When Did Americans Lose Their British Accents?

[TTL News 308]

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English colonists established their first permanent settlement in the New World at Jamestown, Virginia, in 1607, sounding very much like their countrymen back home. By the time we had recordings of both Americans and Brits some three centuries later (the first audio recording of a human voice was made in 1860), the sounds of English as spoken in the Old World and New World were very different. We're looking at a silent gap of some 300 years, so we can't say exactly when Americans first started to sound noticeably different from the British.

As for the "why," though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don't pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, the English, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent. We don't know much more about said accent, though. Various claims about the accents of the Appalachian Mountains, the Outer Banks, the Tidewater region and Virginia's Tangier Island sounding like an uncorrupted Elizabethan-era English accent have been busted as myths by linguists. 

 

Read the rest here.

[Andy 70]

That’s a question I can say I’ve never ever thought of 

[MsKreed 1,185]

1 hour ago, TwinTiersLiving said:

As for the "why," though, one big factor in the divergence of the accents is rhotacism. The General American accent is rhotic and speakers pronounce the r in words such as hard. The BBC-type British accent is non-rhotic, and speakers don't pronounce the r, leaving hard sounding more like hahd. Before and during the American Revolution, the English, both in England and in the colonies, mostly spoke with a rhotic accent.

If I'm reading this correctly, this makes it sound like they believe it was the Brits whose accent changed, not Americans.

[Chris 2,169]

5 hours ago, MsKreed said:

If I'm reading this correctly, this makes it sound like they believe it was the Brits whose accent changed, not Americans.

That’s how I read it as well.

[Kevin 337]

A YouTube video by a linguist is so awesome when it talks about this topic. I will find it and post it below. It is just s small portion of a bigger presentation and I would like to find the full one, but never have.