Where did Americans get their accents?

Question

Okay, we came from England to what is now North America and we all had english accents. Did we just make our accents up?

Answer 1

This is a very interesting question and I don't really think it has an exact answer but here's what I came up with.

General American (sometimes called Standard Midwestern) is the accent of American English perceived by Americans to be most "neutral" and free of regional characteristics. The General American accent is not thought of as a linguistic standard in the sense that Received Pronunciation (RP) has historically been the standard, prestige variant in England, but its speakers are perceived as "accentless" by most Americans.

Within American English, General American and accents approximating it are contrasted with Southern American English, several Northeastern accents, and other distinct regional accents and social group accents like African American Vernacular English.

Answer 2

Actually, we didn't have English accents back then. Everybody spoke a different version of English, and linguistic studies of old rhymes show that it was probably a bit more like the English spoken in the Appalachian Mountains of West Virginia. The people there were so isolated, that they maintained the same accent. Apparently, if you read some of those old poems with a West Virginian accent, they make more sense.

In contrast, both the English and the Americans changed their accents over time because they interacted with other people who spoke different languages. The Americans would be talking with Native Americans a lot, and some French and Spanish, whereas the English would be talking with other Europeans, but not Native Americans. Because there were different levels of interaction with different people, we all ended up speaking differently.

Answer 3

Depending on what nationality tended to predominate in the different geographical areas of the US, accents evolved from there. You can almost detect the Swedish roots in, say, the Minnesota accent. You can almost detect Italian roots in the New York accent. Irish roots can be detected in many Boston accents. I think I read that Swedish roots are also in some Southern accents in the U.S.

I'm no linquistic expert, but I have also seen how ignorance and laziness in speech has contributed to some accents. Sometimes, too, though education or intelligence or a wish to help one's children speak correctly contributes to people's dropping some of the less desirable pronunciations of some things.

People have been in this country for several hundred years now. It easy to see how accents have been watered down and altered and adapted.

Answer 4

I suspect it came from a gradual mix of dialects from around the world. I mean, there are several different American accents at that, so it can seem a little complicated.

Canada is basically the same: "eh" has come to define our accent, for better or worse. Now where did it come from?

Chalk it up to the melting pot.

Answer 5

I found the recipy in my grandmum's cookbook :

Put a lot of English spoken by British, Germans, Italians, Polish, Dutch, Irish, Swedes and so into a pot....boil it for more then 200 years, stir well and you may get an accent close to what the US has today !

Answer 6

We did not all come from England. Read history and you will see that people from various countries migrated to different regions of the U.S. at different stages of our development. where they moved in enough number to affect local slang and dialect accents became more recognizable and passed on through the generations before the train and other modes of travel allowed the mixing of people and "accents".

Answer 7

The accent shop

Answer 8

The accents are different all over the country and have evolved. Like Irish people, and Scottish people, who also speak English.

Answer 9

i don't have the accent you do... no just kidding the accents depend on which part of america you live in the longer you're there the more you talk like those you're around the most

Answer 10

Actually, we talk normally. Some British nobility got together and decided to alter the way they spoke. I promise this really happened. They thought the "r" at the end words were ugly, for instance. American English is actually closer to Shakespearean English than modern British English since it was changed afterwards.