When did Americans lose the British accent?

American broadcast announcers and those that attend school to be ones,are taught to speak neutral American English.The city and surrounding area that is known to have the most neutral American English is Indianapolis,Indiana.
David Letterman and Jane Pauley are two well known from that area.

I am also from there.When I listen to Letterman now, he sounds like he is from the east coast where he has lived many years. Jane Pauley reported from Chicago for many years after leaving Indianapolis.I can still here that accent when she speaks.

There is an area of New Orleans that all the people there speak with an accent that makes them sound as if they're from Providence, Rhode Island. It is really odd to encounter it after listening to the southern, Cajun accents in the area.

From what I gathered there was a large migration of Portuguese from that area to New Orleans during the war to work in the shipyards and fishing boats and they all settled in the same area. The accent just stayed as more came to the area.

reply to post by amatrine


Madonna, is that you?

reply to post by Becker44


Thank goodness, not all Brits sing with an American accent. Take Lilly Allen for one and many of our upcoming Brits are keeping it real.

No Madonna here,lol
Wouldn't mind having the money though
Ama

[edit on 4-10-2008 by amatrine]

reply to post by Osiris1953

Sorry but Williams just sounds to me like a bad, American imitation of his friend Billy Connelly.

Read Bill Bryson's book called 'Made in America'. It's fantastic and there is a whole section talking about just this - where the American accent came from and the history of US english.

The whole book is great actually.



I am an Aussie and when I was in NY several people thought I was a local and asked myself and my friend for directions. We have the same 'Pahk the cah' kind of accent in Oz. I think it may come from and Irish and English mix. The 'rolling R...not sure where that comes from in most US dialects.

There is a great book called Mother Tongue about he development of the English language here's the link The author indicates in one of the chapters that it is the British who lost their accents and we Americans are speaking an English in an accent closer to what was common in the era that this country was founded in.

It's a great book very informational and witty

read it ,you'll love it!

There's a great piece of dialogue in the movie "Yellowbeard" where the blind character, "Pew", explains to one of the villains,

"Oy 'ave acute 'earing."

The villain responds, "I'm not interested in your jewellry, Cloth-eyes!"

An English professor told the class once, many years ago, that people in either, Tennessee or Kentucky speak with an accent that is closer to Shakespearean English than the English spoken in London in our time.

The French accent of Quebec, which used to be much laughed at in France, is much closer to the French of Moliere (one of France's greatest literary figures) and French speaking people of the 16th century than French spoken in France today.

reply to post by ipsedixit

Like wise Icelanders speak an ancient version of Norwegian ,they can read all their founding documents which are 1,100 years old

be like British people still reading Chaucer! in old English!

You gotta read Mother Tongue ! It's hilarious,they have whole chapters of stuff like place names ,and swearing,hysterical

alot of irish people settled in boston?
well im from tennessee and most of the people here are from ireland or britain. so i don't think the ireland theory on the boston accent is correct. or maybe its that no other accent bothered it? it could also be that various types of people moved into different areas and the accents melded differently between say, polish immigrants and scots.

thats the most plausible theory to me.

reply to post by Becker44


I think you're right on target (tahget). I'm from Boston, and I, too, speak as you described - with the exception of the added syllable. However, I do have some older relatives who say doe-uh (door) and flow-uh (floor), etc.

To compare accents, let's look at the word BUTTER.

British Buttuh

Standard American Budder

Bostonian Budduh (an obvious blend)

This thread is fascinating, as this is something I've wondered about for a long time. I love listening to accents, and am a natural "chameleon" when talking with others. I pick up other people's accents very quickly. (I always worry the person I'm mimicking will be offended!) I live in Arizona, and have a "neutral" accent (i.e., no accent). Maybe my chameleonic tendencies are based in jealousy of all the cool accents out there.

Thank you for great links and information.

When people come from foreign countries to the US and speak English, they usually have some sort of accent. I noticed that Dutch people who come to the US and speak English have no noticeable accent. (I am from California, so perhaps Dutch people sound like northerners when they go to the south.)

Has anybody else noticed this with Dutch people? Is it possible that the American accent is really a Dutch accent?

reply to post by Anonymous ATS


You can break an accent down into two components. The first component is the way a person pronounces (or does not pronounce) vowels and consonants. For example, people from Chicago will pronounce socks and box sacks and backs. People from the UK do not pronounce r's at the end of sylabbles.

The second component of an accent is cadence. People from the southern US speak in a slow cadence. People from India speak in a fast cadence.

Perhaps when many British singers are "singing American" they are really singing American music with an American cadence. This seems to make sense because singing with a Britsh cadence to an American beat would throw off the whole song.

I had a school teacher this past year from England but her accent seems to be wearing off some. I don't know how long she's lived here but she's not very old, late 30s maybe. My uncle also lived in London for a little bit and when he called our house you could notice he had a little bit of an English/British accent. I think that maybe just being around people with a different accent influences the way you talk. A funny thing is that sometimes if I listen to myself talk it seems to me I can sometimes have a little bit of a southern drawl. I live in Rhode Island and don't know anyone that talks with the least bit of a southern accent.

What no one has mentioned is the ability of children to lose the accent of their parents. Children can usually learn other languages and lose accents up to about 15 years of age...that seems to be the general cut off age. Older and it is much more difficult for the brain to "lose" an accent.

As the children of immigrants to Canada I can attest to this. We spoke Dutch at home even though I was born in Canada until about age 11. As a result I can speak both English and Dutch without accents.

This would have been no different in the past here in North America...I think what happened is you had a combination of immigrant groups. For example, Irish/Scottish/German/Dutch etc the children would have standardized slowly among their peers, regardless of their parents accent. These children then grew up and within one generation you have a different accent. This would have occurred anywhere that immigrants mixed (Cities/Towns).

Interesting thread

What I've noticed is how in Australia we all speak with the same accent- some of us may speak in 'broader' Aussie than other Aussies but we all essentially speak the same

Where as in say England or America people speak differently ie with different accents- you can tell where peeps come from from their accents..

God knows Aussies are going to end up speaking like Americans because we watch too many American tv shows...words are already creeping in like 'awesome' 'my bad' etc etc

Cool thread. I used to wonder about this, too. I guess the Aussie above me will disagree but to Americans, the Aussie and British accents sound similar in many respects. You can at least spot the British influence in the Aussie accents. So why do Americans sound completely different?

I'm wondering if it is because we are a melting pot? It really wasn't just the English although they were a large part of it. It was also the Spanish, French, Scottish, Dutch, German, Swedish, Portuguese, Russians, etc.

Perhaps once we all gathered we influenced each other to develop our own, unique accent? No idea- just something I thought was maybe possible when I used to think about this.

I would argue not 100% until 1990. Back in old movies, from like the 40s, American speech was more "elegant" - I attribute this to the British influence left.

However, it was probably more American than British by 1840 or so.

I guess the Aussie above me will disagree but to Americans, the Aussie and British accents sound similar in many respects.

- Yes I will have to disagree, we sound nothing alike, lol.. we always come off sounding English in American movies/tv!