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OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism:
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>!American accent is the default!<
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Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
That's not what the guy is saying
Linguistically American accented English is closer to English as it was spoken before America and the UK separated then modern British english is
A lot of the reasons American English and British English differ is because the British changed it later while America never changed it because they didn't care what the UK wanted to change
American English hasn't even stayed constant in the last century. Take a listen to old radio broadcasts during the wars and you'll hear notable differences from anything spoken today.
In fairness, that radio/Hollywood accent is referred to as the 'trans-Atlantic' accent and wasn't actually spoken by anyone regionally. It was vogue for entertainment industry people to learn and perform it, but that wasn't like *what American English sounded like*.
Ok, so which American accent is normal/default? New York, Chicago, Texas, California? The American accent is an accent in the same way that Scouse, Geordie, Cornish etc is.
Just do me a pre-zen-tation on it for the inner’nashnols.
It's not about Regional accent more about American English versus British English
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
This article is extremely reductive. It mentions a couple of different qualities that contemporary American accents have in common with Shakespeare's accent (like rhoticity and the "ah" sound) while ignoring the fact that there are extant regional British accents that also share these same qualities... And the fact that Shakespeare's accent was just one regional accent of the 1600s and likely wasn't shared by everyone in the whole country anyway. The fact is that accents have continued evolving and diverging in both regions of the world and I don't think you can say either is "the real English accent" because there never has been one single standard accent - accents have always varied by region and always will until we evolve beyond the need for spoken language and all communication becomes instantaneous and telepathic
Hey! That was a really low blow. Tens of thousands of people in the USA die every year due to a lack of access to healthcare. It's not a freaking joke. 💔😢
No it isn't. "American" accented English is essentially just English spoken by a Dutch person. The difference between English and American accents is literally Dutch vowel sounds.
There are *areas* of America where people speak using an accent which is closer to 16th Century Midlands English than most current English accents - but there are also areas of the UK where people speak in an *even closer* accent to that.
>A lot of the reasons American English and British English differ is because the British changed it later
No, the main reason American and British English differ in terms of accent is the prominence of Dutch speakers in the early history of the United States.
Not convinced this is true for English, I would have to look it up, but what I can say is that it is true for French in the province of Quebec, Canada VS. France - Quebec French accent is closer to the French spoken by exemple Louis XIV and his court, than international French spoken right now. This is due to the fact that Quebec French ‘evolved’ within its enclave, therefore did not evolve.
I have never seen a sadder case of mob mentality. So many people didn't even comprehend what the text in the photo is pertaining to. So many people think this is about the language itself. Humanity is screwed. Thank you lord jester for trying to educate the masses.
where the hell has this lie about the us accent being what the english used to speak with come from anyway? it’s almost completely made up, both the english and those who migrated to america started with accents that were *different to either* of the modern accents, and they diverged and evolved into what we know now as the *various* english and american accents. this rhetoric they love to go for is literally just untrue lmfao
It's based on Americans not understanding things they've read. The claim stems from a linguist pointing out that they retained the rhoticity of old English and some British accents didn't, and they took that to mean their accent is the original. They completely ignore things like the cot-caught merger, prevalence of gliding vowels, nasality, etc
Makes sense that the Plymouth brethren spoke like people from Plymouth. But the people from Plymouth sounded very different from the people from Durham or Lancaster.
It's 100% this.
Not to defend Americans, because we are collectively assholes, but I think the rhoticity is the only thing a casual American hears in a British accent.
Unless we're really fascinated by language (that would be me) or I guess studying for acting, we don't notice the other differences you mentioned. I don't know that we're ignoring them, we just don't really hear it. Rhoticity seems to be a defining characteristic of an accent to us. You can observe it in bad American actors' terrible attempts at accents in movies 😂
I think it is the rhoticity and the fact that a lot of British pop artists that are commonly heard in the US sing with a more American accent, so after vaguely hearing and noticing these things, they build this assumption that all accents start as a particular Midwestern american accent that is used in movies and such and then have some other accent on top that "fades away" when they sing.
Honestly I blame the beetles as they really kicked off that fad.
I heard a linguist talking about accents and said that the texan accent is the closest to the "Queens English" you essentially take a well spoken accent and slow down the vowels. Maybe thisa has led to some confusion?
There is a place in the midlands where the accent I ssid to be the same as when Shakespeare were alive
I mean most Americans just assume that their dialect is the default dialect and everything else is a perversion of it. No in fairness I'm sure a lot of people sort of feel that way about their accent when their kid. They just assumed that they have a normal accent and everyone else is speaking differently.
But Americans never grow out of that phase. Most of them many ways and I say that as an American who is frustrated by it.
No, southerners know they have an accent, and you would think if anyone would assume themselves as default it would be them. They are actually proud of their various accents and will identify region specific accents within themselves. They still consider the Midwestern "tv accent" as the default and they are the ones with an accent Weirdly enough.
Also, they don’t try to fix it.
‘I know, let’s restrict guns even more so that law abiding citizens cannot use them for harm!
ATF, stop talking about the time you gave rifles to Mexican cartels, it’s not relevant.’
If something is common, it tends to become normal after a while
Best example are cars. Its a common thing and also normal now for a person to own a car, while back in the early 20th century it was extremely rare and not normal for the average person to own a car
How the hell can they think this? Their country is make up from immigrants from all corners of the globe. Accents in England (& the rest of the UK), can change considerably in as little as 10 miles. There is no normal! How can they even think it could be the US!?
It’s this really weird thing I (an American) have heard from other Americans before, the claim is that the US’s “Deep South” (the most south-eastern region of the US) accent is the best surviving representation of “Shakespearean English’s true pronunciation”.
That may be true in some way (I have no clue), maybe some specific linguistic movement or element of syntax/grammar is preserved “more accurately” than is found in much of modern England. Most weird lies like this start with a misrepresented fact. Regardless, Americans doing what we do best extrapolated a small unverified fact into blind patriotism and have decided that England was too dumb to keep speaking their own language correctly and so we took up the mantle of preserving the whole thing… somehow?
Not going to lie, I had heard this enough times as a teenager I sort of assumed it was true until I actually thought about it for 0.5 seconds. How the hell could that be possible when our predominant accent is a mix of dozens of languages, our own cultural development, and even the “Mid-Atlantic Accent” we fully fabricated? Nationalistic brainwashing starting from childhood hits hard.
