What accent did George Washington talk with? More specifically, was it British or American Southern? George Washington was born a British subject. And, while granted this next one isn’t too scientific, most parodies of Washington on tv, etc. portray him with a quasi-upper class British accent. But Washington, according to the sources I have before me, was born 1732 in Virginia, a Southern state (or more correctly, colony at the time). He died 1799, also in Virginia.
Now I have it on good authority that there was a Southern accent in existence at George Washington’s time. The proof: Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), born in South Carolina. All descriptions I have heard and read for Jackson show he had a Southern accent: his voice is described as high and twangy, and often compared to Abraham Lincoln’s, the expressions he uses are clearly Southern, etc. So the Southern accent was clearly around in Washington’s time.
So what is it? Did George Washington talk with a British or American Southern accent (or is there a third choice here I am missing)?
Using expressions we associate with the contemporary South doesn’t prove that one has the particular accent we now associate with the South, and descriptions like “high and twangy” are almost worthless for actually establishing accent features. Almost certainly, every accent which was in existence in George Washington’s time differed significantly from every accent in existence today.
I’m not so sure. Linguists tell us that a lot of the divergence happens in the first generation of geographic separation (cite), which, in English-speaking America, would have occurred at the Jamestown colony.
We know that Confederate veterans had Southern accents. (We don’t have to guess about this; there are audio recordings of Confederate veterans.) So the Southern accent was there by the 1860s in more or less the form we hear it today.
So what shall we believe? That the accent only emerged in the four score and seven years between the Declaration of Independence and the battle of Gettysburg? Or that it emerged sometime during the 169 years between the founding of Jamestown and the Declaration of Independence? Seems to me the geographic isolation necessary for divergence would have been more present in the early years of colonial history.
As I mentioned in that earlier thread, it’s funny that Robert E. Lee (born 5 miles from the spot where Washington was born) is generally presumed to have had a Southern accent, while Washington (who fought alongside Lee’s father) is not.
I agree with the OP that the Southern accent was around at least by Andrew Jackson’s time. You can read the journals of Lewis and Clark (1804-06) and see phonetic spellings by William Clark that are highly suggestive of a Southern accent. (Somewhere on these boards I catalogued examples of this, but I can’t seem to find that post.)
I don’t disagree that the accents of the time probably contained many features in common with today’s Southern accents; they might well sound Southern. But I still think the accents of the time, for all their similarities to their modern descendants, would have significant differences from ours. I guess I find it hard to believe that, over the course of 250 years between Washington’s birth and mine, any group of speakers would fail to undergo significant accent changes.
No doubt their accent was “Southern”, in the sense that it had features in common with and distinctive to modern Southern accents (of which, of course, there is more than one). But was it really essentially unchanged from its modern descendants? (I’d find it easier to believe at 150 years ago than at 250 years ago, I suppose…)
My old linguist hat is a bit dusty, but let me see what I can do with it anyway…
Washington’s accent would have sounded more like either a modern mid-Atlantic or a modern Southern accent than like any modern British accents. However, the British accents of Washington’s time were more different from modern British accents than the American/Colonial accents of Washington’s time were from modern American accents. British and North American accents of the day were closer to one another than is the case at present, and of the two groups it is British accents that have changed more.
So: Washington’s accent would likely not have sounded out of place in modern Virginia, and it would not have sounded out of place in Britain during his lifetime. But it would probably sound strange in Britain today!
I found some more evidence that wasn’t available last time this came up. Here’s an interview with a Confederate veteran (or a man claiming to be a Confederate veteran – there is some doubt) born in 1846. Sound quality is poor but (whether or not he was really a Confederate veteran) his Southern accent is apparent.
It’s an accent he would have picked up in his youth, in the 1850s.
