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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
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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 ...
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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.
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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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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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In reply to:
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.
Interesting. My Dad, educated at an Anglo-Indian public school in the dying days of the Raj, also uses "may-or" consistently - it's one of the few traces of his oroignal accent left after 52 years away from the land of his birth.
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In reply to:
UK, Australian, NZ & South African English inevitably uses "m-air" whereas US (& Canadian??) English uses the OE "may-or" for the word mayor.
Stales, perhaps I'm misunderstanding your transcription (which seems to rhyme it with a female horse), but my pronunciation of mayor is more like mayuh(r) (stress on the first syllable and then a schwa at the end, r pronounced before a following vowel), and I think that's pretty standard Southern UK pronunciation.
Bingley
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Bingley comments: Stales, perhaps I'm misunderstanding your transcription (which seems to rhyme it with a female horse), but my pronunciation of mayor is more like mayuh(r) (stress on the first syllable and then a schwa at the end, r pronounced before a following vowel), and I think that's pretty standard Southern UK pronunciation.
I think he's right - about Zild and Strine anyway. We do tend to pronounce the two words - mayor and mare - the same. MaxQ might have a different take on it.
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In reply to:
I think he's right - about Zild and Strine anyway. We do tend to pronounce the two words - mayor and mare - the same. MaxQ might have a different take on it.
Mais non! Every good Kiwi knows that mayor and mare are homophones, pronounced exactly alike. That's why I mentioned that my Dad's lapse in this regard was one of the signs that gives him away as a steenkin' furriner.
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I believe the Aus/NZ accent comes from London. It shares many features with Cockney. Regionally, the modern Kentish accent, which is very slight, has a faint echo of Aus/NZ, so I suspect Cockney (East London) and the more recent Saaf Lunnon derive from Kent, which is why they're so strikingly different from East Midlands (London and Oxford and Cambridge), the origin of RP.
The fact that the majority of settlers came from the major population centre of London would explain how Aus/NZ and for that matter South African, which in some ways is similar, came to be, without invoking class or convicts.
But it is striking that NZ is ethnically very Scottish, yet has no trace of Scots in the accent. A simple explanation in terms of regional origin of settlers obvously isn't quite enough.
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NicholasW said But it is striking that NZ is ethnically very Scottish, yet has no trace of Scots in the accent. A simple explanation in terms of regional origin of settlers obvously isn't quite enough.
Actually the Scottish influence was very slight. They only arrived en masse in Dunedin, and then in one main tranche with a few extra odds and sods arriving in the next few years. Probably the majority of the immigrants between the first group, in 1848 and about 1860 would have been English, although the Scottish influence remained strong for a while, then waned. Things might have been different except that 13 years after the Otago colony was founded, a bloody Australian came over and found gold. The population went from a few hundred mostly rural settlers to tens of thousands from all over the world in a little more than two years.
Some of the Scottish traditions remained in a small way. It was a bastion of Presbyterianism until about the turn of the 20th century. Most of the Scots stuff is modern revival, though.
I agree that Zild is based on Brit English, of course. I have to go to my approximation of RP when I'm in the States. They can't understand Zild easily. But, unlike you, I do not hear echos of Zild in any particular English brogue or accent. Certainly not in saaf Lunnon, which is almost as foreign to us as it would be to, say, belMarduk. Essentially, it must be homegrown. Why we got what we have is the mystery!
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Oh no, you're right, Cockney and even more so Saaf Lunnon are strikingly different from every other regional accent in England; except that I think I can detect in modern Kentish a je ne sais quoi that suggests a common ancestor in Kent for both the East London and the Southern Hemisphere accents, both of course radically altered since then.
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the Cornish and ?Devonish sailors Devonian. As for accents, they are definitely in the ear of the listener. At least partly - each listener will most easily distinguish the accents s/he has most exposure to. That's what I think, anyway. (First person to translate the above sentiments into a permissible form for the 'Not M_' thread wins my undying admiration!  )
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Dumnonian, as I think our old Roman pals would say, or am I wrong about tribal Britons?