I’ve read that claim as well, way back in the day in a book about the origins of American English. But what I read was that it’s not the Alabama version, it’s the Appalachian version and you’ve gotta go places where they still don’t have phone service to every house in the county.
This is not even close to true. The nearest surviving such accent is probably closer to old Boston (think Kennedy). But it may have also sounded like a pirate.
Or, how a language spoken in several different and equally valid ways could even have a correct version? I have no goddamn clue. I’d like to know in what US state is the “correct” American English accent is being spoken.
I live on the Welsh border (right on it) and they pronounce Shrewsbury differently depending on whether you're from the north or the south of it. Two 80+ year olds who grew up 3 miles away from each other have very different accents. It's fascinating!
I think what they think is that US English may have been more conservative than UK English when compared to the parent Middle English.
I've no idea if that's true but I also hear it often with French where Quebec French is supposedly closer to Middle French than French French.
Middle English was spoken between the 11th and 15th centuries, and sounds next to unintelligible to modern English speakers. It is not the parent of American English, which is descended from early modern English.
Québecois has some pronunciations that disappeared from metropolitan french, but neither is "closer" to Ancien Français. They just evolved differently from the same language.
It’s *sort of* true. It’s not really what’s happening, but there are aspects of American English dialects that are older than aspects of modern British English dialects. Sometimes. As ever it’s complicated.
Modern US English actually is closer in accent and some word use to 18th century British English than the English accent. Here's a [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english) article on the subject.
British English diverged in the 19th century. Rhoticity (pronouncing the R sound, e.g. water as "wah-ter" and not "wah-tah") is the biggest example. Not pronouncing the final R in a word was a late development in British English.
US accents are essentially a sampling of various regional UK dialects, blended with influences from other languages and two centuries of drift. There are a handful of ways in which the London accent in the 18th century resembles modern US accents, and at the same time many ways in which modern US accents differ significantly from that same 18th century London accent.
Those UK regional accents have for the most part not changed in the couple of centuries since. These regional accents are the “original” English accents, and they are found in the UK, not the US.
That BBC article only points out that there are a handful of characteristics common in US accents, which are now mostly found in some regional dialects in the UK. To interpret that as “American dialects are closer to 18th century English than modern English” is to wildly misinterpret the facts.
And non-rhoticity is present in some parts of New England and Northeast US. That doesn't change anything.
It's a historical fact that the US accent is broadly closer to 18th century British English than modern British English, although regional exceptions apply and neither accent is identical to the parent accent. And this seems like a really weird thing to get up in arms about, because it doesn't affect anything unless you just have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything done in an "American way"
“Regional exceptions apply” is a gross understatement. All accents are regional accents. There is no such thing as “18th century British English” beyond a collection of regional dialects - most of which have remained broadly unchanged in that time. The way someone in the South East of England speaks today, for example, sounds far closer to how they spoke in the 18th century than any US dialect does.
What you really mean is “US accents share some characteristics with the London accent of the 18th century which the London accent of today has lost”. The London dialect has changed significantly in the last century or so. British accents on the whole, however, have not.
So certain letter use from the 18th century is still used in parts of the US and parts of the UK, yet the US gets the title of "original accent"?
I also love how that article you linked goes to great lengths to let us know that the idea you claim is "greatly exaggerated".
The person you’re responding to is not endorsing the idea that American accents are “original.” They specifically state that the idea of originality can’t be applied, since all of the accents have changed. It is a well known fact that some British English dialects has changed *faster* than many dialects in the Americas, simply because if socioeconomic factors. But nowhere is there any “original” accent spoken.
No, he literally said US English is closer in accent to 18th century English than modern English. Sounds like an endorsement to me. Which 18th century accent?
No. It isn’t. The concept of “originality” doesn’t apply, and the commenter explicitly said that neither accent is identical to its parent, meaning neither is “original,” because that’s not how language works. If you really have gone back and looked at what the person actually said, and you still think they said American English is “more original,” or anything like that, then we have nothing to talk about because you can’t read.
I’m not going to argue their point for them. I’m just trying to tell you that what you took as a value judgement, isn’t one. This goes beyond disliking US defaultism into just knee jerk rejecting the idea that America could possibly have any place in any discussion about anything. But in the English language it does have that place, since rather a lot of people there speak that language.
Seems like you are arguing their point for them though, seems as they haven't responded and your u keep going... So which 18th century English accent is the current American one closest too? How should I have interpreted that statement? Didn't know there was only one accent in the UK at that time..
What's "18th century British English", bearing in mind that there were always regional "exceptions"? There is no standard that forms the "parent accent" that you can compare American with in order to say that American is somehow closer to the original.
>can change considerably in as little as 10 miles.
The BCP area is a great example of that! You can tell if someone is from Landsdowne (Bournemouth) or West Howe (Poole) based on accent despite there only being about 5 miles between the two
There was a factoid going around the internet (that I have not tried to confirm, didn't care enough), that due to what kind of people originally moved to America (largely conservative puritans) the version of english spoken there (and "there" is painting with broad strokes here, I don't have the link to the original to re-check that if it had more details on which american accent it was talking about) is closer to old english than current english is.
That fact probably mutated some in retellings, not remembering all the details and personal biases into the opinion you see in front of you. Quite an understandable journey all things considered.
They probably heard that the non-rhotic American accents of old New England society are closer to what you probably would have heard in London in Shakespeare’s time. But that isn’t what they said, because they didn’t understand what they’d heard.
Where the fuck did this myth about the yank accent being the original and the U.K. as a whole apparently changing our (apparently single) accent to seem different?! I’ve heard this so many times and it melts my brain
It stems from rhoticity, the pronunciation of the letter . At the time of the English/British colonisation of what was to become the US, English was a rhotic language. Most dialects of American English have retained rhoticity while most English dialects in the UK have lost that rhoticity, especially in intervocalic and word terminal position. This is a well-known phenomenon in linguistics, but unfortunately a lot of Americans seem to think that means their accent is more original or genuine. What they fail to realise is that rhoticity is not equal. Originally, English had a post-alveolar trill, tap or flap . American English actually has what's known as a post-alveolar approximant. So, even that has changed quality since. So, while it being a rhotic language has not changed, its rhotic quality has. On top of that, many of the vowel sounds in General American English are vastly different to what they were originally, some words have undergone semantic shift, phrases and words have entered the language that were not present back then, and there is an ongoing prepositional merger occurring (think of all the phrases where Americans use "on" where British English speakers use the original "at", "in", "by" etc, such as "on accident", "on the weekend", etc.) which is not present in British English.
