# When did the American accent develop? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [August 3, 2006, 2:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135 "2006-08-03T02:51:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 3:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/61 "2006-08-07T15:19:44Z")
Zoe writes: \> And I was taught that certain usages in Southern dialects came from \> Elizabethan and Cavalier English. Again, it depends what you mean by this. If all you’re saying is that you can find certain usages in Southern American English that were preserved from Elizabethan times or earlier which were not preserved in other dialects, this is true. Every current dialect has some usages which were preserved from older times which died out in other dialects. On the other hand, if you’re claiming that Southern American English is an archaic dialect which is much closer to Elizabethan English than other current dialects, this is wrong. There are no archaic dialects. All languages and dialects are constantly changing. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/62 "2006-08-07T15:56:34Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Just to be clear, I’m talking about how: “pipe” becomes (almost) “pahp” “life” becomes (almost) “lahf” “fine” becomes (almost) “fahn” in the South. And that happens across the variant Southern dialects. [/QUOTE] your example also happens, as you say, in Illinois. Also Ohio and Indiana. And, as any football fan in this area can attest, Western Pennsylvania. I’ve heard it in Oklahoma, West Texas, and from people who grew up in Arizona and Colorado. ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/63 "2006-08-07T16:02:14Z")
Forgot to add, Eugene O’Neill transliterated a New England accent using “la’f” for life. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/64 "2006-08-07T16:23:14Z")
**spoke-** - No new cites. Pass. **Zoe** - Nobody is questioning that Twain tried hard to approximate in print the accents he wanted to render; his manuscript mark-ups are proof of that. The question is how closely he got to the accents of the time he was writing about. Henry Nash Smith’s introduction to my ancient copy doesn’t even try to answer: > [@](#): > > But even if we could prove that the dialects are accurately rendered (which we could do only by a difficult historical inquiry into the language actually spoken along the banks of the Mississippi in the 1840’s), we should still have thrown very little light upon the novel as a work of art. I assume some progress has been made along these lines in the past 50 years. But nobody here is even trying to go to Twain scholars to prove me wrong. All I read are opinions and personal anecdotes. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 4:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/65 "2006-08-07T16:26:47Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] your example also happens, as you say, in Illinois. Also Ohio and Indiana. And, as any football fan in this area can attest, Western Pennsylvania. I’ve heard it in Oklahoma, West Texas, and from people who grew up in Arizona and Colorado. [/QUOTE] You may recall that Oklahoma is where the Southern Indian tribes were re-settled. (More evidence that the Southern accent was in place by the 1830s when the removals occurred.) West Texas, presumably, was peopled by east Texans. I regard it as part of the South. As I mentioned before, many settlers in southern Illinois and southern Indiana came from the South. Abe Lincoln’s family migration from Kentucky is typical. In both Southern Ohio and western Pennsylvania you have some bleed-over from the Appalachians (Kentucky and West Virginia). I’ve never heard it in Colorado or Arizona, but it wouldn’t surprise me to hear it there, since parts of those states were also peopled (in large part) by Southerners moving west after the Civil War. (New Mexico, too.) For that matter, you can also hear it in Bakersfield, California, where many of the “Okies” wound up. None of that changes or challenges my essential point, which is that there is a fundamental divergence (in broad terms) between “Southern” accents and Northern accents. When you hear a Southern accent, you can recognize it as such, even if you can’t pinpoint precisely where the speaker is from? (Note that even with your exceptions we are still talking about a geographically contiguous area, though its borders may not be strictly confined to the old Confederacy. You don’t hear the Southern “long i” in New York or Minnesota do you?) If we recognize that the Southern accents diverge from the Northern ones, we have to ask when, how and why that divergence occured. Until I hear a better theory, the isolation of the Jamestown colony from the northern colonies makes sense to me as a starting point. