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Could somebody please provide a potted history of US English pronunciation.
I'd heard that, to some extent, US pronunciation reflects the way the founding fathers spoke at the time of their arrival in New England. Once the vocabulary, pronunciation and dialect had been "exported" to the new land, the opportunity for a divergent evolution of the 2 "languages" had been cast.
How true is this?
Following this line of thought (and if the above is true), could one assume that the New England accent (being the oldest), is the most reflective of the language that was spoken in England whenever it was that the FF's arrived? (stales - an aspiring wordsmith maybe, history student - NOT!)
Similarly, does US English's shortening of "our" to "or" (eg in "honour") reflect its Old English origins, or is it a more recent development?
(Despite being born in Lowell, Mass, I've been an Aussie ("ozzie" NOT "ossie" - please!!) all my remembered life,so this question has a degree of personal interest).
Stales
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The spellings are a later development consciously adopted in the 19th century at the urging of Noah Webster. As for the history of US pronunciation I would have to look it up and my resources for that are at home.
Bingley
Bingley
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To some extent (e.g. American retains the -r dropped later in England) but really once two dialects begin to diverge they are both equally likely to innovate. And New England is as likely to innovate as anywhere else in America (good example is the Boston variety that drops -r, apparently an imitation of British English). What you might find is that New England had more regional diversity, compared to the recently-settled West. (Just as England has more diversity than America as a whole, having had more time for evolution to occur.)
I don't off-hand know of a single UK vs US spelling difference that actually reflects a pronunciation difference. All Webster's reforms were fairly trivial. Any takers?
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NW>I don't off-hand know of a single UK vs US spelling difference that actually reflects a
pronunciation difference. All Webster's reforms were fairly trivial. Any takers?
aluminum v. aluminium, certainly... airplane v. aeroplane?
(but, of course, these probably weren't due to Webster :)
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I once sat through a lecture on this (and broader considerations of the differences between "British" and "American" English) by some world-renowned linguist whose name I can't for the life of me remember. Here's a potted (or potty) version of what he had to say. His thesis was also backed up by the TV programme "The History of English" many years later, again presented by a linguist whose name escapes me.
No arguments about spelling. Noah Webster had his way. Also, most of the modern "americanisms" such as aluminum/alunimium are usage issues.
You have to go back to Elizabethan times to get a handle on what happened in the USA. First of all, almost everyone with education in England in the sixteenth century would have had an accent similar to what we consider today to be the Devon brogue, the "Arrr, but the arrrnswer do loie in the soil" type of thing. A matter of degree, the linguists don't appear to agree how pronounced this burr was. It was further influenced by the Cornish and ?Devonish sailors who apparently made up the majority of the crews for ships which plied the Atlantic, too. RP is a relatively recent invention.
When the early settlers went to America they took their accent with them to Jamestown and other areas of Virginia. The hypothesis is that the accent spread from there. Being in relative isolation for a long period of time (about a century), the accent didn't change all that much. By the time of the major wave of immigration it was well established as the "way to speak", and the incomers adopted it rather than corrupted it (although some corruption probably did occur - look at the range of accents across the US today).
The theory goes that the most pure form of "original" accent is endemic in inland Virginia and on the islands off the Carolina coast, where the outside influences were negligible for many years.
Effectively, then, the American/Canadian accent is closer to "pure" - whatever that is - than English in England or anywhere else. Historically speaking, of course.
For what it's worth ...
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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while some of this is true-- and there are ruralism that are very old in US-- things that past out of common use in england years ago.. there is more...
A bit more of US history– isolation is part of the story– but so is immigration. Some (most) colonies where set up with two purposes, as a haven for religious dissenters– Puritans,(and the like) who held that the Anglican church hadn't gone far enough in reformations (and indeed it hadn't– the roman catholic church has curious relation with the Anglicans.. )
What both had in common was that bishops and higher were treated as nobility. Puritan held that all men were noble, and all could aspire to wealth.
So American colonies were commercial enterprise– (lots of sailors needed!) And religious centers. And immigration started pretty early..
NY (new Amsterdam) was unique in that it was from 1650 (1653) just a commercial enterprise. (First date is the date of the decision in Holland, second, when it got back to NY as law... ) but even before that,Portuguese jews had set up the first temple in americas--in Rhode Island--not exactly the most religiously open settlement..
So while NY (New Amsterdam) had some what of a mixture before 1650, after, it was an open town– all comers welcome. And the local population before war for independence included Turks, Arabs, Greeks and Albanians. As well as northern europeans; English, German, French, Scandinavians, Scotch and Irish and needless to say the Dutch!