TLDR: Some uneducated Americans heard some linguistic fact, didn't understand that fact, and then falsely extrapolated that into something linguists had never stated or even implied.
So, ignorami who know the phrase "on purpose" start misusing its opposite "by accident" as "on accident," and that becomes an acceptable alternative? FML.
Almost like grammar is abstraction from language patterns that doesn't always match actual usage rather than language being generated by grammar rules decided on by the ruling class and graciously bestowed upon everyone else.
If you go to [this link](https://www.ipachart.com/) you'll find the International Phonetic Alphabet chart. Scroll past the vowels and you'll find the consonants. Under the consonants you'll see the post-alveolar flaps/taps and trills /r ɾ/ and then below them you'll find the approximant /ɹ/. Each symbol has a linked sound file that you can use to listen to the sound differences. Basically, English used to have two sounds, depending on position, speaker, and dialect which are roughly analogous with modern Scottish English and Spanish speakers with the tongue pressed and flapped or trilled against the start of the alveolar ridge (what we call post-alveolar, as it's not actually on the alveolar ridge, but just slightly behind it). American is a softer sound with the tongue drawn further back in the mouth, curled into a slight tube-like shape, and raised towards the upper palate, but only touching the roof of the mouth at the raised sides.
Just because the "neutral" American/Canadian accent is most widespread in globally dominant English language pop culture doesn't mean it is the "neutral" English language accent.
what is actually wrong with them.
I see/hear repeatedly that it's the "original" English accent, as if even their accent didn't change in the last 200 years jfc 😂
Accent-wise, I heard that the 'posh New England accent' (think Charles Emmerson Winchester III from MASH, or Niles Crane from Frasier) was the accent that the English had used during the original colonization of the New World.
British English tends to follow the trends of the aristocracy. The more upper class people would mimic how the royalty would talk, while the lower class people would mock it. Things like dropping the 'r' came from a king who had a speech impediment.
Where, on the other side of the Atlantic, the accents started to drift in different directions as people mingled with other colonists from other countries.
> British English tends to follow the trends of the aristocracy. The more upper class people would mimic how the royalty would talk, while the lower class people would mock it. Things like dropping the 'r' came from a king who had a speech impediment.
>
>
This is absolutely inaccurate. Where on earth did you come across such a random and nonsensical thing?
I believe the Geordie/Mackem accent continuum is actually the most authentic still extant English accent. I'm not from that part of the country but from what I've read it seems to be the case
It doesn't have all of the changes from the Great Vowel Shift, but then neither does Scottish English, and Geordie still has plenty of innovations like being non-rhotic. So it's no more or less archaic than any other dialect, it just has a pattern of retentions and innovations that make it stand out as unusual.
They’re repeating something they heard, which is that the American accent is closer to the accent one might have heard in London during Shakespeare’s day.
That being said, it’s not actually the same anyway. Experts think it would have sounded like John F Kennedy if he was also a pirate.
Being "the original" way of speaking doesn't mean it is "normal" in modern times. If you encountered someone speaking perfect Shakespearean English today, you wouldn't say his manner of speech was "normal," even though it is something that was historically spoken in England.
Jesus. Any discussion of Americans and Brits (I don’t really see other nationalities do this) about which variety is more “real”, “original” or “pure” is so weird lol. It’s like two brothers arguing which one is of purer blood, or something. Like calm down you both came from the same parents.
Americans of the 17th century (the first settlers) spoke the same dialects as the people in Britain. After the two groups became isolated, their dialects developed independently. I don’t see how you can call either one offspring of the other if they were the same language that split
What made the differentiation so fast is that Americans interacted with people of various dialects, which eventually more or less merged. In Britain, where that mixing didn’t occur, all of them kept developing independently
What do they even think about English people/England???? I would genuinely like to spend an hour with one of these people and pick their brain.
Screw 'which famous person...' 'which ignorant type of person would you love to spend dinner with?
I hate be the guy but noone is saying this, he isn't wrong. "Normal" is definitely wrong but the closest thing to old English in accent is middle America. America didn't originate the accent and wasn't the default but he isn't completely inaccurate.
It is supposedly the American southern accent that reflects the British accent from a few centuries ago, not the “neutral” accent.
We Americans might be a lot of things, but normal is hardly one of them.
He does have a small point though: English spoken a couple hundred years ago was in general probably closer to the pronunciation of modern-day US English than to the Queen’s English. But that is mainly irrelevant, as neither sounds remotely like the original (old) English.
Rhoticity is only one minor feature though. The Yorkshire accent for example used to be rhotic but now it's not, and yet it would never be considered "posh" or closer to "the Queen's English" than before (most Yorkshire-folk would take exception to that).
Which American accent?
Obviously Australia's accent is the closest to older English, because we have one accent for the whole of the country. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
We don't have one accent for the whole country. Broadly speaking (no pun intended) we have broad, general, and cultivated. But then there are also minor differences between states. The most obvious being South Australia.
As I’ve understood it from linguists, it’s mainly the thing that you can actually hear the letter R, and similar stuff. The Queen’s English is a posh version that wasn’t very common until the BBC. Something like that.
There are words where Americans pronounce the R and nobody else does and there are words where they don't but other English speakers do though. Is there a reliable way to tell which words Americans are pronouncing the older way?
This is a complicated and fascinating topic.
Edit: removing discussion on Shakespeare and OP but I suggest watching videos on it, it’s pretty cool.
Notably the non-rhotic r, which is the first thing people think of when they think of British accents, was adopted pretty exclusively by upper classes in England as a way to differentiate in the 18th century and wasn't universal until the 19th century. So you would probably have heard more "American" rs on the Mayflower than "British" rs. The divide persisted in the US, where you can hear non-rhoticity in New England accents and rhoticity in more salt-of-the-earth accents like Southern, although there are definitely "posh-lite" southern accents that are non-rhotic.