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/66 "2006-08-07T16:31:31Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] Forgot to add, Eugene O’Neill transliterated a New England accent using “la’f” for life. [/QUOTE] Now you are picking at flyspecks. Do you mean to tell me that you can’t distinguish a New England accent from a Southern accent? Or that you can’t recognize a Southern accent as such when you hear it? ---
**Author:** ![saoirse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/5daacb/32.png) [@saoirse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/saoirse)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/67 "2006-08-07T19:31:38Z")
[QUOTE=spoke-] Now you are picking at flyspecks. Do you mean to tell me that you can’t distinguish a New England accent from a Southern accent? Or that you can’t recognize a Southern accent as such when you hear it? [/QUOTE] I can recognize dozens of accents from the South, but I have never heard a Southern Accent. I believe you said that this particular pronunciation was the feature that defined the Southern Dialect. I pointed out that it is spoken in several other places. No problem, if you can define 75% of the United States as “The South.” But New England can’t be defined as the South, so you have to dismiss it. You haven’t been able to identify a unique feature of this dialect yet, except a pronunciation that is turns out to be not unique. I also wonder why you think the Appalachian dialect “bled over” into Pennsylvania, rather than “bleeding under” into Virginia and Kentucky, considering the huge Scots-Irish population there. ---
**Author:** ![Shagnasty](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9dc877/32.png) [@Shagnasty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Shagnasty)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/68 "2006-08-07T19:41:27Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] No problem, if you can define 75% of the United States as “The South.” But New England can’t be defined as the South, so you have to dismiss it. You haven’t been able to identify a unique feature of this dialect yet, except a pronunciation that is turns out to be not unique. [/QUOTE] I fail to see why someone must prove that there is one unique feature to the Southern style of speaking for the various forms to be related to each other and differentiated from other American speaking styles. We are talking about an entire style of speaking after all, not one tiny little trait. One similar vowel sound spoken by one person from outside of the South certainly doesn’t invalidate that. I have little idea about what you are talking about as well. It sounds like you are saying that there just happens to be a whole bunch of completely separate accents in the Southern region that an uninformed person might consider to be related. BTW, I am Southern and I am not sure where you are going with this. It makes no sense at all to me. ---
**Author:** ![Spoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e57/32.png) [@Spoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spoke)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2006, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135/69 "2006-08-07T23:09:11Z")
[QUOTE=saoirse] I can recognize dozens of accents from the South, but I have never heard a Southern Accent. [/QUOTE] Sophistry. Do you mean to say that you have never used the phrase “southern accent” to describe a person’s speech pattern? Do you mean to suggest that southern accents are unrelated to one another and each sprang up independently? Do you mean to say that, upon hearing a hypothetical person from the South speak, whom you did not know, and about whose geographic origin you had no clue other than accent, you would be apt to describe that person’s speech patterns to a third person by saying “Oh, she had the most charming Georgia piedmont accent! Franklin County, I’d say!” Pull the other one. And if you are willing to admit that you have used the phrase “southern accent” in conversation (as I am quite certain you have) then what did you mean when you used the phrase? > [@Shagnasty](#): > > We are talking about an entire style of speaking after all, not one tiny little trait. Precisely. Thank you. We are talking about a constellation of speech patterns, usages, and pronunciations, of which the pronunciation of the “long i” is but one part. **saoirse** , please take a look at the [wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_American_English) on Southern American English. It offers several examples of common characteristics of Southern speech. It also confirms what I was saying about areas of the country settled by Southerners: > [@](#): > > Southern dialects in some form can be found chiefly in the States of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Maryland, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Texas, Oklahoma, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the Ozark and Little Dixie areas in Missouri. The dialect found in the remaining rural areas of tidewater Maryland is similar to the dialect found in Virginia, and some experts have also suggested that the dialect found in two of Delaware’s three counties is related to Southern. > > **There are also places in Kansas, New Mexico, Colorado, Arizona, and the San Joaquin Valley of California where the prevailing dialect is Southern in character, due to historical settlement by Southerners. Also, the speech patterns in the rural areas of the southernmost counties of Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois - settled by Southerners and other groups - have strong Southern influences**. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-did-the-american-accent-develop/367135.md?page=3)