Since the accents between British English and American English are so pronounced (pardon the pun), I wondered if any record exists as to when the shift occurred in North America.
In other words, did the Pilgrims, Puritans, and other colonists speak with a British accent?
It isn’t that simple. British and American (and Canadian and Australian and…) accents have been slowly growing apart ever since the colonies were first set up. You can’t specify a date, since the changes have been very gradual - barely noticeable from one year to the next, but over 300-odd years, these things add up.
In 1620, nobody was speaking with any sort of modern American or British accent. The language has changed considerably in both countries. However, contrary to popular belief, it has changed less in North America than in Great Britain.
Back in the time of Henry VIII, people spoke in an accent that was similar to the modern midatlantic speech patterns and pronounciations. Travel to the Americas for settling started around then and continued for a few centuries afterward. The accents of the colonists stayed similar to the speech patterns of the original settlers, while, back in England, the accents and speech patterns changed with the languages around England. Later on, people from non-anglophone lands immigrated to America and settled in different regions. This caused the different accents of the immigrants to blend into the regional speech patterns that we now have. The same thing happened in England and other anglophone countries. Irish sounds different from British because the celtic dialects originally spoken there influenced the English that is spoken there now.
So neither the early colonists nor their relatives in England sounded like the English do today?
I think the key to understanding the change is an idea already aired on the thread about George Washington’s Southern Accent thread:
In Colonial times the standard British accent was different from what it now is. In fact, the Great Vowel Shift did not fully settle down until the end of the 18th century. During the 17th and 18th centuries, the broad a (“ah”) of father did not exist in the standard English phonetic system. (I think father rhymed with lather in those days.) When the sound made its reappearance, it came back in different words depending on whether you’re in Britain or America.
In fact, the accent in England has probably changed more overall during the past 250 years than it has in America. While Americans are more famous for innovation in the English language, and the Brits for conservatism, there’s more to it than that. American English has kept the subjunctive alive and kicking, while England has trashed it.
Linguistic historians have gone on record saying that Shakespeare’s accent was closer to modern American than to the modern Received Pronunciation of England, and that’s saying a lot.
As I understand it, yes. I’m drawing completely on memory here, but there’s an excellent video series hosted by Robert McNeil (of McNeil-Lehrer fame) called The Story of English. One part of the series focused on this exact question and had a couple scholars talking about the changes since Elizabethan times. One particular bit I remember was a comparison of Oxford students’ accents from the 1950s and the late 1980s (when this series was produced). There was indeed a noticeable difference in the accent between the two time periods, which leads one to wonder what the changes could have been over a period 12 or 13 times as great.
Incidentally, also from TSOE, there are a couple islands off the coast of NC where the locals’ accent, scholars assert, is close to, if not an exact match of, the English accent of Elizabeth I’s day. I’m sure there are other Dopers out there with the relevant sources at hand; I’m off for lunch.
Right. In fact, East Coast Americans speak more like the British of the colonial era than modern Brits do. Dialects spoken in isolated areas, such as the Appalachians, have changed even less over the years. I have heard that there are even some people in the Appalachians who speak a Scottish Gaelic dialect that no longer exists in the British Isles.
That must be the Gullah language, which is a creole blend of Elizabethan English and several African languages. I’m afraid I don’t know much else about it, but I’m sure a websearch on “Gullah” would turn up something.
No, the Geechee (speakers of Gullah) live on the Sea Islands of South Carolina and Georgia. The award-winning film Daughters of the Dust was set there circa 1900. Building the Hilton Head resort there probably had a negative effect on the Gullah language.
I think I’ve posted this about 27 times already, but … the idea that somewhere in America there is a group of people who speak something akin to Elizabethan English is a load of hooey.
Thinking caps on, folks, there was only one English settlement to America in the Elizabethan era - the Lost Colony - whose members didn’t survive to pass along their accents! And the islands where people supposedly still speak Elizabethan English? None were settled any time close to the Elizabethan era.
The speech on these islands is quaint and old-fashioned and may bear some vague resemblances to some types of British speech. That’s all. Few genuine “scholars” will make any grander claim about it, though the local tourist boards sure like to.
I’m with ruadh.
I think the notion that British accents have changed more than American accents doesn’t pass the common sense test.
It seems to me that the biggest causative factor in the development of new accents is English as a second language. (Hence the Irish, Scottish and Welsh accents are markedly different from those heard in England).
The U.S. is a mish-mash of peoples, many of whose ancestors learned English as a second language. Think of the influence of Jewish, Irish and Italian immigrants on the accents in New York. Think of the influence of slave dialects on Southern accents. Think of the influence of Norse and Swedish speech patterns on the accents in the upper midwest. Think of the influence of the many Indian tribes, as they learned English. You can hear the influence of their speech patterns on English spoken in many parts of Canada. Think of the influence of French speech patterns in Louisiana.
It’s true, e.g., that Southerners use some words and phrasings that have come down intact from the early settlers, and which are not heard elsewhere. (For example, the use of the word victuals, pronounced “vittles,” as used by some mountaineers.) That does not mean that the accents of these mountaineers are the same as those of 17th century English settlers.