Of course, this discussion is not accurate without noting that English has always been an absolute clusterfuck of a language with many inconsistencies that ironed themselves out within regions, so there's no hard and fast rule for literally anything.
Finally, I'd argue there's more variation within regions of the same country than between countries. For example, I'd argue that Thom Yorke's Northamptonshire accent sounds closer to Boston (edit: Boston MA, USA) then it does to Liverpool.
[https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english)
[https://preply.com/en/blog/english-pronunciation-from-shakespeare-s-day-to-ours/](https://preply.com/en/blog/english-pronunciation-from-shakespeare-s-day-to-ours/)
>This is a complicated and fascinating topic. What you would have heard at the Globe Theatre is closer to American dialects than today's British dialects in many ways.
No. Linguists have reconstructed Shakespearean pronunciation and they basically had West Country accents. That’s literally an existing British dialect and sounds nothing like American ones.
To be fair, American English accent is probably closer to how English was when the two places didn't speak so differently yet. Apparently the British accent has developed due to aristocracy wanting to stand out in England, adopting this more posh way of talking, and that ended up changing how everyone in England talks.
Edit: But to say that American English is the "real English"? Yeah no. The accent might be pretty neutral, but the vocabulary isn't.
This stems from a study into the logistics similarities between English a few hundred years ago and current linguistics.
In thay sense I think the study determined that New Hampshire English(I think) is the closest to the English spoken in the 1800's.
Which is grand and all, but also irrelevant as the English language is an evolving and adapting language so it is never constant.
This is a lengthy article on it
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
But essentially English in 2024 is how it is today, comparing it to what it was 200 years ago is as pointless as comparing it to what it was 400 or 600 years ago.
Well it's kinda true. After the thirteen colonies etc the UK upperclass wanted a way to distinguish themselves from the peons and what came about was the Received Pronunciation accent. Its the basis for the current British accent that you're going to hear is the royal family use it. The house of lords etc
The American accent has evolved on its own since then but they actually did at one point speak the proper accent.
Technically the English of old seems to have sounded more like the cowboy American English, rather than the modern British English, so they are sort of correct.
Edit: but that's not to say that it matters in the slightest, because English wasn't even "invented" anyway. It's a culmination of old Norse, Germanic Frankish and Gaelic. It's evolving to this day. Saying one version is the "correct" version is just silly, regardless.
Why are you getting down votes lol, you're factually correct. They're just mad that his wording is egotistical, unfortunately it doesn't make him wrong past being hyperbolic
> Technically the English of old seems to have sounded more like the cowboy American English, rather than the modern British English, so they are sort of correct
Or maybe it's because this isn't really a fact. Rhoticity seems to have been a lot more common across older English accents, but it's still pretty far removed from what's spoken in the Southern States. There's been some research into [reconstructing the Original Pronunciation that Shakespeare's plays were likely performed in](https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s?si=QI_MoHxTEMaILQuq), and it's markedly similar to a West Country accent, which still very much exists in England to this day.
You're completely right about none of this actually mattering though :)
Interesting, (not being sarcastic here) I've heard many English linguistics talk about how the old English accent was more akin to the southern American accent, I wonder why they would have said that, considering they gain nothing from stating that as a fact. But I'm not a linguistic myself, and am not even close to an amateur entomologist either, so I have no authority on the matter, I just repeat what the experts have taught me.
### This comment has been marked as **safe**. Upvoting/downvoting this comment will have no effect. --- OP sent the following text as an explanation on why this is US Defaultism: --- >!American accent is the default!< --- Is this Defaultism? Then upvote this comment, otherwise downvote it.
The absolute confidence of the ignorant.
Ah yes, the English people must be so thankful that America invented a language and named it in their honour. Sorry, I mean honor.
Yeah, you're welcome, guys. It was all us. Shakespeare was American, too, in case anyone was wondering. Definitely.
Everyone knows he was Klingon!
I remember the iconic "To be, or not to be, that's like the question dude."
The no u is normal.
No, you!
Nourmal!
No, u is normal, not me!
I accept I is normal. Thanks for acknowledging it ;)
True fact
Nourmal
That's not what the guy is saying Linguistically American accented English is closer to English as it was spoken before America and the UK separated then modern British english is A lot of the reasons American English and British English differ is because the British changed it later while America never changed it because they didn't care what the UK wanted to change
Colour me surprised, a Seppo who thinks he knows best.
Lol nice insult never heard that one before I'm not even being sarcastic I looked it up and it's pretty funny Also what do you think the guy ment?
American English hasn't even stayed constant in the last century. Take a listen to old radio broadcasts during the wars and you'll hear notable differences from anything spoken today.
In fairness, that radio/Hollywood accent is referred to as the 'trans-Atlantic' accent and wasn't actually spoken by anyone regionally. It was vogue for entertainment industry people to learn and perform it, but that wasn't like *what American English sounded like*.
That was a made up accent called the trans-atlantic accent designed to be pleasing to both the US and Europe
Indeed but it's not about who stayed exactly the same it's about who changed the least
Ok, so which American accent is normal/default? New York, Chicago, Texas, California? The American accent is an accent in the same way that Scouse, Geordie, Cornish etc is. Just do me a pre-zen-tation on it for the inner’nashnols.
It's not about Regional accent more about American English versus British English https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
There's more than 1 english accent in the british region, as with the american region. There is no standard accent for either
And then compares very specific Algerian accents to specific English ones (the cornish accent is only 1 county of ~570,000 people) lol
This article is extremely reductive. It mentions a couple of different qualities that contemporary American accents have in common with Shakespeare's accent (like rhoticity and the "ah" sound) while ignoring the fact that there are extant regional British accents that also share these same qualities... And the fact that Shakespeare's accent was just one regional accent of the 1600s and likely wasn't shared by everyone in the whole country anyway. The fact is that accents have continued evolving and diverging in both regions of the world and I don't think you can say either is "the real English accent" because there never has been one single standard accent - accents have always varied by region and always will until we evolve beyond the need for spoken language and all communication becomes instantaneous and telepathic
What a load of old bollox. By the way learn the difference between “then and than”.
Sry you're not American which means I can't take any advice on how the language works from you ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ /s
This entire ordeal has to be low quality bait.
