how did the english colonists change accents?

Question

this may be a random question, but..

back whn the colonists came from britain, they had british accents, right? well, how come everyone lost their british accent after the colonization era????

im just curious

Answer 1

The key is to note that there was NEVER just one dialect or accent of American English NOR of British English

In colonial times there were FOUR main regional dialects -- which became the foundations for the main regional dialects we have today. Contrary to some popular ideas, the differences were NOT mainly due to the influence of other groups (immigrants from other nations, Native Americans). Instead, each of the regions was primarily populated by people from a DIFFERENT region of England.

That is, there were four distinct migrations of English speaking people to America during the colonial period (1607-1775), each coming mainly from a different part of the British Isles. Thus each of these groups brought their OWN culture, including ways of speaking.

Here are those four migrations:

1. New England - Puritan Migrations (1629-40) from East Anglia
2. Coastal South (Virginia to Florida) -Cavalier Migrations (1642-1675) from South England
3. New Jersey, Pennsylvania - Quaker migrations (1675-1725) from the Midlands area of England (near Wales)
4. Appalachian English - Scots-Irish migrations (1715-1775), mostly English people from Britain's Celtic fringe (North England, Northern Ireland)

For a nice summary of each of these and how their language affected modern American English, as well as some of the other factors that helped to shape the dialects, check out the notes at this link:
http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vajda/ling201/test3materials/AmericanDialects.htm

Compare also the following article. It oddly only mentions three of the dialects, but the explanation is helpful:
http://www.uta.fi/FAST/US1/REF/bgnotes.html

There is also a fine book by David Hackett Fisher, called *Albion's Seed* which describes not just the language (in fact, not mainly that), but ALL the distinct "folkways" of each of these four groups. . . and examples of how these can be seen in later American history.

____________________________________

By the way, the distinct ENGLISH dialects themselves also go way back. Apparently, from the very beginnings of Old English there were distinct groups and dialects as the 'founders' of the language migrated from mainland Europe from different places at different times. (That is, there has NEVER been just ONE English language.) For more on this, check out the intro and first chapter of *The Stories of English* by David Crystal (the choice of "stor-iES" instead of "story" is very deliberate.) A brief discussion of THESE dialects and the factors that explain them may be found at the beginning of the web page I cited first above.

Answer 2

People don't so much lose their accents as they gain someone elses. If you go spend a few months in Australia, or New Zealand or England, there's no doubt you'll come back, with a bit of their accent instilled in your voice and phrases instilled in your speech. But as time goes on, you'll be talking with friends and family who don't have the australian accent and you will quickly lose your new accent. As for losing the British Accent from the colonists, no one really knows what they sounded like back then. We assume they sounded like the English do now (which varies GREATLY depending on what part of England someone is from) but there is no sure way of telling. The only thing we know is that their use of language and grammer were much different. Another common theme among language is that when people seperate themselves from others in small groups or seperate colonies, they tend to develop their own accent or language. This also may have happened during the colonization. Just look at the USA alone, how many different accents are present there.

Answer 3

There were three factors involved. (1) isolation from the larger group, (2) different climate, and (3) foreign influences on the accents.

Others have covered 1 and 3. #2 is my favorite. The colder winters in New England influenced the New England accent and lifestyle. Because it was cold, people tended to speak quickly and they moved quickly. You can get awfully cold pretty quick there.

In the South the pace of life was much slower due to the hot weather and people were not in a hurry to finish what they were saying.

In the West (1800s) cowboys developed a drawl because they weren't in a hurry either. It also gave them sufficient time to think.

In Minnesota where it is still really cold in the winter, people tend to talk as little as possible.

Oh, and then there's California. Because California is where most TV serials are made and most movies, the California accent has become the accepted one. We also get California slang inflicted on us regularly. Just gag me!

By the way, the influence of television in Britain has caused the cockney accent to disappear. Children are learning how to talk from TV instead of from their parents. Frightening.

Answer 4

First of all, almost every accent in the US can be traced back to an English regional accent (especially the southern ones). But overtime, because of its relative isolation from the mother tongue, pronunciations changed. They were changing in England too, just in different ways. (In other words, the accent the English had in 1775 was not the same as the accents they have now.) Add to that the additions over several centuries of languages, dialects, and inflections from other parts of the world (Yiddish in New York, for example, or Norwegian in Minnesota), and you've got the hodgepodge of accents and dialects that now make up the American language-scape.

Answer 5

I heard from my English Professor at UCLA that colonies keep their accents better than the mother countries. So...that means that we sound more like the Brits used to sound and they've modified their accents. Can you imagine Shakespeare with a Valley Girl Accent?

Also, America was populated by British, Irish, German...etc. The accents melded a bit. Voila! American!

The Southern Accent is probably the truest accent, historically.

Although, if you watch old movies...the stars sounded very british!