Did everyone in the Old West have an accent?

Question

Just curious, in movies that are period pieces in the Old West, does EVERYONE have a western accent, or were some people back then speaking with what is considered a 'neutral' American accent? Perhaps people who were considered "upper class"?

I know, weird question, but any input is appreciated.

Answer 1

Of course everyone had an accent.

If you are British, everyone in the Americas have accents. In the Old West, there were people from many, many nations as we were a developing country of immigrants. There were very few people born and raised there until it wasn't the Old West any more but a developed area.

So yes, everybody had accents of some kind since there would have been English, Irish, Scottish, Spanish, German, Chinese, Italian, African, Native American.... the list goes on...




g-day!

Answer 2

The Old West was a Melting Pot with a splendid array of accents tickling the senses. Immigrants from all over The World mingling with 'native' born Americans. It is difficult to exactly 'how' people spoke way back before the recording of speech. Western Movies once were dominated by American Accents - - - Gary Cooper and John Wayne and Randolf Scott and Joel McCrae spoke plainly simply often a simple Yup or Mah- ham, or 'Draw yer Gun.' Up through the 1950's in movies American was spoken, then toward the late fifties early sixties 'Revisionist' Westerns rolled in and suddenly actors were encoruaged to go
accent happy; heavy duty THESPIANS such as Marlon Brando and Karl Malden and Richard Burton and Richard Harris strutted about inventing all sorts of amusing gobblygook, especially Marlon whose movies now need closed-captioning... It also became the norm to have the villain be either English or German and so more accents 'popped' up... The worse 'offence' in modern 2007 Western Movies is that an actor with an 'English' Accent supposedly sounds more like an American from the Old West?

Where 'they' got that is beyond understanding. As for the Real American West and in America in General, there was no 'one accent other than that of learned speech, in fact before the leveling power of radio & televsion Regional Speech was common and humorist made great play out of the fact that one needed a translater to get about easilly.

If you want a good guide to how people most likely talked 'back then,' 'trust' John Ford, especially Stagecoach,' where Wayne speaks clearly briefly distinctly Middle American and another actor, Carradine, speaks as a Man of the South, also see Howard Hawk Westerns though he too took the revisionist bit between the teeth and 'allowed' encouraged Walter Brennan to 'ape' Marlon Brando.

A final note - - - accents from around the World // Irish Brouge, Svedish Ja & Unkle, Deutch/German and Spanish were all heard 'Out West,'; which was actually in the middle between the Missipppi and California......

Peace.....

Answer 3

Before the standardization of American colloquial speech, due to radio, movies and television, everyone everywhere had an accent, not just in the Old West. We're a nation of many cultures and histories and it was reflected in our dialects and speech patterns, no matter where we went.
Movies about the Old West generally have everyone speaking "western" for the sake of convenience---over the last few decades, western movies have used several different accents & dialects--"Silverado" and "Unforgiven" are good examples, as is HBO's masterful "Deadwood" series.

Answer 4

Even now, everyone has an accent. A californian has a destinctive accent as a southern drawl or irish lilt.

In the frontier days of the American west , manefist destiny attracted thousands of immigrants to America. Everybody talked diffrent languages and accents and everything.

Answer 5

Not weird at all.

As most of the people settling the Old West were from disparate places, I'd say there were several accents - Spanish, Irish, Chinese, Swedish, English, Argentinian. It ix my understanding that Western settlers were mainly the middle class, poor or the second sons who didn't stand to inherit the family estate and of course fortune seekers of all backgrounds during the Gold Rush of 1849.

Answer 6

People spoke with various accents. The movies extremely exaggerate the spoken word in order to help the audience believe the actors are genuine representations of the OLD WEST. It's all part of what is known as "the willing suspension of disbelief," something that movie makers and story tellers rely on the viewer or listener to do in order to be drawn into the experience.

I hope this helps.