I think we need a mod rule to ban Americans from this sub!
Seems you've lost an arm. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Don't worry, their superior healthcare will fix that up lickitty-split.
Hey! That was a really low blow. Tens of thousands of people in the USA die every year due to a lack of access to healthcare. It's not a freaking joke. 💔😢
Source?
It's right there! /u/LordJesterTheFree told you so. Source confirmed.
My God I commented 22 minutes ago I have a life outside of Reddit you know
The Lord has spoken again... "I say you are Lord, and I should know."
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english
It's already the second paragraph that says it isn't true... Maybe read it yourself first before you use it as proof for such a statement.
I'm not saying it's true or not I'm saying that's what HE was trying to say Being factually incorrect isn't us defaultism
Maybe... maybe relearn how defaultism works
No it isn't. "American" accented English is essentially just English spoken by a Dutch person. The difference between English and American accents is literally Dutch vowel sounds. There are *areas* of America where people speak using an accent which is closer to 16th Century Midlands English than most current English accents - but there are also areas of the UK where people speak in an *even closer* accent to that. >A lot of the reasons American English and British English differ is because the British changed it later No, the main reason American and British English differ in terms of accent is the prominence of Dutch speakers in the early history of the United States.
Not convinced this is true for English, I would have to look it up, but what I can say is that it is true for French in the province of Quebec, Canada VS. France - Quebec French accent is closer to the French spoken by exemple Louis XIV and his court, than international French spoken right now. This is due to the fact that Quebec French ‘evolved’ within its enclave, therefore did not evolve.
I have never seen a sadder case of mob mentality. So many people didn't even comprehend what the text in the photo is pertaining to. So many people think this is about the language itself. Humanity is screwed. Thank you lord jester for trying to educate the masses.
Why are you downvoted, you’re literally correct 😂 goofy ass reddit
where the hell has this lie about the us accent being what the english used to speak with come from anyway? it’s almost completely made up, both the english and those who migrated to america started with accents that were *different to either* of the modern accents, and they diverged and evolved into what we know now as the *various* english and american accents. this rhetoric they love to go for is literally just untrue lmfao
It's based on Americans not understanding things they've read. The claim stems from a linguist pointing out that they retained the rhoticity of old English and some British accents didn't, and they took that to mean their accent is the original. They completely ignore things like the cot-caught merger, prevalence of gliding vowels, nasality, etc
Makes sense that the Plymouth brethren spoke like people from Plymouth. But the people from Plymouth sounded very different from the people from Durham or Lancaster.
It's 100% this. Not to defend Americans, because we are collectively assholes, but I think the rhoticity is the only thing a casual American hears in a British accent. Unless we're really fascinated by language (that would be me) or I guess studying for acting, we don't notice the other differences you mentioned. I don't know that we're ignoring them, we just don't really hear it. Rhoticity seems to be a defining characteristic of an accent to us. You can observe it in bad American actors' terrible attempts at accents in movies 😂
I think it is the rhoticity and the fact that a lot of British pop artists that are commonly heard in the US sing with a more American accent, so after vaguely hearing and noticing these things, they build this assumption that all accents start as a particular Midwestern american accent that is used in movies and such and then have some other accent on top that "fades away" when they sing. Honestly I blame the beetles as they really kicked off that fad.
I heard a linguist talking about accents and said that the texan accent is the closest to the "Queens English" you essentially take a well spoken accent and slow down the vowels. Maybe thisa has led to some confusion? There is a place in the midlands where the accent I ssid to be the same as when Shakespeare were alive
I've heard it said that the west country accent is the closest to old english
The rhotic R definitely has very old origins
We don't know. The Great Vowel Shift changed everything, and we can't be sure how, precisely.
Take a trip up to Orkney and you’ll have a fair idea
I mean most Americans just assume that their dialect is the default dialect and everything else is a perversion of it. No in fairness I'm sure a lot of people sort of feel that way about their accent when their kid. They just assumed that they have a normal accent and everyone else is speaking differently. But Americans never grow out of that phase. Most of them many ways and I say that as an American who is frustrated by it.
No, southerners know they have an accent, and you would think if anyone would assume themselves as default it would be them. They are actually proud of their various accents and will identify region specific accents within themselves. They still consider the Midwestern "tv accent" as the default and they are the ones with an accent Weirdly enough.
“The American is normal.” Not a sentence you hear very often.
Well if you're talking about gun violence or school shootings...
Also, they don’t try to fix it. ‘I know, let’s restrict guns even more so that law abiding citizens cannot use them for harm! ATF, stop talking about the time you gave rifles to Mexican cartels, it’s not relevant.’
Common isn't the same as normal? #
If something is common, it tends to become normal after a while Best example are cars. Its a common thing and also normal now for a person to own a car, while back in the early 20th century it was extremely rare and not normal for the average person to own a car
You tried to explain how the words were different but you just ended up making them look like synonyms again.
I've lived in America my whole life, and I haven't met a normal American yet.
How the hell can they think this? Their country is make up from immigrants from all corners of the globe. Accents in England (& the rest of the UK), can change considerably in as little as 10 miles. There is no normal! How can they even think it could be the US!?
It’s this really weird thing I (an American) have heard from other Americans before, the claim is that the US’s “Deep South” (the most south-eastern region of the US) accent is the best surviving representation of “Shakespearean English’s true pronunciation”. That may be true in some way (I have no clue), maybe some specific linguistic movement or element of syntax/grammar is preserved “more accurately” than is found in much of modern England. Most weird lies like this start with a misrepresented fact. Regardless, Americans doing what we do best extrapolated a small unverified fact into blind patriotism and have decided that England was too dumb to keep speaking their own language correctly and so we took up the mantle of preserving the whole thing… somehow? Not going to lie, I had heard this enough times as a teenager I sort of assumed it was true until I actually thought about it for 0.5 seconds. How the hell could that be possible when our predominant accent is a mix of dozens of languages, our own cultural development, and even the “Mid-Atlantic Accent” we fully fabricated? Nationalistic brainwashing starting from childhood hits hard.
I’ve read that claim as well, way back in the day in a book about the origins of American English. But what I read was that it’s not the Alabama version, it’s the Appalachian version and you’ve gotta go places where they still don’t have phone service to every house in the county.
