Did America’s Founders Have English Accents?
Below is a fascinating discussion of something I have long wondered about – did America’s founding fathers have English accents?
Reading David McCullough’s 1776, I found myself wondering: Did Americans in 1776 have British accents? If so, when did American accents diverge from British accents?
The answer surprised me.
I’d always assumed that Americans used to have British accents, and that American accents diverged after the Revolutionary War, while British accents remained more or less the same.
Americans in 1776 did have British accents in that American accents and British accents hadn’t yet diverged. That’s not too surprising.
What’s surprising, though, is that those accents were much closer to today’s American accents than to today’s British accents. While both have changed over time, it’s actually British accents that have changed much more drastically since then.
First, let’s be clear: the terms “British accent” and “American accent” are oversimplifications; there were, and still are, many constantly-evolving regional British and American accents. What many Americans think of as “the British accent” is the standardized Received Pronunciation, also known as “BBC English.”
The biggest difference between most American and most British accents is rhotacism. While most American accents are rhotic, the standard British accent is non-rhotic. (Rhotic speakers pronounce the ‘R’ sound in the word “hard.” Non-rhotic speakers do not.)
So, what happened?
In 1776, both American accents and British accents were largely rhotic. It was around this time that non-rhotic speech took off in southern England, especially among the upper class. This “prestige” non-rhotic speech was standardized, and has been spreading in Britain ever since.
Most American accents, however, remained rhotic.
There are a few fascinating exceptions: New York and Boston accents became non-rhotic, perhaps because of the region’s British connections in the post-Revolutionary War era. Irish and Scottish accents are still rhotic.
© 2010 Nick Patrick
Interestingly enough, the same can be said about the French language spoken in Europe, i.e. France, of course, Belgium and Switzerland, and in North America or specifically French Canada, mainly in the province of Quebec and in Acadia (L’Acadie), the name given by the first French settlers of the actual Canadian Maritimes provinces.
Well, not the rhotacism, but the fact that language seems to have somewhat “stopped” evolving in the colonies.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_language_in_Canada
And it may also be true of European and Brazilian Portuguese.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Portuguese
You’re misusing the word “accent”. An “accent” is one languages subtleties placed on another spoke language such as a “French Accent” or a “Russian Accent”. The word you actually want is “dialect” which is more about the differences within one language due to location or culture, such as a “British Dialect” or “Urban Dialect”
Dialect is very different though, I consider them accents. Dialects would be like Parisian French and Québécois. American English and British English different words, yes, but I don’t think there are enough of them to consider them dialects.
One’s accent is a dimention of one’s dialect. Two people can be speaking with the same grammar and vocabulary, thus using the same dialect, but have differing accents (the way they pronounce words). Of course, distinct accents tend to be associated with distinct dialects, and vice versa.
I am learning a lot from this, thanks very much!
Also you can find the same phenomenon among spanish speakers. The fact that ex-colonies are bigger than its former metropoli shouldn’t confuse us. With much fewer population density, the isolation slows down the speech from evolving. In America is common to hear the word “gaveta”, and in Spain it has been replaced for “caj´´on” (sorry, the accent mark doesn’t work properly). The same with “vos” (=t´´u, usted) the word for english “you”. In later middle age, there was no references about different accents in Portugal, Castilla or Catalunya.
Nonsense…utter nonsense.
Sorry, but I need A LOT more proof to make me believe that the English accent we know today (British doesnt exist, hence the English language, and not Welsh or Scottish) is really only 200 years old as far as accents are concerned.
Shakespeare just turned in his grave. Id like to explain myself more but Bill Maher is on and im a little sleepy.
As I understand it, the way scholars approximate pronunciation from before recording devices relates a lot to how people speaking other languages recorded, in their vernacular, names, introduced words, etc. or writers within that language mocking the pronunciation of others (an example I can think of is J. R. R. Tolkien mocking working-class pronunciation of “jewels,” which is how he pronounced it- ‘jew-els,’ whereas working class people, and most Americans, pronounced it ‘jools.’
And English as spoken in Elizabethan times versus Colonial times is a big enough difference that Shakespeare might have been turning in his grave 250 years ago.
The actual fact is that English as a whole is based on old West Germanic (the same language modern German is rooted from) and it is VERY rhotic and gutteral. The fact English was first spoken in England and they are the farthest off from their roots in both pronunciations of basic phonology only leads more credit to this. Accents are not the only part of a dialect this is a fact but British English and American English do have enough differences in basic lexicon to be considered dialects in just the basic and general sense. We wont even bring in all the various subdialects in each area.
I have always wondered how people in the Southern states ended up with an accent so different from the Northern states. The same thing happened in Canada with people on the east coast speaking with a “Newfie Accent” They say the east coast Canadian accent comes from Irish and Scottish decent but most white North Americans come from British heritage so why the wide variety of regional dialects?
Uh, I saw this story all most word for word two years ago in Smithsonian Magazine. Thanks for the repost. The original was better.
Thanks for posting not one but TWO totally fucking retarded comments jackass.
I posted the story here because I thought it was interesting, I make no claims of authorship on it.
And since this post has gotten half a million hits, clearly other people find it interesting too.
Do independent research? This is a blog I do in my spare time, not a fucking research paper. But for what it’s worth, I included the actual author’s name on the bottom TO CLEARLY INDICATE IT WAS NOT WRITTEN BY ME, which I would have guessed anyone with half a brain could have figured out since the article was written by a man and my name is SOPHIA.
Fuck off asshole.
