# George Washington's Accent. **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 10, 2008, 12:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978 "2008-02-10T00:45:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/61 "2009-08-15T13:34:47Z")
> [@aruvqan](#): > > you might find some examples on the Smithsonian Folkways website, and also Library of Congress archival site. I know that Harry Smith archived a fair amount of early southern folk music and spoken routines. Thanks, **aruvqan**. Actually, since I posted that, a few items from Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers (sometimes spelled Likkers) have appeared on YouTube. [Here they are performing _Cotton Baggin’_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qRDooIrwJ4&feature=related), with a spoken word introduction delivered in a 1920s drawl that still sounds current. (Though I do notice that the speaker _almost_ says “woids” for “words,” a habit that has since mostly dropped out of Southern speech.) ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 3:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/62 "2009-08-15T15:27:12Z")
Here’s another cut from Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers, with much more dialogue throughout: [Hog Killing Day](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZ1997fyPRA&NR=1). Those are accents you can still hear today in north Georgia. So the accent is not much changed in nearly 90 years. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/63 "2009-08-15T16:00:37Z")
Let’s remember that there is no such thing as a Southern accent – there are a broad range of accents. First, Washington was born a patrician, in northern Virginia. His older brother was a crony of Lord Fairfax and his agents. Second, as **Captain Carrot** has noted in other threads, Nrthern Virginia is today an entity unto itself – not truly a part of the South. While it’s impossible to know what it was like 250 years back, I suspect the regional accent would be much more like today’s rural Maryland than stereotypical Southern plains (think Scarlett O’Hara or Rue McClanahan’s Blanche). My hunch, founded on nothing more than a sense of historical class consciousness, is that the Washingtons, Fairfaxes, etc., would have spoken such an accent with a pronounced ‘British’ overlay – meaning, of course, R.P., not British regionalisms. Andy Jackson, by contrast, would probably have had a distinct Appalachian accent – think “country singer” speech. The Waxhaws area (where Jackson was born and raised) and the surrounding counties have transitioned from a modified “Southern mountains” accent to a modified “Southern plains” accent within living memory. And even within such groupings, there are clear subregional breakouts. Someone with a ‘pure’ Eastern North Carolina accent sounds like a native of Daown East Maine trying to portray a Suth’n’uh, far different from either Tidewater Virginia or Low Country South Carolina (which are themselves distinct). And they in turn differ from the Deep South accent of Alabama or Mississippi, the Cajun-spiced Louisiana speech, or the indescribable mix of East Texas. Likewise, it’s easy to tell a Cincinnati/Covington native from someone from the Virginia mountains or from popints further south. (And Cincinnati sounds much more like an Appalachian-Cornbelt cross than it does like typical Standard American speech from further north in Ohio or northwest in Indiana.) ---
**Author:** ![Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aji_de_gallina/32/260_2.png) [@Aji\_de\_Gallina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aji_de_Gallina)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 4:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/64 "2009-08-15T16:28:36Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > Let’s remember that there is no such thing as a Southern accent – there are a broad range of accents. > > First, Washington was born a patrician, in northern Virginia. His older brother was a crony of Lord Fairfax and his agents. Second, as **Captain Carrot** has noted in other threads, Nrthern Virginia is today an entity unto itself – not truly a part of the South. While it’s impossible to know what it was like 250 years back, I suspect the regional accent would be much more like today’s rural Maryland than stereotypical Southern plains (think Scarlett O’Hara or Rue McClanahan’s Blanche). My hunch, founded on nothing more than a sense of historical class consciousness, is that the Washingtons, Fairfaxes, etc., would have spoken such an accent with a pronounced ‘British’ overlay – meaning, of course, R.P., not British regionalisms. > > Andy Jackson, by contrast, would probably have had a distinct Appalachian accent – think “country singer” speech. The Waxhaws area (where Jackson was born and raised) and the surrounding counties have transitioned from a modified “Southern mountains” accent to a modified “Southern plains” accent within living memory. > > And even within such groupings, there are clear subregional breakouts. Someone with a ‘pure’ Eastern North Carolina accent sounds like a native of Daown East Maine trying to portray a Suth’n’uh, far different from either Tidewater Virginia or Low Country South Carolina (which are themselves distinct). And they in turn differ from the Deep South accent of Alabama or Mississippi, the Cajun-spiced Louisiana speech, or the indescribable mix of East Texas. Likewise, it’s easy to tell a Cincinnati/Covington native from someone