In the early USA (around the time of the American Revolution or the American Rebellion depending on your point of view) when did distinctly American accents finally develop?
Did the American colonists speak in what we would call today a British accent? I heard that some dialects of American English (such as those in the Appalaichans) had closer linguistic similarities to British English than any other American dialect.
The Southern Appalachians are thought, for reasons I don’t happen to be clear on, to have preserved much of the traditional North English accent. Similarly the native Hampton Roads-Outer Banks dialect (from Norfolk VA south to Okracoke Island NC) is thought to be almost perfectly preserved Elizabethan English pronunciation. (Perhaps one of our linguistics scholars might have the background on why these conclusions were reached?)
I’ve heard theories that the current American accent (or one of the several) is actually closer to the English accent of the colonists than the modern day English Accent.
Lopsang, acccording to this source:
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm
Linguist and writer Mrio Pei said, “The speech of the Ozarks comes closer to Elizabethan English in many ways than the speech of modern London.” (The Ozarks are in Arkansas…you know, President Clinton’s home state.) That isn’t exactly what you were saying, but it is along similar lines.
That particular site has a lot of interesting information about the origin of American dialects. Here are some excerpts:
One commone hold over from the Cavaliers is the word y’all.
Usages that I have that came from these folks: fixin’ to, golly, dad blamed, sack (instead of bag) and bucket (instead of pail).
If you look at other usages from this influence, I think you will find the stereotypes of what many people think that all Southerners talk like.
This site also discusses the influences of the Dutch, the Africans, the French and more. Good reading.
This is actually not true, although it is often reported to be. In particular, the residents of Tangier Island have a unique accent often misquoted as being Elizabethan.
I can’t cite this because it’s in a book, but a very good source for this type of question is The Story of English, which was a really good PBS series back in the 80s, with the late Robert McNeil (of the MacNeil/Leher News Hour).
Anyhow… the salient point is that English accents in 1776 weren’t what English accents are today, so no, the American colonists in 1776 probably didn’t sound like English people do today either.
The Story of English isn’t really a good source of information. It was written by language hobbyists rather than actual linguists, and there are a lot of inaccuracies in it.
However, it’s true that there are no dialects in America that are “perfectly preserved Elizabethan English”. For one thing, there were no surviving English colonies of the Elizabethan era.
Definitely at the time of the American Revolution there were distinct American Accent(s).
In 1768 Ben Franklin had set up his own “American Alphabet” and as Bartleby’s says: “and had offered plenty of proof in it, perhaps unconsciously, that the standards of spelling and pronunciation in the New World had already diverged noticeably from those accepted on the other side of the ocean”.
In 1789 Noah Webster’s “Dissertations on the English Language,” - somewhat polictically – makes a great deal of how different the “American Language” is from English, by then at least it is very clear that the accetn has diverged.
How accurate would the information in *The History of the English Language *by Dr. Seth Lerer be considered? It was an interesting audio course that I listened to a couple of years ago. I’ll have to find the cds and listen to the parts on American English.
I’d be interested in knowing what you consider to be “lots of inaccuracies”. There certainly are some unverifiable speculations, especially concerning Old English, but I think the authors make it pretty clear when they are treading into that type of territory. I’m no linguist myself, but I’ve done lots of reading on the subject, and I don’t recall there being significant discrepancies in that book as compared to others written by established linguists.
Did America’s “Founding Fathers” Have English Accents?
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=162856&highlight=accent
It’s been a long time since I read it (and I never finished it), and I don’t recall specifically most of what I objected to in it. I remember that it repeats the urban legend about Lincoln writing the Gettyburg Address in two minutes on the back of an envelope and repeatedly refers to Welsh as a Gaelic language. It also makes a number of questionable assertions without providing sources or any evidence to back them up; for example, that people in Northern Ireland have been killed over the way they say the alphabet - although there are letters that are usually pronounced differently by the two communities, it’s never to my knowledge been documented that anyone has actually been killed for using the “wrong” pronunciation. And this claim is not cited, and neither are a lot of others in the book. I can also recall a couple folk etymologies although I would have to read it again to remember what they were.
If hazel-rah is still around, maybe he can point up some of the other errors. He does have a linguistics degree and he’s posted before that he considers the book unreliable as well.