Local variations in pronunciation can sound hard to pick up if you don’t know that district, so a lad or lass from far away won’t twig linguistically why two folk that talk akin will both claim "I’m not using sounds anything at all as that chap is, can’t you catch it?".
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Relative to Rhode Island, it was founded in 1631 with the express purpose of being religiously open. The first Jewish temple, which is still in existence, was established in Newport. The building currently there was built in the 18th century, I believe. Roger what-his-name, I am told, walked 60 miles from Massachusetts thru the snow that winter to get away from the oppressive theocracy there to found a colony he called "Providence" that would have complete religious freedom. Penn, of course, founded the other at Philadelphia. Actually, Penn first came ashore at Newark (prounounced new-Ark') Delaware. But you touch on a primary factor that created the isolationism you mention and that is the religions of those who settled. Virginia was Anglican, Delaware was Lutheran, Pennsylvania was Quaker, Long Island was Presbyterian (sp?), Connecticut and Massachusetts were (originally) Puritan. Connecticut later became almost completely Congregationalist.
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"The History of English" is available as a set of video tapes. It was created by MacNeal of the "MacNeal Lehrer Report" seen for many years as the evening news program on the American Public Broadcasting System (PBS). Can't remember his first name. MacNeal is Canadian by birth.
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But it is striking that NZ is ethnically very Scottish, yet has no trace of Scots in the accent.There is a trace of Scots in the only distinctive regional accent within NZ. Southland has its own accent, distinguished by being markedly rhotic, in sharp contrast with the very non-rhotic NZ standard. FWIW, your mention of Kent interested me, as my sister, born and bred in NZ, was often asked by prisoners of Mother England if she was from Kent.
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Re: Books I've mentioned this site before but I thought I'd let you know that the BBC Radio 4 programme "The Roots of English" is now in its third series and has published books and CDs, available from BBC books. http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/routesofenglish
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>as my sister, born and bred in NZ, was often asked by prisoners of Mother England if she was from Kent
That is interesting. I tried out my own version of both accents and noticed the similarity. In NZ I suspect that Kent would sound like Keent. In a London/Kent accent (found in many offices in the City) Kent would be pronounced like Cairnt which, in a high-ish voice is pretty similar.
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>a primary factor that created the isolationism you mention
I would think that distance must have been another factor. I wouldn't have thought that many ordinary people would have travelled extensively within, even the North East of America, let alone further afield.
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"...Roger what-his-name, I am told, walked 60 miles from Massachusetts..."
Bit spooky this - Roger who? My first name is Roger and, as mentioned in the initial post, I was born in Mass!!
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Oh, all right then, since someone has resurrected this one, I just have to have Maxie on about his statement There is a trace of Scots in the only distinctive regional accent within NZ. Southland has its own accent, distinguished by being markedly rhotic, in sharp contrast with the very non-rhotic NZ standard.
Max, Southland was settled by predominantly English settlers. A professor of linguistics at Otago University some time ago debunked the theory that the burr in the Southland accent is Scottish in origin - but couldn't explain where it came from for certain. There were a number of early settlers from whaling ships in that area, and the idea that the Cornish or Devon accent was perpetuated out of Bluff or Riverton was the favourite. This was twenty years ago - the view could have changed.
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Capital Kiwi did chastise me thusly: Max, Southland was settled by predominantly English settlers. A professor of linguistics at Otago University some time ago debunked the theory that the burr in the Southland accent is Scottish in origin - but couldn't explain where it came from for certainTo which I can but reply - Job 42:3
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What can I say? Job 42:2 ....
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Aw, I love you guys! [heart emoticon]
Job 42:3--You ask, 'Who is this that questions my wisdom with such ignorance?' It is I. And I was talking about things I did not understand, things far too wonderful for me.
Job 42:2--"I know that you can do anything, and no one can stop you."
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