Pennsylvania, was pretty open too, it was officially a Quaker settlement, and the local government supported the church– but it was much more open to other religions and sects– and attracted from very early on, German immigration. (Pennsylvania Dutch as they are commonly called. –Bobyoung can tell us more..,) but in Maryland, a catholic colony, french Catholics were welcome. .Even New England welcomed some french– my kids, through their father go back to Rochelle– french huguenots who escaped to religious freedom in Massachuset. (Early enough in the scope of things that they also trace their roots to Mayflower. ) The puritan didn't always like other sects, but they hated Romanism so much it was a case of my enemy's enemy is my friend.
So from a fairly early date, US colonies interacted with Portuguese (slave traders) and the french–remember, while in Europe France and England were at war, here we were forging our own alliances with the french. (against native Americans) And alliances with the Dutch in NY, and the Spanish.. Not that the french didn't change sides later– French and Indian war...
Early US trade triangle was molasses, for rum, for slaves.. It stayed under the radar– that is, unlike our trade with england (rice, and cotton and tobacco) this trade was largely untaxed. Our trading partners were Portugal, or Spain or France... or rather their colonies.
All this effected our English. The same tv show referred too, (History of English) pointed out, that at the time of WWI, 90% of population of England lived with 10 miles of where they were born. Not true this side of the Atlantic..
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One of the things for which I've never been able to obtain an even half-way satisfactory explanation is why the Australian and New Zealand accents are so similar and yet are so dissimilar - and why they are like no accent anywhere else.
I can be in a very crowded Oxford Street (or any other similar location), and all the varied accents around me will simply wash over me, yet a Zild or Strine accent will perk up my internal radar at the drop of a blip.
I've seen all sorts of hogwash along the lines of "lower class English convicts were transported to Australia and the accent is a corruption of theirs". But sorry, it doesn't wash. New Zealand never had transported convicts and it wasn't largely settled from Australia.
I should point out that I studied computational linguistics as part of a post-graduate diploma rather than the "softer" areas, although I wish I had had time to do both. I attended anything that looked interesting, though. Therefore, my understanding of the area is pretty limited. SWMBO would say that my understanding of any area is limited ...
All opinions (on the origins of the Australasian accent) eagerly sought!
How posts does this make it, Xara? You appear to be taking over MQ's mantle in this area.
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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In reply to:
U.S. vs British English
I read an excellent explanation in a scholarly book about a year ago, but I gave the book away and don't remember the title or author. This author's explanation is:
Originally, there were two American dialects of English, the New England and the Virginia. From researching the origins of the early emigrants, it appears that the vast majority of the first settlers in New England were from eastern England, East Anglia and Norfolk, and they spoke English with the flat vowels and elided 'R'. The vast majority of the first settlers in Virginia were from southern England, mostly from Kent, and spoke with the deeper rounder vowels and the soft 'R' (this is the American dialect most like modern British). Later on, those who came and settled western NY, Pennsylvania, Kentucky and Tennesee were mostly Scotch-Irish from Ulster, speaking with the hard vowels and hard 'R' of that area. This has, over 200+ years, morphed into the standard U.S. dialect. This is the gist of a complicated explanation backed up with reams of demographic data.
Meanwhile, there is the fact that beginning around the 1720's in London, a shift in pronunciation began. Up to then, British and American usages and pronunciation were pretty much the same, depending on where you were from. But a new pronunciation with different vowel values and stressed syllables etc., got under way, which culminated in what is now the (more-or-less) standard British usage. The colonists, however, being to a fair degree isolated on this side of the Atlantic, did not participate in this neology, but stayed with the old usages they had brought with them. (In the same way the Canadians held fast to the French they came with, in the face of changes in the language in the motherland.) Thus it may fairly be said that American English is more like the English of Cranmer, Shakespeare, Donne, Milton & Dr. Johnson than modern British English, just as Canadian French is more like the French of Moliere and Racine than modern continental French.
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I can be in a very crowded Oxford Street (or any other similar location), and all the varied accents around me will simply wash over me, yet a Zild or Strine accent will perk up my internal radar at the drop of a blip.
Well this is very understandable– a naturalist visiting NYC heard a cricket while walking down Broadway– (inspite of cars and buses, and all sorts of NY noise) and his companion was stunned. The naturalist then did a quick test. He dropped coins – and watched peoples reactions. The large the denomination of the coin, the bigger the reaction (More people reacted to $0.25 than $0.01.)
He expressed that we are all creatures of our personal environment. City dwellers learn to react to the sound of a coin on concrete, and react more strongly when more is being lost (or potentially to be found). He was a naturalist– he had learned to react to sound of animals..
You are tuned to Zild and Strine accents... They are you're crickets.
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old hand
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Don't know if it fits/fit (UK English/US English - subject of a previous post) the criteria, but what about "zed" & "zee" for the 26th letter? (which was going to be the subject of a future stales post).
In terms of pronunciation without a spelling change, UK, Australian, NZ & South African English inevitably uses "m-air" whereas US (& Canadian??) English uses the OE "may-or" for the word mayor.
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