From where did the American "accent" come?

[gwilks98]

Ok, so if our language evolved from those people in England that came over to America, when did the change happen? In other words, when did an English speaking American person start sounding different from an English person? Why hasn't the English "accent" evolved? Did Horatio Nelson talk with the same accent you would hear on the streets of london today?

It kinda makes me think of the one liner joke, "If man evolved from apes, why are there still apes."

How did the southern dialects sprout, or the boston talk?


The crap I think about when there's nothing else going on....

[clutchy]

that's a good question, but i would assume, being fairly isolated from england from whenever the colonies started there would have to be some change.

maybe it was a way to differentiate colonists from the english...

i really have no idea... but it's an interesting thought.

[hapoo]

http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=The%20origins%20of%20the%20American%20accent


There is often an implicit assumption that daughter communities innovate (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=innovate) and the mother community keeps the original speech (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=speech). But in the 400 years since London (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=London) and New York (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=New%20York) began to diverge in accent (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=accent), both have undergone 400 years of evolution. A mother community (such as the homeland, England) being large and its colonies being small (at first), you might expect different rates of propagation of change. Well, I don't know how language change (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=language%20change) arises, and I don't think any linguist (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=linguist) has much idea, but rather than big communities being conservative because there are so many people who have to accept change for it to get established, it seems to me there may be an opposite effect: if a change is spontaneous like a genetic mutation (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=mutation), then the more people there are, the more mutations have a chance to arise and be taken up by a subcommunity (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=subcommunity). (The situation is similar to, but might not be the same as, this question in biology.) These days most of the accent differences seem to be in big cities.
Many of the differences between American and Southern British are because of innovations in Southern British. The sound r was lost (except before vowels) somewhere over 200 years ago in London. This change spread out and is now established all across England except the south-west and East Anglia (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=East%20Anglia), and is also true of the Southern Hemisphere (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Southern%20Hemisphere) countries colonized in the last 200 years. So American resembles Irish in being a rhotic (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=rhotic) accent (one having r everywhere) because they are both survivors of the original situation that 300 years ago prevailed everywhere in England.
However, American has innovated on exactly how it pronounces its r: instead of being a simple consonant as in Irish English, it is now a colouring of the preceding vowel: see my How to pronounce an English "R" (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=How%20to%20pronounce%20an%20English%20%22R%22) for details.
Again, the American can't (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=can%27t) with the same vowel as can reflects the original English, and it's England that's innovated to the ah vowel. This can be approximately dated by noting that Australia etc also say kahnt; but similar changes in dance (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=dance), plant (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=plant) happened in England after the settlement of Australia, where they have not been taken up: the can vowel in common between American and Australian dance is also what was said in London 200 years or so ago.
One mutation which is characteristic of American is the "breaking (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=breaking)" of the vowel in can and its fronting effect on the consonant, so that it is like kyean. Now this might be a new mutation, or it might be present in some of the dialects and accents of Britain that gave rise to it; I haven't the materials by me to tell. Bear in mind also that immigration (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=immigration) from Britain to America was continuous over many generations, and new influence (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=influence)s and changes could keep arriving. Language change is not purely divergent (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=divergent) like a tree: changes arising in one place often propagate (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=propagate) across dialect boundaries. Historically, London (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=London) changes gradually influence most of the rest of England, and beyond; and in the last century American has achieved a similar driving position.
This is a very quick survey, of such a level of generality that I can completely ignore the differences within American English (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=American%20English) (see Cletus the Foetus (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Cletus%20the%20Foetus)'s write-up there for details); and the possible influence of other languages such as Yiddish (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Yiddish).
The prestige Boston (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=Boston%20English) accent, which is non-rhotic (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=rhotic%20r%27s) like London, is said to be a 19th-century innovation in imitation of London. However, I think this is an urban myth, and there is also a non-rhotic lower-class New York (http://www.everything2.com/index.pl?node=New%20York) accent, which is highly likely to be native, not imitating England. See the first few entries in http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/2003_11.html for more detail.

[nickel]

here we get told we sound like Canadians. eh, go figure.

[Houdini]

Neat post.

I remember reading that the US Southern accent, due to early migration South, etc., is most closely related to the Brit accent of early colonial times.

[oblongmelon]

here we get told we sound like Canadians. eh, go figure.

My cousins from Scranton tell me all the time that I have a "New Yawk" accent..I don't have a clue what they are talking about, because I'm only an hour away from Nickel and she sounds Canadian ;)

[Airencracken]

Whatever dude, people from like cali have no accents bro.

[InfiniteNothing]

That's a dialect, not an accent.

[gwilks98]

Hapoo, I'll be honest. I had to read your post 4 times to understand less than half of it. Thanks for digging that up. I gotta go digest it all now.

[Houdini]

Hapoo, I'll be honest. I had to read your post 4 times to understand less than half of it. Thanks for digging that up. I gotta go digest it all now.

Yeah, it's all the blue underlined links. They kinda get in the way of reading it, as my eyes want to jump around moreso than they usually do.

[Thesifer]

I found this to be an interesting and informative post. Now I have to go research more into the subject. Thanks. I'm supposed to be on Vacation! :(

[hapoo]

Yeah, it's all the blue underlined links. They kinda get in the way of reading it, as my eyes want to jump around moreso than they usually do.

:nono: someones not using the Black hapoo scheme!

[Airencracken]

Classic dark is where it's at.

[Houdini]

I know. I've always used the default. Perhaps I should branch out. :)

[Kevster]

Come on folks, we all know the real accent is from Kah-LEE-fornia. ;)