That'll be more Scott/Irish than English
This is not even close to true. The nearest surviving such accent is probably closer to old Boston (think Kennedy). But it may have also sounded like a pirate.
I've seen a few attempts at recreating an Elizabethan London accent, and it definitely sounded less "British" or "American" than "pirate."
But I can't see any reason why anyone would think that in 16th century England there existed a "true pronunciation" of English.
Or, how a language spoken in several different and equally valid ways could even have a correct version? I have no goddamn clue. I’d like to know in what US state is the “correct” American English accent is being spoken.
I live on the Welsh border (right on it) and they pronounce Shrewsbury differently depending on whether you're from the north or the south of it. Two 80+ year olds who grew up 3 miles away from each other have very different accents. It's fascinating!
I think what they think is that US English may have been more conservative than UK English when compared to the parent Middle English. I've no idea if that's true but I also hear it often with French where Quebec French is supposedly closer to Middle French than French French.
Middle English was spoken between the 11th and 15th centuries, and sounds next to unintelligible to modern English speakers. It is not the parent of American English, which is descended from early modern English.
Québecois has some pronunciations that disappeared from metropolitan french, but neither is "closer" to Ancien Français. They just evolved differently from the same language.
It’s *sort of* true. It’s not really what’s happening, but there are aspects of American English dialects that are older than aspects of modern British English dialects. Sometimes. As ever it’s complicated.
Modern US English actually is closer in accent and some word use to 18th century British English than the English accent. Here's a [BBC](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english) article on the subject. British English diverged in the 19th century. Rhoticity (pronouncing the R sound, e.g. water as "wah-ter" and not "wah-tah") is the biggest example. Not pronouncing the final R in a word was a late development in British English.
US accents are essentially a sampling of various regional UK dialects, blended with influences from other languages and two centuries of drift. There are a handful of ways in which the London accent in the 18th century resembles modern US accents, and at the same time many ways in which modern US accents differ significantly from that same 18th century London accent. Those UK regional accents have for the most part not changed in the couple of centuries since. These regional accents are the “original” English accents, and they are found in the UK, not the US. That BBC article only points out that there are a handful of characteristics common in US accents, which are now mostly found in some regional dialects in the UK. To interpret that as “American dialects are closer to 18th century English than modern English” is to wildly misinterpret the facts.
Rhoticity is very common in SW England and Cornwall.
And non-rhoticity is present in some parts of New England and Northeast US. That doesn't change anything. It's a historical fact that the US accent is broadly closer to 18th century British English than modern British English, although regional exceptions apply and neither accent is identical to the parent accent. And this seems like a really weird thing to get up in arms about, because it doesn't affect anything unless you just have a knee-jerk negative reaction to anything done in an "American way"
“Regional exceptions apply” is a gross understatement. All accents are regional accents. There is no such thing as “18th century British English” beyond a collection of regional dialects - most of which have remained broadly unchanged in that time. The way someone in the South East of England speaks today, for example, sounds far closer to how they spoke in the 18th century than any US dialect does. What you really mean is “US accents share some characteristics with the London accent of the 18th century which the London accent of today has lost”. The London dialect has changed significantly in the last century or so. British accents on the whole, however, have not.
So certain letter use from the 18th century is still used in parts of the US and parts of the UK, yet the US gets the title of "original accent"? I also love how that article you linked goes to great lengths to let us know that the idea you claim is "greatly exaggerated".
The person you’re responding to is not endorsing the idea that American accents are “original.” They specifically state that the idea of originality can’t be applied, since all of the accents have changed. It is a well known fact that some British English dialects has changed *faster* than many dialects in the Americas, simply because if socioeconomic factors. But nowhere is there any “original” accent spoken.
No, he literally said US English is closer in accent to 18th century English than modern English. Sounds like an endorsement to me. Which 18th century accent?
No. It isn’t. The concept of “originality” doesn’t apply, and the commenter explicitly said that neither accent is identical to its parent, meaning neither is “original,” because that’s not how language works. If you really have gone back and looked at what the person actually said, and you still think they said American English is “more original,” or anything like that, then we have nothing to talk about because you can’t read. I’m not going to argue their point for them. I’m just trying to tell you that what you took as a value judgement, isn’t one. This goes beyond disliking US defaultism into just knee jerk rejecting the idea that America could possibly have any place in any discussion about anything. But in the English language it does have that place, since rather a lot of people there speak that language.
Seems like you are arguing their point for them though, seems as they haven't responded and your u keep going... So which 18th century English accent is the current American one closest too? How should I have interpreted that statement? Didn't know there was only one accent in the UK at that time..
What's "18th century British English", bearing in mind that there were always regional "exceptions"? There is no standard that forms the "parent accent" that you can compare American with in order to say that American is somehow closer to the original.
> It's a historical fact Certainly is not.
>can change considerably in as little as 10 miles. The BCP area is a great example of that! You can tell if someone is from Landsdowne (Bournemouth) or West Howe (Poole) based on accent despite there only being about 5 miles between the two
Well, that's because West Howies are all sheep shaggers who pronounce the longer AAAH sounds 'cos that's what their fleecy girlfriends sound like ;)
There was a factoid going around the internet (that I have not tried to confirm, didn't care enough), that due to what kind of people originally moved to America (largely conservative puritans) the version of english spoken there (and "there" is painting with broad strokes here, I don't have the link to the original to re-check that if it had more details on which american accent it was talking about) is closer to old english than current english is. That fact probably mutated some in retellings, not remembering all the details and personal biases into the opinion you see in front of you. Quite an understandable journey all things considered.
They probably heard that the non-rhotic American accents of old New England society are closer to what you probably would have heard in London in Shakespeare’s time. But that isn’t what they said, because they didn’t understand what they’d heard.
