When did Americans lose the British accent?

Thames Delta Blues

Originally posted by Becker44
If I may impose upon you further, why do British musicians sing with an American accent?

A better question: why do white musicians sing in a black accent?

Both questions have the same answer. And the answer really only applies to one area of music: rock. You don't hear many British country musicians singing with Grand Old Opry accents, or British rappers trying to sound like they came out of South Central LA.

The answer lies in the blues, on which nearly all modern popular music is based.

The blues is American music. Black American music.

Rock 'n' roll was what happened when a white boy named Elvis copied the style of the black singers whose records he grew up listening to.

The black element in rock 'n' roll (and its elder cousin rhythm and blues) was what British musicians picked up on the most. The Beatles were an exception; they were more into Motown pop and eccentric British music-hall stuff. But the Rolling Stones and just about everyone who came after them were into the black side of things. They became blues students, copying the vocal and instrumental stylings of people like Robert Johnson, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James.

And when they sang, they sang in the accents of their heroes; it was always cute, these whey-faced English boys raised on sweet tea and jellied eels, singing like poor blacks from the Mississippi Delta or the slums of Chicago.

And they didn't just sing in these accents; they played in them, too.

And their enormous popularity in the States carried the accent and the style back across the pond to white American kids, some of whom grew up playing and singing like ancient black bluesmen in their turn.

Not all British rock musicians sing in American accents, though. Those who have achieved great success while sounding as British as beer and chips include the following:

Cliff Richard
The Beatles (their 'yeah, yeah, yeahs' were Liverpudlian, not American)
The Who
The Kinks
Marc Bolan
David Bowie
Pink Floyd
Queen
The Sex Pistols
The Clash
Kate Bush
The Police
Morrissey
The Cure
The Stone Roses
Blur
Oasis
Franz Ferdinand
Pete Doherty
Arctic Monkeys

That's roughly chronological. I could go on and on and on...

I think occasionally you'll get someone with an accent in a different place who choose deliberately to keep the way they talk and don't conform to their new pal's ways. Then there's the majority who will change the way they speak so they'll be understood better. And if the majority do it to be heard then you'll get a slow mass change of accent. I've an old friend born in Scotland but grew up in Kent. She's been back in Scotland for over 20 years now but still talks in her English accent and not a drop of Scots slang. I've another friend, Iranian, who came to Scotland about 25 years ago and lived in Glasgow for a few years before moving to Fife. He's obviously learned English with a Scots accent but when he went abroad for a holiday some folk he met said "oh, you're from Fife, we know the accent". They even knew which part of Fife he came from.I heard a great 'made up' word the other day, (I hope it takes on). Some old ladies from Fife (years ago) were all excited because the building they worked at was getting a new modern conservatory. They took great delight at lunch time telling their pals "let's take our tea in the SITOOTERY." sit oot = sit out

Originally posted by Becker44
If I may impose upon you further, why do British musicians sing with an American accent?

It's a choice.

I'm a British singer and I tend to sing with an "American" accent. However, there are many British singers who sing with their own regional accents. It's a simple choice, just pick an accent. I can sing with an Armenian accent if I so desire.

[edit on 19/10/07 by thebox]

this just personal opinion, not anything near a scholarly answer;


back when colonists brought their mother tongue, it quickly gave way to local accent and regional dialects...
one reason is the motive for every individual to join the community,
so a speech vocabulary particular to that village, town, or river valley
would emerge almost immediately with the next generation...
the immigrants themselves, with decades of learned, rote speech, would
hang on to their old ways & be sorta shunned by the younger generation
who had created their newer collective language, of words, meanings,
inflections, dialects, accents...


being seperated from the 'world' of their day (British Empire)
the colonists were compelled to create their new world from the bottom up,
and that meant that they would not 'Ape' all of the social trappings, institutions, and language
...of the far distant & foreign place.



the printed word, from england, had no accent, so the americans
melded their own variations of American English
see a list here;
en.wikipedia.org...


i know you get the drift

To us, in America, Australians seem to be closer to the British accent, but who knows the Australians might think the same thing about us. Hopefully one will gives us an opinion on the matter.

I'm Australian or Ozzie as we say (not Ossie as we usually hear Americans say) and we hear the British, American, New Zealand and South African english, all as distinctly different individual accents to ours.

Most Ozzies would be able to recognize any of these accents. But I feel Americans would have severe difficulty in doing so. On a recent trip to the USA, most people thought I was from England or New Zealand. But they just loved listening to the accent.

