Melting pot.
Why don't Americans have a British Accent?
- Thread starter Brent
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American accents aren't flat. We evolved our own way of speaking because we were tired of every conversation sounding like a Monty Python sketch.
There are many different accents in Northern England. Just the broadly recognised ones, there's Yorkshire, Lincolnshire, Lancashire, Geordie, Scouse, and within Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire there are a wide variety, there are even variances in Geordie and Scouse and they're just associated with a single city. So you can't really generalise like that.
After living in Europe a while, I found that the tone closest to an American accent was Danish. So I tend to think that immigrants' Germanic accents had a strong effect on our accent.
Both sides of my family are from the Smoky Mountains, and even there you will find Germanic people among the backwoods Scots and English. My grandmother's maiden name was "Smelcer," which clearly was "Schmelzer" at one point.
She even wore those Brunhilde braids wrapped around her ears when she was young. And they had been in the country a long, long time. The family was from way up in the Smokies.
I've heard that our national language nearly became German and that one of the first newspapers in the colonies was a German-language one.
However, in the Tidewater area of Virginia, remnants of archaic British accents persisted even until the time when I moved there in the 1970's. I remember having to stifle a laugh when someone said, "Please pass the ve-ge-TAH-bles."
Both sides of my family are from the Smoky Mountains, and even there you will find Germanic people among the backwoods Scots and English. My grandmother's maiden name was "Smelcer," which clearly was "Schmelzer" at one point.
She even wore those Brunhilde braids wrapped around her ears when she was young. And they had been in the country a long, long time. The family was from way up in the Smokies.
I've heard that our national language nearly became German and that one of the first newspapers in the colonies was a German-language one.
However, in the Tidewater area of Virginia, remnants of archaic British accents persisted even until the time when I moved there in the 1970's. I remember having to stifle a laugh when someone said, "Please pass the ve-ge-TAH-bles."
Technically I could, if I had heard all of those.
But yeah, Nor'n 'gln' is all I actually got from the conversation.
The Irish. Always the Irish!
GO BACK TO AFRICA! Wait.
It's called "Scottish".
Now, on a more serious note. There's an island in the southern Chesepeake Bay whose inhabitants still have faint Cornish accents. People in-the-know think they still have this trait even after 400 years because the island is pretty isolated and never had many immigrants from continental Europe or elsewhere. Pretty much what John Picard said.
The Irish. Always the Irish!
GO BACK TO AFRICA! Wait.
It's called "Scottish".
Now, on a more serious note. There's an island in the southern Chesepeake Bay whose inhabitants still have faint Cornish accents. People in-the-know think they still have this trait even after 400 years because the island is pretty isolated and never had many immigrants from continental Europe or elsewhere. Pretty much what John Picard said.
Aren't I just a cheeky bastard!
I always enjoy the Philly accent; it's like the Baltimore accent without the Southern refinement.
I don't think so. Definitely north of New York, but not Boston.
The more general Tidewater accent as heard in Crisfield and such is similar, if less pronounced.
Firstly, I think the question is asked wrongly. It should be "Why don't modern Americans have a modern 'British' Accent", to which the answer has already been given and is not all that esoteric. From a broader (if contextually incorrect) viewpoint, one could very well surmise that Americans do have an English accent. If it weren't for simply being American accents, they would just stand out from other English accents (AAVE excepted, of course), but probably not even as differentiated as Welsh or Scottish.
I've often wondered myself how appreciable the difference in English accents are to non-native speakers and people who don't speak English at all. The Beeb's OmniEnglish is certainly widespread enough, I'd think, to suss out the difference between it and American/Canadian NewsAnchorEnglish. But I cannot for the life of me pick up the differences between a Taipei and Shanghai Mandarin speaker, even though they're said to sound as different as the above two examples. So who knows?
I've often wondered myself how appreciable the difference in English accents are to non-native speakers and people who don't speak English at all. The Beeb's OmniEnglish is certainly widespread enough, I'd think, to suss out the difference between it and American/Canadian NewsAnchorEnglish. But I cannot for the life of me pick up the differences between a Taipei and Shanghai Mandarin speaker, even though they're said to sound as different as the above two examples. So who knows?
Also, the "British Accent" as we know it did not exist when Elizabeth II first started sending ships to the Americas that led to Jamestown and Plymouth and all. So from there, the English language started to diverge.