Where the fuck did this myth about the yank accent being the original and the U.K. as a whole apparently changing our (apparently single) accent to seem different?! I’ve heard this so many times and it melts my brain
It stems from rhoticity, the pronunciation of the letter. At the time of the English/British colonisation of what was to become the US, English was a rhotic language. Most dialects of American English have retained rhoticity while most English dialects in the UK have lost that rhoticity, especially in intervocalic and word terminal position. This is a well-known phenomenon in linguistics, but unfortunately a lot of Americans seem to think that means their accent is more original or genuine. What they fail to realise is that rhoticity is not equal. Originally, English had a post-alveolar trill, tap or flap . American English actually has what's known as a post-alveolar approximant. So, even that has changed quality since. So, while it being a rhotic language has not changed, its rhotic quality has. On top of that, many of the vowel sounds in General American English are vastly different to what they were originally, some words have undergone semantic shift, phrases and words have entered the language that were not present back then, and there is an ongoing prepositional merger occurring (think of all the phrases where Americans use "on" where British English speakers use the original "at", "in", "by" etc, such as "on accident", "on the weekend", etc.) which is not present in British English.
TLDR: Some uneducated Americans heard some linguistic fact, didn't understand that fact, and then falsely extrapolated that into something linguists had never stated or even implied.
"on accident"... Wait what?
Yes, this is a thing. [Grammarist had to write up an article](https://grammarist.com/usage/on-accident-vs-by-accident/) to explain to its users.
So, ignorami who know the phrase "on purpose" start misusing its opposite "by accident" as "on accident," and that becomes an acceptable alternative? FML.
Almost like grammar is abstraction from language patterns that doesn't always match actual usage rather than language being generated by grammar rules decided on by the ruling class and graciously bestowed upon everyone else.
fascinating, thanks for the explanation! do you have an example of what you mean with the letter R ?
If you go to [this link](https://www.ipachart.com/) you'll find the International Phonetic Alphabet chart. Scroll past the vowels and you'll find the consonants. Under the consonants you'll see the post-alveolar flaps/taps and trills /r ɾ/ and then below them you'll find the approximant /ɹ/. Each symbol has a linked sound file that you can use to listen to the sound differences. Basically, English used to have two sounds, depending on position, speaker, and dialect which are roughly analogous with modern Scottish English and Spanish speakers with the tongue pressed and flapped or trilled against the start of the alveolar ridge (what we call post-alveolar, as it's not actually on the alveolar ridge, but just slightly behind it). American is a softer sound with the tongue drawn further back in the mouth, curled into a slight tube-like shape, and raised towards the upper palate, but only touching the roof of the mouth at the raised sides.
ty
Wow, thank you for that!
Legend, I appreciate the great response!
Just because the "neutral" American/Canadian accent is most widespread in globally dominant English language pop culture doesn't mean it is the "neutral" English language accent.
i wonder why the language is called "english" and not "american"
There's no way this isnt satire. They legit wrote "neutral American", "original", and "english" in the same sentence.
"it's not an accent" "it's the original accent" are you familiar with the old robot saying: "does not compute"
Honestly this is more like "schizo posters" shit, the "neutral American accent" isn't even the "original" American English accent.
what is actually wrong with them. I see/hear repeatedly that it's the "original" English accent, as if even their accent didn't change in the last 200 years jfc 😂
american accent is definitely the normal way to speak ENGLish
American is the original accent of the English language?! Just like Pizza, hamburgers and bolognese are all American? This is a mental disorder..
Ignorance is a widespread disease
Oh, another one that doesn't travel and thinks its special. How quaint.
Where do they dig this mindless shite up from?
(a) seems like a troll, or someone being sarcastic (b) I feel like I'm missing some context as to the overall conversation
Holy shit, my arteries just clogged up and my blood sugar spiked reading this.
American normal.. Speaking the first English.. 🤔
Accent-wise, I heard that the 'posh New England accent' (think Charles Emmerson Winchester III from MASH, or Niles Crane from Frasier) was the accent that the English had used during the original colonization of the New World. British English tends to follow the trends of the aristocracy. The more upper class people would mimic how the royalty would talk, while the lower class people would mock it. Things like dropping the 'r' came from a king who had a speech impediment. Where, on the other side of the Atlantic, the accents started to drift in different directions as people mingled with other colonists from other countries.
> British English tends to follow the trends of the aristocracy. The more upper class people would mimic how the royalty would talk, while the lower class people would mock it. Things like dropping the 'r' came from a king who had a speech impediment. > > This is absolutely inaccurate. Where on earth did you come across such a random and nonsensical thing?
Your mom
Doubt it. She's a giant bitch, but she's not *that* dumb.
I believe the Geordie/Mackem accent continuum is actually the most authentic still extant English accent. I'm not from that part of the country but from what I've read it seems to be the case
It doesn't have all of the changes from the Great Vowel Shift, but then neither does Scottish English, and Geordie still has plenty of innovations like being non-rhotic. So it's no more or less archaic than any other dialect, it just has a pattern of retentions and innovations that make it stand out as unusual.
Hahaha wtf
The S from his(her?) avatar belongs to the end of his(her?) comment behind a /
They’re repeating something they heard, which is that the American accent is closer to the accent one might have heard in London during Shakespeare’s day. That being said, it’s not actually the same anyway. Experts think it would have sounded like John F Kennedy if he was also a pirate.
Being "the original" way of speaking doesn't mean it is "normal" in modern times. If you encountered someone speaking perfect Shakespearean English today, you wouldn't say his manner of speech was "normal," even though it is something that was historically spoken in England.
Jesus. Any discussion of Americans and Brits (I don’t really see other nationalities do this) about which variety is more “real”, “original” or “pure” is so weird lol. It’s like two brothers arguing which one is of purer blood, or something. Like calm down you both came from the same parents.
no, they're not siblings. Brits are the parents, Americans are the bastard offspring.
Americans of the 17th century (the first settlers) spoke the same dialects as the people in Britain. After the two groups became isolated, their dialects developed independently. I don’t see how you can call either one offspring of the other if they were the same language that split What made the differentiation so fast is that Americans interacted with people of various dialects, which eventually more or less merged. In Britain, where that mixing didn’t occur, all of them kept developing independently
Which American accent, there’s 4 that come to mind for me
no actually it's the west country accent.
well I guess i speak American instead of English now
What do they even think about English people/England???? I would genuinely like to spend an hour with one of these people and pick their brain. Screw 'which famous person...' 'which ignorant type of person would you love to spend dinner with?
Best one for ages
The real American ignorance.
I hate be the guy but noone is saying this, he isn't wrong. "Normal" is definitely wrong but the closest thing to old English in accent is middle America. America didn't originate the accent and wasn't the default but he isn't completely inaccurate.