Funnily, when asking for a scotch and cola at a bar, the bartender had no idea what I had asked for, until I tried the local accent and asked for a "skarch and cola".

there is no such thing as a british accent, the only thing i think you could mean would be the queens english which only very posh people who have had lessons speak, and i have never met anyone who speaks it I'm from liverpool so my accent is known as scouse ( the same as the beatles), leave the city and 20 miles in any direction inland and the accent can change dramatically

reply to post by thebox


Facinating discussion by all. I'm really enjoying this and learning quite a bit. I'm amazed how many Brits, Scots, and Ozzies we have on this board.

Question for Box:

I understand your point about picking an accent while singing. I am curious why singing seems to be an easier avenue to project an American accent while speech on the other hand has it's difficulties.

I refer to movies and such when a British actor tries to portray an American accent or visa-versa. We (americans) can clearly hear the effort put forth and it usually is very apparent as the words just don't sound right.

Do others think there are people who can pull off these accents without a noticable trace of their native tongue. I know for one if I try and speak with an Ozzie, or British accent it seems to be exaggerated and almost cartoonish as if I were trying to hard.

Becker

The same thing can be said for Southern accents here in the states. I am from North Carolina, but I currently live in Utah. I never thought that I had an accent at all, but everywhere I go people are like "Wow, where are you from, you have such an accent." Im from Charlotte, which is a pretty big city, with tons of transplants so the true Southern accent gets lost along the way sometimes, but you go 20 miles outside the city and the drawl gets very thick.

Also, I can hear someone from North Carolina talking and immediately tell that they are from there, just by the sound of their accent, and Im sure that they would think just like me...that they didnt have an accent at all. My dad was raised in New England, but has lived in Charlotte for about 40 years, and he still talks with a Northern accent.

Very fascinating stuff...

Originally posted by Becker44
reply to post by thebox

 

Facinating discussion by all. I'm really enjoying this and learning quite a bit. I'm amazed how many Brits, Scots, and Ozzies we have on this board.

Question for Box:

I understand your point about picking an accent while singing. I am curious why singing seems to be an easier avenue to project an American accent while speech on the other hand has it's difficulties.

I refer to movies and such when a British actor tries to portray an American accent or visa-versa. We (americans) can clearly hear the effort put forth and it usually is very apparent as the words just don't sound right.

Do others think there are people who can pull off these accents without a noticable trace of their native tongue. I know for one if I try and speak with an Ozzie, or British accent it seems to be exaggerated and almost cartoonish as if I were trying to hard.

Becker

Have you seen the movie 'Blood Diamond' with Leonardo DiCaprio? He plays a white guy from Rhodesia/Zimbabwe, who grew up in South Africa. From what ive been told his accent is spot on....like he could walk into a bar there and not stick out at all, well aside from the fact that hes Leonardo DiCaprio.

Great movie, BTW...

Originally posted by Becker44
I understand your point about picking an accent while singing. I am curious why singing seems to be an easier avenue to project an American accent while speech on the other hand has it's difficulties.

It's a mystery to me! I generally believe that the ability to feign accents / sing in accents is heavily governed by one's vocal cord limitations.

reply to post by PokeyJoe



I have not seen the movie but based on your suggestion I will. Being a native New Englander (luckily devoid of the accent) I have seen films like Fever Pitch with Jimmy Fallon. While he is a Bostonian the others in the film completely butchered the accent.

Films by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon like Good Will Hunting reflect a much better sound. Damon and Affleck are Boston boys so no real stretch there.

If a English person who moves to California slowly changes his accent, wouldn't he also very slightly change the accent of the Californians also? I think new dialects are people of older pronunciations effecting each other moving to a middle pronunciation, based on size of two groups.

I saw a lecture on language. They had a graph that showed brain activity in the very young when they hear sounds. When young the sounds that are different inflections of the same sound are separated, over a few years by the age of 4 or so, these slightly different sounds consolidate to one brain section. So people that here sounds close to lets say the A sound for them, aye, ahy, ah. process it as one single sound, there dialect. They can step out of the language section and identify the accent if they want, but the language interpretation part of brain groups the sounds as one.

The study explained each language can actually have sounds not used in other languages, those sounds get grouped into the sound closest to a sound they use. This is why Asians have an r issue, they have no corresponding sound, or Norwegians and the w sound. They do not process the sound in there brain as a w or r, it is moved to a closer sound they were raised with as part of their language.