from the Virginia mountains or from popints further south. (And Cincinnati sounds much more like an Appalachian-Cornbelt cross than it does like typical Standard American speech from further north in Ohio or northwest in Indiana.) …but still, the concept of a “southern accent” is not unscientific. There is of course a continuum of accents, but with little effort you can understand that Bill Clinton and George Bush have southern accents and that Giuliani doesn’t. I think that a person born in Virginia to an upper-class family in the mid 18th century would have an accent that people would clasify in the (broad) category of “southern accent” even if it didn’y match what you’d expect today from the same kind of person. in the same way that to speak of a “northern accent” in England is a way of showing certain generally-present characteristics. ---
**Author:** ![aruvqan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aruvqan/32/2891_2.png) [@aruvqan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aruvqan)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 5:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/65 "2009-08-15T17:43:40Z")
> [@spoke-](#): > > Thanks, **aruvqan**. Actually, since I posted that, a few items from Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers (sometimes spelled Likkers) have appeared on YouTube. [Here they are performing _Cotton Baggin’_](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9qRDooIrwJ4&feature=related), with a spoken word introduction delivered in a 1920s drawl that still sounds current. (Though I do notice that the speaker _almost_ says “woids” for “words,” a habit that has since mostly dropped out of Southern speech.) I have the Harry Smith collection, best money I ever spent, and most of my monthly emusic allotment ends up getting used on folkways records =) I love the old music, the voices may not be studio perfect…but priceless. If you want more fun, there is a podcast that used to be on Itunes about Moe Asche and Folkways Records that originally got me hooked, they play entire pieces in the podcasts, there are 24 podcasts =) ---
**Author:** ![aldiboronti](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/9fc348/32.png) [@aldiboronti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aldiboronti)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 5:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/66 "2009-08-15T17:54:09Z")
It might be instructive to learn how quickly a distinctive Australian accent developed (and, as it’s comparatively recent history, far easier). This might give a clue as to how rapidly colonial accents develop. All the evidence is that accents develop quite quickly. > [@](#): > > The earliest commentator on the Australian accent … James Dixon, in A Narrative of a Voyage to New South Wales and Van Diemen’s Land (1822), writes: ‘The children born in those colonies, and now grown up, speak a better language, purer, more harmonious than is generally the case in most parts of England. The amalgamation of such various dialects assembled together, seems to improve the mode of articulating the words.’ > [@](#): > > Two decades later, nasality begins to become an issue. Mrs Charles Meredith, author of Notes and Sketches of New South Wales during a Residence in the Colony from 1838 to 1844(1844), writes: ‘What puzzles me exceedingly to account for, a very large proportion of both male and female natives snuffle; dreadfully; just the same nasal twangs many Americans have. In some cases English parents have come out here with English-born children; these all speak clearly and well, and continue to do so, whilst those born after the parents arrive in the colony have the detestable snuffle. This is an enigma which passes my sagacity to solve.’ [Link](http://www.anu.edu.au/ANDC/pubs/ozwords/June_98/4._australian_twang.htm) One can see from those dates just how quickly an Australian accent developed and my feeling is that it would have been much the same with the American colonies. ---
**Author:** ![yabob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yabob/32/2821_2.png) [@yabob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yabob)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/67 "2009-08-15T18:53:31Z")
> [@An\_Gadai](#): > > This thread begs the question, what are the oldest extant recordings of the oldest people. Are there recordings of people born in 1800? The oldest deliberate sound recording of the human voice is 1860. A guy named Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville worked out a way of transcribing sounds into squiggles on paper some 20 years before Edison developed the phonograph. He had no means of playback. In modern times, his paper recordings have been transcribed and played back. They give whole new meanings to the term “low fidelity”, although they definitely count as sound recordings made long before the Edison phonograph: > **[Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leon_Scott)** > > Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville (\[e.dwaʁ.le.