As an American, it seems the Standard American accent (aka General American or Midwestern accent) would be much easier to understand to residents of Britain than accents traditionally heard in Maine, Boston, Long Island and Bronx (NY), the deep South, Tennessee, East Texas, West Texas, etc. The Standard American accent sounds to me so flat and neutral that it seems it would be instantly understood even among natives with dense Liverpudlian, Geordie, Cockney, Brummie, etc accents – although the reverse certainly isn’t true. Today, many Brits are accustomed to hearing Standard American accents through television and music, but how about a century ago – was there likely a time when pre-radio Brits theoretically might have struggled to understand today’s American Midwest accent?
Mark Twain, who was born in Missouri, travelled Europe extensively, including the UK. His accent did not prevent him from being made an honorary member of one of the London clubs.
FWIW, the Received Pronunciation that is allegedly the standard way of pronouncing English in Britain is a 20th century invention anyway; the English actually spoken by actual people in Britain varied much more widely (as it still does). On this basis, I’d venture to say that a person speaking modern-day Standard American might have sounded unusual to an average 19th century Brit, but would not have caused any problems being understood.
In fact, I doubt they’re sound much more unusual to a Brit than a Brit from a different part of Britain would.
Exaclty. I would imagine that in dealing with multiple varied accents in the British Isles, the average Londoner probably would have no difficulty adding “speaking American” to the mix. Back country people with less exposure to those from other regions, maybe would find it difficult.
I did, for example, have to turn on subtitles when watching the movie version of Billy Elliot and my dad’s family was from Yorkshire (but never heavily accented).
Depends on which region of the USA would be easily understandable. New England probably so. Coastal Carolina’s maybe not.
I think some accents are easier understood by people from other areas than others. If I overhear a stong Glasgow or Geordie accent I will struggle to understand it, though if people from those cities are speaking directly to me they will tend to tone down the accent so I can understand, if I am in somewhere like Oxford I have no trouble understanding anyone (dispite having no connection with that area)
A strong Geordie accent, can be very difficult to understand. Billy Elliot has a Geordie accent though I would not say the accents used in the film are especially strong. Geordie is vey distinct from the Yorkshire accent.
Accents from the home counties are much easier to understand and this was the main reason it was adapted into received pronunciation from radio broadcasts (the others being it was similar to what was spoken by the people who made such decisions, and the first broadcasts were mainly received in London and the SE and Cockney is another difficult accent). I do not know but I suspect that pre radio, people learning English as a foreign language would tend to be taught something close to received pronuciation.
I am less knowledgable of US accents, but I think the same applies with Standard American being easier to understand (both Nationally and Internationally) than some other accents.
Quite a lot of people in Britain would have met Americans in the last year or so of WW1. And the elites of both countries would probably have spoken much the same since long before 1776.
(PS - did I hear once that some people in the Carolinas speak much the same as rural Essex folk used to?)
Many years ago, I traveled extensively through that part of Missouri along the Mississippi. The accents of the older folk were thicker than I expected, so I think it’s safe to say Mark Twain would have had a pronounced accent vis-a-vis the super-flat Standard Accent of today. Some call that the Northern Midland American Accent, but in that area of Missouri, even today, it isn’t completely “flat” or “neutral” and was likely more pronounced 100+ years ago. One thing is certain, the thick accents of millions of grandparents across America are fading fast. Their own grandchildren tend to have much flatter accents, thanks (or no thanks) to TV. (BTW, I know a linguist would destroy my usage of a “flat” or “neutral” accent. I’m simply using shorthand.)
Occasionally, we will hear a native British English speaker on some program on PBS in the United States and it takes my total and undivided focus to comprehend what the speaker is saying. To my ears, the stronger accents sound like they’re halfway to another language. This includes Geordie, Scouse, old Yorkshire, Sheffield, Cockney, the list goes on. Of course, a lot of the difficulty goes beyond accents, per se. A lot of these speakers mangle their words. There’s little articulation or elocution. Let’s also agree that there’s Cockney and then there’s Cockney, or any other accent. Some speakers push things to the distant shores.
Or further. Scots may or may not be a separate language from English, depending on whom you ask (though obviously one very closely akin to it).
Part of the issue too may be unfamiliar words and grammar constructions.
My dad once mentioned the old Yorkshire saying “Owt’s daft boot thee and me, and thee’s abit queer”. Not the simplest thing to figure out. He taught us “Ilkly Moor”(?) and it took me until I was in my 40’s to one day realize that “battatt” was “without hat”.
(Just as Australian can be (is?) a different language with words like tucker and chook, etc. I have a recording of Waltzing Matilda where the singer first has to explain what half the words mean. Even some words we know (“squatter”) have a different connotation there.
Yes indeed, there are plenty of variations in dialect, plus in more insular communities people have been known to strengthen it to keep out the outsiders. Try this for size:
Differences between regional/national accents are less perceptible the further away they are; whilst I can discern the differences between various American accents, I doubt I am noticing as many differences or distinctions as would someone from the USA - and the same is true in reverse; I’ve met Americans who couldn’t really discern much difference between different British accents that a seem more different than alike to my ear.
In some cases, I have been able to discern different accents that are from places only a few miles apart - Oldham vs central Manchester, for example - because I worked with people from both of those places, I could tell the difference even though the geographic separation is about 7 miles.
So I would say that if a pre-radio Brit could understand one regional American accent, it’s likely they would be able to understand many of them, simply because they would probably sound more alike than different within that perceptual context.
That’s definitely a difference between the US and UK. In the US, it’s very rare to have different accents that close together, and even when you do, it’d probably take an expert to recognize the differences between them.
I guess they’ve had longer to develop and diverge here, and our country is more urbanised and densely populated so you can be traversing quite a lot of different local culture in a relatively short distance.
I once met a highland Scot whose accent was utterly incomprehensible. He assured me it was not Scots Gaelic and could speak a perfectly comprehensible English as well, but his mother tongue was different. Also Bajan (Barbadian) English cannot be understood by Americans, although they can almost always speak a mid-Atlantic dialect that their radio and TV announcers use. And Cockney is another one.
Fairly recent case in point:
People are generally ‘lumpers’ with regard to distant accents and ‘splitters’ when it comes to local accents.
To me, Australian and New Zealand accents sound more alike than different. I can tell the difference, but I imagine me calling them similar probably seems ridiculous to someone from one of those places, indeed it’s likely to be a case of “what do you mean by ‘Australian accent’? - there are different Australian accents” - but my perception will tend to lump them together into one category.
Having been to my share of Burns Suppers, it’s easily my opinion that it counts as a different language. Address Tae a Haggis is a great poem, but when read aloud in the proper accent it’s borderline incomprehensible if you don’t have a translation on hand.
My personal experience is that the few dialects of English I have trouble understanding seem to have vowels that are hard to distinguish and words I don’t know. They sound different in a way that other British accents do not.
I suspect that the modern Standard American accent and dialect is close enough to other British accents that it would not pose difficulty the other way around.