Now singing uses different brain areas, there are stories of people who have brain damage that can not remember something when speaking, but can sing the memory. So the sounds of singing are more musical melodies, that language translations making it easier to make and identify the individual sounds.

Great thread, Accents seem to develop every few hundred miles, I would guess it only takes a few generations of cross language influences to create a dialect.

[edit on 19-10-2007 by Redge777]

reply to post by Redge777


Great post Redge.

Perhaps the American accent can be attributed to the cross polination of British and Native American tongues. Your example of the English accent in California rang true.

An earlier poster remarked (paraphrase) "Is there a definative line in countries where an accent takes a radical departure?"

Or....does it become a seemless blend? The U.S. has what I would consider 5 distinct accent variations with sub variotions of each.

1. New England = Closest to perhaps an Irish accent
2, New York = Certain baseball prejudices make me refrain from comment
3. Southern Drawl = Not sure of the origin but it is slooooooow speak.
4. Mid West = I think there is a scandanavian influence at work here.
5. Western = Prominent in California & Arizona perhaps Latin American.

Do other contries have varying accents? Australia for instance. Can you immediately tell where someone is from?

Becker

Originally posted by Becker44

Do others think there are people who can pull off these accents without a noticable trace of their native tongue. I know for one if I try and speak with an Ozzie, or British accent it seems to be exaggerated and almost cartoonish as if I were trying to hard.

I think the ability to imitate different accents and to learn languages is linked to

1) willingness to listen
2) good hearing
3) ability to imagine oneself with a certain mentalitity, sound, facial expression
4) willingness to change or to be different than one was

You will notice that the more closed-minded people who like to "stick with their own" will have great difficulties sounding different.

I think that with good acting (imaginative) skills, you can change your accent and make people believe it. But you need a good ear for it.

reply to post by Skyfloating
I agree.

In the postcolonial society in which I live, being able to speak English with a British or American accent is considered a status symbol. The regional and social niceties (Scouse versus Sussex, Ivy League versus West Texas) mean nothing, though; the accents aspired to are the 'average' ones you mostly hear on international TV and radio.

Some people acquire these accents by living abroad for decades, or being born there. But plenty more acquire them by going to school or university in the West and then bringing home an accent to go with their diploma or degree. Some people even pick up an 'accent' after a three-month vacation in the US!

The striking thing is that you hear these people speaking with wildly differing accents -- some so thick you could cut them with a knife, others almost indiscernibly different from native-born English speech. Some sound convincing, others are ludicrously contrived. The worst are people who can barely speak English at all, but insist on delivering what little they know in mangled locutions they imagine to be 'English' or 'American' -- or, God help us, ''Strine'.

Conversely, some of my compatriots can live in the West for fifty years and still sound the same as they did when they left home.

Clearly, acquiring (and keeping) an accent is as much a matter of intent as it is of exposure and absorption.

Though inborn ability obviously counts for something, too. I read and write French pretty well, but try as I might to acquire a decent accent, I can barely make myself understood to native Francophones when I speak the language.

Consider that it is not only English accents that were lost. We are, of course, the "melting pot".

Originally posted by Astyanax
Though inborn ability obviously counts for something, too. I read and write French pretty well, but try as I might to acquire a decent accent, I can barely make myself understood to native Francophones when I speak the language.

Of course French is much easier to read than speak...but theres also something in the French mentality that doesnt WANT to understand a foreigner...

Most Ozzies would be able to recognize any of these accents. But I feel Americans would have severe difficulty in doing so. On a recent trip to the USA, most people thought I was from England or New Zealand. But they just loved listening to the accent.

I find this to be a lucid and accurate observation. Aussies can tell apart any accent, while americans will have a hard time. Must have something to do with a general disinterest of whats going on in the rest of the world.




[edit on 23-10-2007 by Skyfloating]

Years ago in a Music Appreciation class this exact question came up about musicians from other countries singing in "American Accents". What the professor told us all made alot of sense.....

If the musician/singer was a trained singer, meaning he took voice lessons, his accent was usually much more "american" as voice teachers all teach the same type of annunciation.

If they are a "talented singer" meaning that the ability to sing comes as a gift they are much more prone to have their original accent come through.

He also said that alot of trained singers train with American teachers which would again add to the annunciation expect. Makes sense to me

reply to post by Skyfloating


I think it's more due to the fact that American English diverged earlier and is more different than the British, Australian, New Zealand accents. Someone speaking these more closely related accents are probably more attuned to the differences among them.