I've always found linguistics interesting. How did different languages develop and within that how did different speech patterns or accents develop around the world?
Now I do admit to be someone who simply loves learning and I think because of that random thoughts go through my mind that I would like answers to. One of these random thoughts came to me about a week ago and ever since I've been looking into it.
When did North America "lose" its British accent? Why do Americans and Canadians sound so different from Britons? After all, those who colonized North America were primarily British, so why do we sound so vastly different.
I know this isn't overly pertinent to the world today, but it's just one of those things that made me want to know and I'm sure if one person's questioned it then others have maybe thought about it as well.
So, why does North America English sound so vastly different than what we think of as English, English?
Obviously accents develop and permeate certain areas. We listen to people who have a southern drawl or unique Newfoundland inflections and realize even within North America there are extremely different versions of what English sounds like?
It's apparently true that at the time of the American Revolutionary War a divide between North American English and European English developed, but as it turns out, according to various references, our English is actually closer to what old English would have sounded like.
It was apparently in the 19th Century that the upper and upper-middle classes began to speak with different inflections as a way to display their status in society within England. Even today people across North America may sometimes say that British people sound like snobs because of their accent, it sounds "posh" or high class. Which, I guess is safe to say because that was the intention; however, this eventually caught on and carried across all classes in Britain though there is still a great divide across the country of how people speak due to other factors as well. This is the same idea as someone in Iowa sounding vastly different than someone from the south in the United States.
In fact all accents change over time and linguists can actually trace back to where languages initially started using where they vary the most because the more variation means the longer it has been in an area.
There are still accents in England which are rhotic, meaning the "r" in words are pronounced almost emphatically like we do in North America, while many are non-rhotic meaning the word may be spelled with an "r" but it's almost like it doesn't exist when speaking. For example the word garden, in Canada (generally), we say gaRden not ga'den and caR not ca'.
Though there are exceptions, take the Boston accent from the United States for instance where the non-rhotic accent is the norm. A theory to account for this is because the northeastern states were in closer contact to Britain and therefore when the change in accent was developing "across the pond" people in America began to adopt this class signifier.
The reason why it didn't spread like the new accent in England is because people in America were drastically spread out from each other and not heavily concentrated in cities like the Old World where the Industrial Revolution was in full swing. People in the New World were living in the country, working the land, and very likely too tired to really concern themselves with something like this. Thus, someone from Boston is a mash-up of the old English accent and the new status defining British accent.
In relation to this, an American linguist in the 1970s developed the idea that the dominant people in a community can ultimately be trendsetters from fashion to the community's accent. Thus, because those in North America were spread out and not concentrated in cities like those in England the fad of the upper classes didn't take hold amongst the population.
In the end historical linguists conclude that English spoken in the states of Maine and West Virginia are closest to pre-19th Century English and the British accent we hear today is relatively new.
