# Why are "Standard" American and Canadian Accents So Similar? **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [December 6, 2005, 5:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303 "2005-12-06T05:03:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![guizot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/guizot/32/3636_2.png) [@guizot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/guizot)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 5:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303/21 "2005-12-07T05:25:04Z")
> [@Bytegeist](#): > > I’m not a linguist, but I hope you don’t mind a little arm-chair theorizing. It seems obvious to me that modern technology made all the difference. > > Great Britain had many centuries where, without modern transportation and communication, distinct dialects of English formed over relatively small regions. The same is true of the German-speaking lands (Austria, Switzerland, and the states that would later make Germany), France, Spain, and pretty much any European country larger than Luxembourg. > > The U.S. and Canada, on the other hand, happened to begin life near the start of the Industrial Revolution. The printing press already existed and was widely used to make cheap newspapers and books. Universal education and literacy were widespread. Moreover, within two centuries of 1776 there would be railways, steamships, telegraph lines, telephones, cars, airplanes, radio, and television, along with populations that liked to move around a lot. Whatever sharp differences in accent there might have been in the beginning were quickly smoothed out. (In fact, I understand many European dialects have been vanishing, for these exact reasons.) > > If none of that technology had been invented, I’d bet that today’s English-speaking North America would be much more like 18th-century Britain, linguistically speaking. By now West-coasters would be unintelligible to East-coasters, and Canadians to southern Americans. Some of the American founding fathers expected this very thing to happen eventually, as the nation spread out across the continent. Of course they didn’t know what was coming down the pike. Forgive me (because I haven’t read the thread completely), but I think **Beitgeist** has the right idea. I think the anglophones of the areas that are now known as the U.S. and Canada had a lot of intercourse—I mean interaction (well, maybe intercourse, too). Add to that the fact that few people in the U.S. even heard a Canadian speak was not until long after WWII. The differences in speach that are commonly noticed between the U.S. and Canada are primarily a few vowels–and very few at that. But only until someone wanted to bring that to attention did anyone notice. The differences in accents in the U.S. had to do with which part of Britain did the people come from. (This had to do not only with English accent, but also with many cultural things.) I’d say that any smart Canadian (and there are a whole lot of them) could feign U.S. birthrights. Furthermore, I’d say that U.S. comedy has benefited greatly from Canadians. In the words that I’d otherwise never use, I say: “Bring 'em on!” I say bring on the Canadians. (I know you might lose your effective medical system, but maybe we can work something out…?) It’s funny when your nearest northern neighbor can’t get a word through to you. No, it’s not funny. It’s not funny. It’s reason to demand an answer. Canada is a wonderful country…so wonderful that…? ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 7:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303/22 "2005-12-07T07:22:02Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > That had occurred to me, too… Why should they be different? But then I got to thinking about the various accents of Great Britain. You could fit the entire island into a a region of North America where the accents are indistinguishable, yet there’s a huge difference between the accents of England, Scotland, and Wales. Is this just because the ethic groups currently in the British Isles have been there for so much longer than those in North America? It’s not necessarily about ethnic groups, but it’s certainly about internal migration (and the lack thereof). With the exception of London, in most places you’ll find that a significant chunk of the population have ancestral roots in the locality. Until recently there’s rarely been a reason for them to move in large numbers, except to nearby conurbations where regional accents were in the main retained. ---
**Author:** ![Larry\_Mudd](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/f14d63/32.png) [@Larry\_Mudd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Larry_Mudd)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 9:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303/23 "2005-12-07T09:05:01Z")
> [@Shagnasty](#): > > I generally take exception to the notion that American broadcast English is confined to an area in the Midwest. […] People in my town tend to use broadcast English as do many of the wealthier towns. This is a naive assertion. “Broadcast English” is not the simple absence of a _broad_ accent. _Nobody_ picks it up casually, and it’s a near certainty that you’ve never heard it spoken by a single soul who hasn’t been specifically trained in it in for drama or journalism. By way of an example, so far there has only been one American president who used a Broadcast English accent for addresses: Ronald Reagan. This is not to say that every other president has spoken with a thick regional accent – only that they had naturally accented speech. The idea that someone can grow up in an area, have normal contact with their cohabitants, and not pick up any regionalisms is absurd – it’s totally contrary to the way that language acquisition works. Of course there are many people who speak carefully and avoid using a heavy regional accent (“Woodja pasta pasta, pasta?”) But that doesn’t mean that they’re using a regionless accent. There is an astonishing array of extremely subtle regionalisms that most speakers and listeners are consciously unaware of. Not talking like a Boston cabbie isn’t going to erase those. For instance, listen carefully to your wife and her friends, and you will probably note that folks from eastern Massachusetts are among the few Americans who share that “funny high pitched thing” with Canadians, where the diphthong before a voiceless consonant has a slightly raised pitch. A Bostonian looking to “normalize” their speech will avoid the _obvious_ things. You can be sure that they’ll use the “correct” rhoticized pronunciation – No “Yondah lies the castle of my fathah.” Unless you know where to look for more subtle regionalisms, you’re not going to make the conscious effort to avoid them. There’s a lot more to “Broadcast English” than you think – it’s not just your ordinary “refined” elocution. Broadcast English is regionless in a way that is totally artificial and largely invisible. Anyway, you said you took exception to the idea that “Broadcast English is confined to the Midwest.” Nobody has said that-- I only made the carefully qualified statement that the regional accent that is _probably_ closest to Broadcast English is a midwestern one. That doesn’t mean that there are people walking around Ohio speaking Broadcast English, unless they have had the misfortune to be required to learn it, jokes about the subtlety of an Ohio accent or no. ---
**Author:** ![Johanna](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johanna/32/8318_2.png) [@Johanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Johanna)\ **Post date:** [December 7, 2005, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303/24 "2005-12-07T11:37:16Z")
There is a Canadian accent that’s immediately recognizable to my ears, and no it doesn’t depend on the raised vowel in the “aboot” diphthong. It’s more of a monotone mutter, more thickly articulated with a relaxed throat. I’m not sure if it’s heard more in rural Ontario or rural Atlantic provinces. I didn’t hear it in Toronto. My first impression of it, hearing it on Canadian TV shows rebroadcast here, is it almost sounds like an American accent that I couldn’t place, because nothing in it sounds British to me at all. In fact, British speech has more pitch inflection than American, while the Canadian accent I have in mind uses even less pitch variation. When I hear it, it sounds so monotonous that I think this is how Americans must sound to British ears. It has nothing of the South in it at all, no drawl, and none of the tense nasality of the mid-Atlantic and the midwestern U.S.; I think its closest relative is rural northeastern U.S. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-standard-american-and-canadian-accents-so-similar/334303.md?page=1)