When did Americans lose their British accents after the American Revolution?

Answer 1

American accents probably began to evolve during the colonial period, before the Revolution..... and continued long after. Upon coming to the American colonies in the 1770s, British essayist, Thomas Paine, observed that the colonists were no longer culturally British. "Adrift in British America, Paine would discover a society about as wholly opposite to his accustomed ways in urban London as could be imagined."

The following websites offer theories about changing accents in America:
http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=409931
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/southern/sounds/
http://travel2.nytimes.com/2006/03/17/travel/escapes/17accent.html?pagewanted=all
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/alleng/dialect/dialect.htm

And....... if that does not satisfy your curiosity.... consider these websites, which claim that even ducks, monkeys, and dogs have accents...... and you can take that for what it's worth. LOL
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s1124782.htm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/3775799.stm
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/12/1228_051228_monkey_accents.html?source=rss
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16697019&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=barking---name_page.html

Answer 2

Before, You're under the impression that all Americans were from England !n 1751 My ancestor scotch , Irish Indian agent married to Cherokee maiden convinced Indians to fight against the Americans.They already had a broken accent that was peculiar to the colonies, the french, German and Spanish added theirs, as did the Dutch. Even today There are vast differences in American accents none of which resemble British. Parts of each state differ with their own slang.Every second generation American from every country has an accent recognizable to Americans as being from those country but different than natives of their countries.

Answer 3

This might be precise. If you first got here from England you then might have the british accessory...in case you got here from Ireland you might have an Irish accessory. Once we broke off, then our specific accents started to increase. In truth there's a idea that the intent we're all establishing to sound extra just like the midwesterners is that's the accessory we use on TV. If you believe approximately it, on TV possibly the neighborhood information may have the neighborhood accessory however, have you ever spotted that on countrywide information there's no one with a incredibly Bostonian accessory or Southern Accent. That is considering the fact that they have got the scoop men and women study to talk with extra of a midwestern accessory. Different accents increase through the years, in one more one hundred years all of us would sound fully specific than we do now. Maybe all of us may have extra of an Asian accessory or French accessory or Spanish accessory considering the fact that of the dynamics on the earth.

Answer 4

Britain doesn't have one accent but a number of regional accents. A lot of American settlement was done by English peasants with , regional accent, not your stereotypical southern received accent of London. It is difficult to access but it would seem that about 50% of res dents of America we born in Britain until the revolution. The Scottish clearances gave rise the Celtic lilt of Kentucky and Virginia. The Irish and German famines forced many Irish and Germans to the USA and modified the American accent. German would have added to the harshness of the American accent.The American accent has about 60% Irish in it, with modified with each wave of immigration. The southern American accent has a lot of ***** in it. The new york concrete saw accent has a lot of middle European in it. Canadian accents are not as harsh as American accents, it often sounds like someone who has immigrated from the USA for decades.
American uses many obsolete words that faded from modern English use, such as ; hog , maize and corn.
In short the drift happened in the 1800 and accelerated and was cemented by Miriam Websters

Answer 5

I agree with a lot of the other answers - but I would think Americans started losing their native accents before the Revolutionary war. The "colonies" had already been settled for nearly 200 years at that point in time.

Answer 6

What I heard was that we were 1 vote away from being a GERMAN speaking country. Remember New York was New Amsterdam first. So there were many "accents" here besides British. Large groups of people who split up into smaller groups and separate develop different accents and even languages. That's how Latin turned into French, Spanish,etc. And German split into 2, and one of those became English.

Answer 7

Not necessarily, I am a eighth generation Floridian and when I went through elementary and middle school (1990-1998) my peers and educators pinpointed me as British because of my so-called rare "aristocratic Southern accent." In New England, folks tend to boost a British accent (somewhat distorted) especially in Massachusetts (forgive my spelling on that state) and Rhode Island.

Answer 8

the US presidents in the early 1900s supposedly all had a slight British accent

Answer 9

Surprisingly more people had German accents at the time...

It never became the official language of the US (there never was the vote that some talked of)
I'm glad we didn't.

Answer 10

I've wondered that too.... I'd like to see if someone has a reasonable answer! And how did those weird southern accents come about?