Where did the American accent come from? If our English is descended from British English, shouldn't we all be speaking as the Brits do? I can understand linguistic drift accounting for different word usage, but shouldn't the overall sound still be about the same? I mean just look at Australia and New Zealand, they still sound pretty damn British. Us Americans and Canadians though, we're something else entirely. Why is that? At what point in history did we go from speaking like Brits to speaking like Americans?
Where did the American accent come from? If our English is descended from British English...
Asher Hall
Leo Cox
are you retarded or just pretending to be the next king of spain?
Chase Hughes
Yes
Noah Martinez
answer the fucking question
Nathaniel Thomas
>Where did the American accent come from?
Which one, nigger
en.wikipedia.org
>If our English is descended from British English
It isn't, it's descended from a common ancestor with British English.
>Why is that? At what point in history did we go from speaking like Brits to speaking like Americans?
OP, the reality is the majority of scholars believe GA is closer to the accent of Puritan England than RP. One thing is we know for a fact that British English used to be rhotic.
Jeremiah Nguyen
>speaking as the Brits do
And how do "the Brits" speak exactly?
Brody Gray
If you mean the dropping of letters to make them "simpler to pronounce" it's because Webster set out to differentiate the language post-revolution. Keep in mind there were people in the newly born USA who wanted German, French or even fucking Hebrew as the national language
Charles Gomez
>or even fucking Hebrew
WE
Carson Hill
>tfw non-native English speaker
>tfw learned bastardized American version
>tfw will never, ever speak proper English
Jonathan Cooper
Back when the first major settlements were founded in America obviously everyone both accents were the same, but the British accent at that time sounded different than it does today.
In this video a guy claims he's able to reconstruct the accent at the time of Shakespeare by closely examining poetic and rhyming patterns. Some people seem to think that the accent sounds more American than British. I disagree, but see for yourself:
David Wood
Sweet LARPing vid m8
Nolan Stewart
>It isn't, it's descended from a common ancestor with British English.
It is quite literally the exact same language you enourmous retard
Charles Morris
Gogolian
Andrew Wood
ITT Nobody can understand what the OP could possibly mean
Luis Morales
Nathan Perry
That sounds nothing like American English. It sounds like a more familiar Scots.
Alexander Jones
He sounds like a motorcycle engine in a pool of sand when he speaks.
Easton Ortiz
please castrate yorself, moron
Nicholas Morales
>It isn't, it's descended from a common ancestor with British English.
fucking retard, American English is descended from British English
David Clark
Umm, no sweetie, British English also underwent change since they diverged, so they just share a common ancestor, ok sweetie?
Ayden Cooper
y'all'd've
Jeremiah Taylor
Britain has dozens of distinct accents.
America has dozens of distinct accents.
So what the fuck are you talking about?
Carson Bennett
I always thought linguistic drift occurred because of the influx of non-English speaking peoples. Everyone learned English, but isolated communities wound up retaining part of their accents somewhat even if a lot of it was dropped.
Imagine a village comprised of 90% Germans who spoke English because it was the official language but couldn't help but still pronounce things with their original accent. They would teach English and interact with people for generations with the same accent, passing it down throughout time and while some of it might be lost, others would simply become the norm.
It's sort of like when an American moves to Britain, over the course of years, they're going to start speaking like a Brit, and vice versa, just due to exposure. At my place of work, we had a guy start here from Australia almost 20 years ago, and very little parts of his accent remain.
Juan Baker
Witty comic BUT why isn't Americaball wearing his sunglasses?
Henry Myers
Rhoticity was a feature prominent in almost all varieties of english during colonial times. Later on, the english elite began to drop the rhotic consonant and the communities nearby followed to eventually produce RP-based dialects.
During this time, america was more conservative in its english accent due to geography and politics, but the new english accent was becoming more popular in trade ports with greater interaction with britain, such as new york, boston, and savannah that contributed to their modern day accents with reduced rhoticity.
This process continued until the civil war, and the cultural centers of america were moved away from trade ports and combined with the effect of rapid expansion out west to further preserve english rhoticity as we use it today.
tl;dr brits speak a fake bastardized version of english, american accents are all far more conservative
Ayden Hernandez
This. It always cracks me up when I see Brits complain about how Americans pronounce things, American pronunciation is far closer to how English was spoken than modern British varieties of the language. This isn't a post knocking the Brits or anything mind you, I've often seen this concept met with extreme hostility by Brits for some reason. You guys just had a harder accent shift than the US did at large, there's nothing wrong with that. Hell it's not like it's even the first time it happened, the Great Vowel Shift was a way more significant change in pronunciation than the change that happened from colonial to industrial Britain.
Thomas Scott
>WE
um sweetie it's still our language
Easton Morgan
I'm going to assume you're posting in good faith and not shitposting. The short answer is that American/Canadian English diverged from British English much earlier than Australian/New Zealander English, hence the different linguistic divergences.
Daniel Taylor
British English of today has changed considerably from what it was 300 years ago. In fact I believe some scholars theorized that east coast Americans sound closer to British people of the 18th century than do modern Brits.
Michael Cooper
Maybe the influence of immigrants like the dutch changed the accent.
Angel Nelson
It didn't, read the thread.
Blake Hill
Look at these guys, this is in an isolated little island in Virginia
Parker Harris
Did I ever say it wasn't? You guys had a had a stronger shift in pronunciation than the US did, I don't know why this riles some people up so bad. Just because the language originated there doesn't mean that it's inherently the most conservative variety. Hell Quebecois French pronunciation is closer to how French used to sound too.
Ryder Taylor
Le ausitmo posting XDddd
Austin Jackson
>all english accents I'm not intimately familiar with sound samey and foreign
>clearly my own must be astoundingly different from them!
Top fucking kek, americans.
I seriously hope you don't believe the average non-anglo can actually distinguish (or even notice, for the most part) between the various english accents.
Liam Scott
>I seriously hope you don't believe the average non-anglo can actually distinguish (or even notice, for the most part) between the various english accents.
We just don't care, desu.
Jordan Campbell
The posh British English accent you know now didn't exist in colonial times. It's just as new of a development in Britain as the American accent is.
Daniel White
I've always been under the impression that your average Brit and/or American colonist in the 1600s would've sounded like a West Country farmer with a little bit of a hillbilly twang.
Jonathan Reed
Only like 10% of it
Hunter Anderson
>polandball lore
This is the most autistic thing ever
David Morales
It's not the lore, just how the character is drawn. GB has his top hat and monocle, which is standard.
Lincoln Long
It's for the punchline.