kings/Queens. It's that posh accent people who went to posh schools acquired by hobnobbing with the royal spawn. Normal people in the British Isles don't talk like that.
Now. FUCK NO. Americans don't have any accent from the British Isles. None of the spoken dialects, germanic or gaelic. Not even Bostonians.
▼
deleted
· 6 years ago
I believe there is a small fishing village somewhere in New England where they still have something that sounds like a southern English accent
Little mixed up I think. American and British speakers of the early colonies were rhotic speakers. They pronounced a distinct "R" in words like hard where non rhotic speech would be more like Hahd (haw-d). RP came about as aristocrats started non rhotic speech. Those wanting to be fashionable followed and tutors began to teach this way. There are many "British accents" by region and some have trouble understanding others. This new dialect was fairly well understood across the isles and so quickly spread in use. In America we stayed rhotic, but accents do change over time. The time between the first colonies and the first audio recording records is about 300 years, and by then their was a difference. So the Americans began independent development of accents and language. Later the non rhotic speech spread to trendy upper class Americans like in Boston and New England (hence their non rhotic speech.) in time this too evolved to distinct local dialects in places like Boston, net York,....
New England, etc. as people moved from these areas to the expanding US some artifacts and enclaves can be found of similar accent, but new accents also developed spurred by exposure to locals and diverse immigrants. So while the United States and Britain both have many accents and local dialects, overall the "general" American accent isn't too far off from a British accent of 300+ years ago. Of course, it is no where near dead on, but it is about as accurate in a period drama to have the British speak a modern "American accent" as it is to have them speak a "modern British accent."
Now. FUCK NO. Americans don't have any accent from the British Isles. None of the spoken dialects, germanic or gaelic. Not even Bostonians.