Ouch! I write this comment with a healthy fear of getting royally cussed out, in order to tell you that royally cussing out your readers on your own blog is terribly bad form. I lost every shred of respect I had for this blog as soon as I saw this scathing reply.
Don’t be such a pussy. If you have something to say, then say it.
Oh and by the way, I don’t need some bossy prick like you to tell me what’s “bad form” on the internet. This blog is all about bad form. If you don’t like it, go fuck yourself.
And I took the trouble to look it up on NPR. Came out the same time as the “Adams” mini-series on HBO about American speech at the time of the founding fathers. Yep, it was virtually the same as this article.
Start doing independent research and not republishing other peoples work, wanker!
Holy shit asshole, of course this is a reprint, that’s why it has the author’s name and copyright date on the bottom.
Go fuck yourself, WANKER.
Stay classy.
Because everyone knows the internet is nothing but classy.
If this is an interesting topic for you, you should try to find a copy of a tv program made in the 80s called “The Story of English”. It covers just about every possible route our language took from creation to the modern (1980s) era.
Good article, though there is some research which looks at the way rhyming in poetry has changed over the years suggests that a modern Belfast accent is maybe the closest accent to that spoken in Elizabethan time and beyond. There are two great books which chart these and other oddness of the English language I can recommend.
Bill Bryson’s Mother Tongue
*If you like his “fascinating bloke in a pub” style*
Melvyn Brag’s Adventures in English
*Similar Content though a little dryer*
Both are excellent.
Wow, nice work. I love your material, you are talented.
Thanks Boris, I appreciate the compliment!
Only two of the ‘founding fathers’ were actually born in England
from the useless information department sponsored by wikipedia
Demographics
Brown (1976) and Harris (1969) provide detailed demographic information on each man.
* Most of the 1787 delegates were natives of the Thirteen Colonies. Only 9 were born elsewhere: four (Butler, Fitzsimons, McHenry, and Paterson) in Ireland, two (Davie and Robert Morris) in England, two (Wilson and Witherspoon) in Scotland, and one (Hamilton) in the West Indies.
* Many of them had moved from one state to another. Seventeen individuals had already lived or worked in more than one state or colony: Baldwin, Bassett, Bedford, Dickinson, Few, Franklin, Ingersoll, Hamilton, Livingston, Alexander Martieno, Luther Martin, Mercer, Gouverneur Morris, Robert Morris, Read, Sherman, and Williamson.
* Several others had studied or traveled abroad.
I think it’s obvious that dialects spoken in colonial America probably sounded very much like the contemporary English dialects. What’s more interesting to me is how those various accents would sound now, compared to their 21st century versions.
An interesting fact about Real football vs American Football. Football is named because it is played with a sphere, a ball, and only kicking is allowed, aside from the goalkeeper. American football is named because the ball used is a foot long, until it was changed in the 70s or 80s to 10″.
Another thing, I hope that American people see and learn about a sport called Rugby. I know alot of American people call English people ‘wimpy’ because of football, but Rugby is american football without the armour,a saying from here in England is, ‘Football is a game for nobleman played by louts, Rugby is a game for louts played by nobleman.’
because Rugby is a physical contact sport, everything from broken backs to knocked out teeth is commonplace in Rugby, because of the lack of armour.
Sir, If you bothered to learn anything about American Football – You would know That it is a contest where a bunch of guys in tight pants stand around for most of the day gathering endorsement deals. Every 30 minutes or so they line up facing the other team and proceed to headbutt each other to increase their roid rage which in turn promotes civility, generosity, and genuine role model behavior both on and off the field.
Interesting article, even if it is a properly cited repost.
dude was a tool so just ignore him.
I’d also like to add that it is impressive the comment string has made it this far with so little of an USA vs. UK pissing contest. (with exception to someone beating the rugby>american football dead horse.).
gonna go stumbling through some of your other blog posts.
Thanks for posting a sensible comment, I really do appreciate it.
If this is true, how do you explain the Australian accent? Considering Australia’s founding around the same time combined with a rather independent development, how does one explain the thick, non-rhotic, semi-British accent carried by those people?
Another thing I’d always wondered is when American English and British English started to be spelt different; ex: honour/honor, neighbour/neighbor, ect. My understanding of what happened is that American English was the original British spelling which changed later on in Britain and her colonies. American spelling didn’t change because by the time the Brits spelling had been changed they had already fought and lost against the US in the war of independence.
Being Australian there are unique things from both American and British english that have developed here, mostly due to American TV, Film and music. Some of the country pronounce controversy as the Americans do while others, like myself, mostly use british.
Also Patches I think the large difference between Australian and American accents is, that apart from English accents already starting to sound different to American after the Independence War was over in an attempt to sound more French, most of our families that came to Aus were convicts and heavily Irish, Scotish or lower class English. A lot of the Irish accent can be heard as can the cockney, the slang we use is a large indication of cockney in rhyming slang.
Please raise your hand if you are at least a 3rd generation American who is 100% English. No one? Weird.
I enjoyed the article and most of the comments. I do have a question/suggestion: If you don’t have the ability to screen or delete ignorant comments like Algonquin J. Calhoun’s, you may want to consider letting your readers defend you, and just only responding to the positive feedback. We all know that the internet is befouled with angry, uneducated, rude people. You are above that, you know. Just wanted to remind you. =)
Thanks…
Hmm it appears like your blog ate my first comment (it was extremely long) so I guess I\’ll just sum it up what I submitted and say, I\’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I as well am an aspiring blog writer but I\’m still new to everything. Do you have any tips for newbie blog writers? I\’d certainly appreciate it.
My advice to aspiring writers? Start a blog and write stuff. Constantly. All the time. Write write write.