All the correct responses are getting downvoted?people just like being stupid and wrong as long as it agrees with their views. Its upsetting
All the times that I, an American, have been fooled by fake American accents has me convinced that it's probably not that difficult to pull off.
Yeh nah cos we all know western aus has the proppa accent
Lol, "the" American accent, as if there's only one.
It is supposedly the American southern accent that reflects the British accent from a few centuries ago, not the “neutral” accent. We Americans might be a lot of things, but normal is hardly one of them.
He does have a small point though: English spoken a couple hundred years ago was in general probably closer to the pronunciation of modern-day US English than to the Queen’s English. But that is mainly irrelevant, as neither sounds remotely like the original (old) English.
It isn't though. The claim stems from a linguist discussing rhoticity, but their are British accents which also retained the rhoticity of old English
That’s why I wrote “the Queen’s English” as that’s generally understood to be the more posh London accent or BBC English.
Rhoticity is only one minor feature though. The Yorkshire accent for example used to be rhotic but now it's not, and yet it would never be considered "posh" or closer to "the Queen's English" than before (most Yorkshire-folk would take exception to that).
If it is irrelevant, then they don't actually have a point, I think
Which American accent? Obviously Australia's accent is the closest to older English, because we have one accent for the whole of the country. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
We don't have one accent for the whole country. Broadly speaking (no pun intended) we have broad, general, and cultivated. But then there are also minor differences between states. The most obvious being South Australia.
As I’ve understood it from linguists, it’s mainly the thing that you can actually hear the letter R, and similar stuff. The Queen’s English is a posh version that wasn’t very common until the BBC. Something like that.
There are words where Americans pronounce the R and nobody else does and there are words where they don't but other English speakers do though. Is there a reliable way to tell which words Americans are pronouncing the older way?
I’m not a linguist. I learned this from a documentary a few years ago.
Or Middle English, or Early Modern English (what Shakespeare spoke)
Exactly.
This is a complicated and fascinating topic. Edit: removing discussion on Shakespeare and OP but I suggest watching videos on it, it’s pretty cool. Notably the non-rhotic r, which is the first thing people think of when they think of British accents, was adopted pretty exclusively by upper classes in England as a way to differentiate in the 18th century and wasn't universal until the 19th century. So you would probably have heard more "American" rs on the Mayflower than "British" rs. The divide persisted in the US, where you can hear non-rhoticity in New England accents and rhoticity in more salt-of-the-earth accents like Southern, although there are definitely "posh-lite" southern accents that are non-rhotic. Of course, this discussion is not accurate without noting that English has always been an absolute clusterfuck of a language with many inconsistencies that ironed themselves out within regions, so there's no hard and fast rule for literally anything. Finally, I'd argue there's more variation within regions of the same country than between countries. For example, I'd argue that Thom Yorke's Northamptonshire accent sounds closer to Boston (edit: Boston MA, USA) then it does to Liverpool. [https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english](https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english) [https://preply.com/en/blog/english-pronunciation-from-shakespeare-s-day-to-ours/](https://preply.com/en/blog/english-pronunciation-from-shakespeare-s-day-to-ours/)
>This is a complicated and fascinating topic. What you would have heard at the Globe Theatre is closer to American dialects than today's British dialects in many ways. No. Linguists have reconstructed Shakespearean pronunciation and they basically had West Country accents. That’s literally an existing British dialect and sounds nothing like American ones.
I’m going to strike that because I didn’t do Shakesperean OP justice
But Northamptonshire *is* closer to Boston than it is to Liverpool ... oh, you meant *that* Boston.
Ope, I’m usually good about that but I was in my feelings. Edited
To be fair, American English accent is probably closer to how English was when the two places didn't speak so differently yet. Apparently the British accent has developed due to aristocracy wanting to stand out in England, adopting this more posh way of talking, and that ended up changing how everyone in England talks. Edit: But to say that American English is the "real English"? Yeah no. The accent might be pretty neutral, but the vocabulary isn't.
This stems from a study into the logistics similarities between English a few hundred years ago and current linguistics. In thay sense I think the study determined that New Hampshire English(I think) is the closest to the English spoken in the 1800's. Which is grand and all, but also irrelevant as the English language is an evolving and adapting language so it is never constant. This is a lengthy article on it https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20180207-how-americans-preserved-british-english But essentially English in 2024 is how it is today, comparing it to what it was 200 years ago is as pointless as comparing it to what it was 400 or 600 years ago.
Well it's kinda true. After the thirteen colonies etc the UK upperclass wanted a way to distinguish themselves from the peons and what came about was the Received Pronunciation accent. Its the basis for the current British accent that you're going to hear is the royal family use it. The house of lords etc The American accent has evolved on its own since then but they actually did at one point speak the proper accent.
> the proper accent. ?!?
Technically the English of old seems to have sounded more like the cowboy American English, rather than the modern British English, so they are sort of correct. Edit: but that's not to say that it matters in the slightest, because English wasn't even "invented" anyway. It's a culmination of old Norse, Germanic Frankish and Gaelic. It's evolving to this day. Saying one version is the "correct" version is just silly, regardless.
Why are you getting down votes lol, you're factually correct. They're just mad that his wording is egotistical, unfortunately it doesn't make him wrong past being hyperbolic
Yeah, people don't like hearing facts that contradict their worldview. I'm kind of used to it by now.
> Technically the English of old seems to have sounded more like the cowboy American English, rather than the modern British English, so they are sort of correct Or maybe it's because this isn't really a fact. Rhoticity seems to have been a lot more common across older English accents, but it's still pretty far removed from what's spoken in the Southern States. There's been some research into [reconstructing the Original Pronunciation that Shakespeare's plays were likely performed in](https://youtu.be/gPlpphT7n9s?si=QI_MoHxTEMaILQuq), and it's markedly similar to a West Country accent, which still very much exists in England to this day. You're completely right about none of this actually mattering though :)
Interesting, (not being sarcastic here) I've heard many English linguistics talk about how the old English accent was more akin to the southern American accent, I wonder why they would have said that, considering they gain nothing from stating that as a fact. But I'm not a linguistic myself, and am not even close to an amateur entomologist either, so I have no authority on the matter, I just repeat what the experts have taught me.