Why don't Americans still have an English accent if everyone originally learned from English people?

Question

How did we lose this accent when every person who learned English through the generations was taught by people who had a "Brit" accent? The English haven't "lost their accent" over the ages!

Answer 1

Actually, the English HAVE lost their accent over the ages. All languages are constantly changing. Queen Elizabeth I would not sound at all like Queen Elizabeth II. You would recognize the different in their accents immediately. That's why American speech is different than English speech, because languages are constantly changing.

Answer 2

Thats not true; before the start of the 20th century, the English Language have chaged very much so. In fact the language is changing every day. Remember, an accent is not a language....even in England people speak in different accents. I still find it difficult to understand the folks from Liverpool.

Generally, the accent that most british folks speak in today was developed by the BBC early in the 20th century...but really, there's no real set accent; even in the small island of Grenada, there is a marked difference between folks from the north and folks from the south.

Answer 3

First of all, because languages evolve independently once a population becomes "isolated." Look at Australia! They originally learned from the Brits too. Second, NOT everyone learned English English, a good lot of it is Irish English, and that is the way the "r" is sounded in American English. Also the "a" sound words like "dance." Third, once the US became "isolated," certain expressions remained in use here but fell out of use in Britain- "it is a quarter of the hour." Sounds likes Shakespeare to most Brits now, doesn't it?

Answer 4

Well if you think that the foreigners that were taught English had a foreign accent when they spoke English...when they came to have their own children, perhaps they would have learned that strange accent too and passed it on to the next generation...plus there are so many regional accents in England, maybe it just developed over time! Who knows, its a mystery!

Answer 5

You may have it backwards, at least to one school of thought on the issue. Some scholars feel it's quite likely that the English spoken in say, New Hampshire, sounds closer to the English variety of the 17th & 18th century than the English spoken by Elizabeth II. (By the way, her own accent & English usage has changed over the last 40 years.)

Answer 6

Darwin once said.Humans conform to change e.g if man were to live in sea for long period of time he would develop fins to help him survive .Very much likewise is the case here.We know that America was originally the first 13 colonies colonised by mainly British and to a certain extend other Europeans and black slaves.They have lost no time in adopting the same culture and accent and lifes present in their homeland.The English that is
However the revolutionary war soon started and soon America kicked the British asses out so it was then that nationalism, pride and their way of life began to change them.They must have thought why must we adopt foreign accent when we should have lost their one and so gradually they began to lose it by decrentalising from their way of life before.I realised how the change in human background truly changes changes the way of life.This change did not take place immediately.Genetically speaking most of them were English and were bound to speak in that manner in such a way since the genes programme what we do.However human evolution is so great that we can programm ourselves to change things that we were bonded to Take for example Japanese and the Chinese who are so close but by a mere fraction in theiir strand of their DNA
To come back soon their offsprings were brought up in a Americanised way of life and culture and very much influenced it.Hence from the next generation to the next ,americans began to lose their formal accent and today a new one is born
Once their genes realised that they were being exposed to a different way of life , the genes had to programmed to suit that
The Englsih accent is pure and original in that sense as it was the first accent that was founded by the original prople the Celtics, druids and so on.As the British began to build their British empire all across Asia,Africa and America.People had to learn Englsih which was something very foreign to them .Hence at that point they learnt it straight away It is not fair to say everyone who learned English from a British had developed the British accent.It was rather the combination of several factors such as genetic ,cultural nationalism, believe in their homeland

To sum it all up ,it was due to nationalism,pride ,culture and yes genetic shows why the American accent has evolved to such a unique accent that is recognisble to the world today

Answer 7

Because English has it origin in Britain, and its influences have been always the same, so the accent only changes a bit, in different zones, in America is different, because it was colonized by different countries, so the language isn't so pure, and in most cases the language doesn't evolutionate in the same way...

You may see the example of Spanish, is quite different in the South America countries, than in Spain, of course we understand each other, but in some cases is spoken as we (Spanish) used to speak in XVII century...

Answer 8

Because we have people from all over the world who learned English but, still had thier own accents. It just all blended together.

Answer 9

There are large variances in accents even in England. Accents are regional, not so much linguistical.

Answer 10

it varies from region to region here,,theres the new england ers that still cary some of the british accent
theres southerners that have thier own drawl
midwesterners sound different too