Just as the American Sign Language is an offshoot of the Language of Signed French from two centuries ago. But the Deaf in France don't sign the way French deaf people did 200 years ago, neither do the deaf Americans today.
Just as the American Sign Language is an offshoot of the Language of Signed French from two centuries ago. But the Deaf in France don't sign the way French deaf people did 200 years ago, neither do the deaf Americans today.
I wonder, though, why, by the time Australia was settled, the divergence seemed to have stopped (or been greatly slowed)? Some Australians still get really close to a British accent (whereas others sound, in varying degrees, like Steve Irwin). And even the "Steve Irwin" accent still sounds so much closer to British than the American accent.
J
Jetfire
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I get accused of being an Italian mobster...though I don't really talk like one??? Maybe it is the Italian heritage in my family that puts out that vibe.
I've heard it repeated many times that the American southern accent came from generations of children being raised by black "mammies," whose English was inflected with the sounds of their native African languages. I don't know whether this is true or one of those common myths.
There's a long-standing joke about why Australians talk the way they do. They say the Aussie accent comes from speaking with the lips held close together to keep flies from flying into the mouth.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKLwWGQAt8
Sounds like Lancashire to me. Am I close?
I know many Brits compare the scouse (Liverpudlian) accent to nails scraping on a blackboard. But I think it sounds cute. Especially when it comes out of the mouth of Jennifer Ellison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N1DUGrTLpY
There's a long-standing joke about why Australians talk the way they do. They say the Aussie accent comes from speaking with the lips held close together to keep flies from flying into the mouth.
There are several distinct Northern English accents. As a Yank, I find the accents of the North rather charming. Like this girl hawking sex toys (this particular video is fairly clean):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnKLwWGQAt8
Sounds like Lancashire to me. Am I close?
I know many Brits compare the scouse (Liverpudlian) accent to nails scraping on a blackboard. But I think it sounds cute. Especially when it comes out of the mouth of Jennifer Ellison.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_N1DUGrTLpY
I wonder about that myself: Just how much of the differences does a non-English speaker notice? In college, I spent a month in Russia (the USSR at the time). When in Moscow, I often heard Muscovites comment (often derisively) about the accents of other Russians, but I couldn't notice any difference. I only had a few semesters of Russian, though. But I do notice differences in Spanish from one country to the next. But not so much the accent- it's the difference in the language itself that I notice.
As a Southern California native, I'm pretty well aware of the differences between the accents of Mexicans, Cubans and Puerto Ricans -- when they're speaking English. Spanish is a different matter altogether.
Well, one difference is that Americans hardly ever use the word "suss"!
Yes, I know that's a difference in vocabulary and usage, not accent. But I'm sure accents differ for many of the same reasons that vocabularies and the meanings of words differ between Britain and the United States.
That would be my call, too. I saw a really fabulous tv programme a few years back (possibly a school-type programme) which studied the various US accents and compared them to various European accents. It was very interesting. I seem to remember the Dutch and New York accents being compared and contrasted.
When I lived in Liverpool I was surprised at how many variations of the Scousse accent I could hear.
I'm sure that Americans and Canadians are aware that the British find it difficult to tell their accents apart, right? And I've noticed that sometimes when American actors try to do a British accent it often sounds Australian to me.
When I lived in Liverpool I was surprised at how many variations of the Scousse accent I could hear.
I'm sure that Americans and Canadians are aware that the British find it difficult to tell their accents apart, right? And I've noticed that sometimes when American actors try to do a British accent it often sounds Australian to me.
It's funny how often you hear that Americans mistake Australian, Kiwi and South African for British accents too, so I suppose that's not too surprising.
Yeah, it makes me laugh when people say people sound "northern" when there's pretty big variance in accents within cities never mind in different counties up north.
She sounds pretty much Generic Northern with a Lancashire flavour.
There's quite a few Manchester accents that sound like hers - and the way she says "bod-eh" for "body" is mainly a Lancashire thing - but some Pennine (where the border with Yorkshire is) accents blur the Lancs/Yorks distinction somewhat.
Most of time people say British they mean English and normally Southern thanks to Colin Farrel/Hugh Grant. Being from the East Midlands pretty much close to centre really, I never realise that I or people around me have accent unless I go to different regions like up North or really down south.
I would love to see Americans with a Geordie accent
I would love to see Americans with a Geordie accent
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