ɔ̃ skɔt də maʁ.tɛ̃.vil\]; 25 April 1817 – 26 April 1879) was a French printer, bookseller and inventor. > He invented the earliest known sound recording device, the phonautograph, which was patented in France on 25 March 1857. > As a printer by trade, he was able to read accounts of the latest scientific discoveries and became an inventor. Scott de Martinville was interested in recording the sound of human speech in a way similar to that achieved by th... > [@](#): > > Scott de Martinville managed to sell several phonoautographes to scientific laboratories for use in the investigation of sound. It proved useful in the study of vowel sounds and was used by Franciscus Donders, Heinrich Schneebeli and Rene Marage. It also initiated further research into tools able to image sound such as Koenig’s manometric flame. [4] He was not, however, able to profit from his invention and spent the remainder of his life as a librarian and bookseller at 9 Rue Vivienne in Paris Scott de Martinville was born in 1817, so he was earlier by a few years than Florence Nightingale. If his device was being used to make traceries circa 1860, it’s possible that somebody born earlier than that was recorded, perhaps even somebody born in the late 18th century. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 7:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/68 "2009-08-15T19:25:17Z")
Generation jumping can be a fascinating thing. I am only 36 years old yet my great-grandmother was born in 1889 and I new her pretty well as a child. She had a strong Southern accent and almost certainly encountered people that were alive in the 1700’s. I never heard a comment on a substantial change of accent from her. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/69 "2009-08-15T20:08:54Z")
> [@aldiboronti](#): > > It might be instructive to learn how quickly a distinctive Australian accent developed (and, as it’s comparatively recent history, far easier). This might give a clue as to how rapidly colonial accents develop. > > All the evidence is that accents develop quite quickly… > > One can see from those dates just how quickly an Australian accent developed and my feeling is that it would have been much the same with the American colonies. **aldiboronti** , that is entirely consistent with the [explanation of a linguist](http://linguistlist.org/ask-ling/accent.html) I linked over in [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=382411&page=1&pp=50): > [@](#): > > When groups become distinct, the way they speak becomes distinct too. This happens socially and geographically, but is easiest to illustrate by geographical differences. **If a single group splits into two (imagine that one half goes to Island A and one half to Island B), then once they have separated, their accents will change over time, but not in the same way, so that after just one generation the accent of Island A will be different from the accent of Island B**. If they stay completely separated for centuries, their dialects may become so different that we will start wanting to say they are speaking two different languages. How does the new accent develop?.. > [@](#): > > The first generation of children will draw on the accents of the adults around them, and will create something new. If people move to a new place in groups (as English speakers did to America, Australia and New Zealand) that group usually brings several different accents with them. **The children will draw on the mixture of accents they hear and create their own accent out of what they hear.** The modern accents of Australia are more similar to London accents of English than to any other accent from England – this is probably because the founder generation (in the eighteenth century) had a large component drawn from the poor of London, who were transported to Australia as convicts. The accents of New Zealand are similar to Australian accents because a large proportion of the early English-speaking settlers of New Zealand came from Australia. > > The mix found in the speech of the settlers of a new place establishes the kind of accent that their children will develop. **But the first generation born in the new place will not keep the diversity of their parents’ generation – they will speak with similar accents to the others of their age group. And if the population grows slowly enough, the children will be able to absorb subsequent children into their group, so that even quite large migrations of other groups (such as Irish people into Australia) will not make much difference to the accent of the new place.** Most parents know this. If someone from New York (US) marries someone from Glasgow (Scotland, UK), and these two parents raise a child in Leeds (England, UK), that child will not speak like either of the parents, but will speak like the children he (I know of such a child!) is at school with. So there is every reason to think the accents in the Americas would have become distinctive from the English accent early on – within one generation in fact. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 15, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978/70 "2009-08-15T20:15:19Z")
**Polycarp** , you are right that there are multiple Southern accents (though I think the dividing lines are more according to social class than to geography in most cases), but Southern accents all have certain common features that allow us to identify an accent as “Southern” even if we can’t pinpoint where the speaker is from. My hunch is that the difference between the (broadly-defined) “Southern” mode of speech and the “Northern” mode of speech can trace its roots to the separate early development of the Virginia colony and the Massachusetts colony. In the parlance of the linguist I cited above, these colonies were the “Island A” and “Island B” of English-speaking America. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/george-washingtons-accent/436978.md?page=3)