Why Did Eleanor Roosevelt Have a British Accent?

[kenobi_65]

Last night, my wife was watching a program about First Ladies (I think it was on Smithsonian Channel), and remarked about Eleanor Roosevelt’s accent. I said, “As a matter of fact, we were just talking about this on the SDMB,” and told her about the Mid-Atlantic accent.

[asahi]

It’s not British; it’s the 19th and early 20th Century accent of someone who belongs to the Northeastern American intellectual and socioeconomic elite class. It’s the accent the projects erudition. William F Buckley, New Yorker like the Roosevelts, had this accent, too.

[Fotheringay-Phipps]

To me, the most strikingly “British” part of her accent wasn’t the "r"s or the vowels, but the "t"s. It’s common if not universal for Americans to pronounce many “t” sounds - especially double t’s similar to "d"s. E.g. better, butter, attitude. British people tend to pronounce them as written. So did Roosevelt.

[HMS_Irruncible]

@RivkahChaya

Americans have a tendency to call anything that doesn’t sound fully American to them, “British.” I know plenty of Americans who insist that Australians sound British. (As though “British” is even one thing). Heck, I even know Americans who insist that any foreign accent from Norwegian to Greek sounds “British.”

To be fair, Australian was a British colony, and it’s not uncommon to hear some RP affectations from folks who want to seem a little more posh.

But, point taken, when a white person is speaking non-rhotic English, and it’s not southern American, we tend to code it indiscriminately as “British”.

[Ruken]

@Fotheringay-Phipps

It’s common if not universal for Americans to pronounce many “t” sounds - especially double t’s similar to "d"s. E.g. better, butter, attitude. British people tend to pronounce them as written.

While “pronounce them as written” is nonsense (letters aren’t sounds), particularly when describing an accent that drops the postvocalic /r/ in the very same word, the phenomenon is described here:

Flapping

[SanVito]

@HMS_Irruncible

To be fair, Australian was a British colony, and it’s not uncommon to hear some RP affectations from folks who want to seem a little more posh.

But, point taken, when a white person is speaking non-rhotic English, and it’s not southern American, we tend to code it indiscriminately as “British”.

If it sounds like anything, Australian can sound a bit like cockney (a long way from RP). I guess a lot of convicts came from London.

We found it hilarious on a visit to Provincetown when an American couple attempted to mimic my wife by adopting a sort of Austin Powers accent. My wife has a thick South Wales accent - you would never take her for English. (In contrast, she also recounted visiting Washington on a school trip and some American tourists asking her group what language they were speaking. Erm, English, as it goes).

[HMS_Irruncible]

@SanVito

If it sounds like anything, Australian can sound a bit like cockney (a long way from RP). I guess a lot of convicts came from London.

As I said, some Australians use an affected RP accent (or something close to it) because they prefer how it sounds (their words, not mine). I’ve heard Kiwis do this as well.

I agree that more broadly, Australian has more features of cockney than anything else. In fact, this could be just sampling bias, but all of my own exposure to cockney rhyming slang is from Australians, not from British. Aussies love taking the piss out of Seppos with their whimsical insults.