Why do Americans and Brits have different accents?

[Mindful]

Have you ever listened to Texan German?

No. I thought no one speaks any longer German in the USA since world war 1 - except the Amish people.

I know they recite the scriptures in German.

Though there are pockets of German migrants in the US where they carry on the traditions, and even give a nod to the language. Not mainstream though.

Nothing in the German culture is a mainstream - all together is the stream. The Amish are the Amish - they have reasons for to be who they are. They are part of the US-American culture - that's what they like to be and that's what they are.

The idea of going to America is to leave what you were behind, and become something else.

The Amish went to the USA for to be able to stay what they are. This is not compatible with your idea about the USA. So what are the Amish in your point of view? A foreign object?

I see the Amish as 'different', but still quintessentially American.

Maybe I should have added previously, you can be what you want to be in the US.

 

[zaangalewa]

lol.

Aussies slur their words and use only two-thirds of their mouth to speak because early settlers spent most of their days DRUNK, academic says

• The Australian language developed because early settlers were often drunk
• Academic claims the constant slurring of words distorted the accent
• The average Australian speaks to just two thirds capacity
• The drunken speech has been passed down from generation to generation.

Read more: Australian accent developed by early settlers who spent most of their days drunk | Daily Mail Online

That's one of the most stupid theories I've ever heard in my life.

 

[zaangalewa]

No. I thought no one speaks any longer German in the USA since world war 1 - except the Amish people.

I know they recite the scriptures in German.

Though there are pockets of German migrants in the US where they carry on the traditions, and even give a nod to the language. Not mainstream though.

Nothing in the German culture is a mainstream - all together is the stream. The Amish are the Amish - they have reasons for to be who they are. They are part of the US-American culture - that's what they like to be and that's what they are.

The idea of going to America is to leave what you were behind, and become something else.

The Amish went to the USA for to be able to stay what they are. This is not compatible with your idea about the USA. So what are the Amish in your point of view? A foreign object?

I see the Amish as 'different', but still quintessentially American.

What now?

Maybe I should have added previously, you can be what you want to be in the US.

So if I like to become a Flamingo I have to go to the USA. Good to know.

 

[zaangalewa]

It is the standard British accent

I love the angst about Britain and England.

I never understand by the way what the people in the English speaking world try to say by using the German word "angst". Angst is an essential form of fear, very fundamental. All animals suffer angst. It's a psychological form of pain. Why did you not say "I love the fear about Britain and England"? Why did you use the word "angst"?

Some German words which have become common parlance in English, seem to sum things up so well. Like Doppelgänger for instance.

The English language is very accommodating towards the integration of foreign words.

¿Doppelgänger? Crazy. Why do you not integrate lots of expressions which have to do with logic or words like "Mensch" from the German language Yiddish for example? Why not the Danish word "Hygge"? Very important words. By the way: Nearly all words of the English language are Latin and German[ic] words. But you use a very strange form of German[ic] and Latin dialect.

 

[rightwinger]

I always wondered why we developed a distinct accent while England, S Africa, Austrailia all kept an English type accent

The have the same accent? ... Whooow. ... I remember two policemen who controlled me once in the good old times, when I made a walking tour in the night. They asked me for an ID card and I said to them "Sorry. I forgot my ID card at home. What's the problem?" One policeman said to me: "No problem." and to his colleague he said: "He speaks the dialect of the people from K-town not far form the center direction east. I guess he lives in the P-street." ... And he was right.

You all sound the same

 

[zaangalewa]

I always wondered why we developed a distinct accent while England, S Africa, Austrailia all kept an English type accent

The have the same accent? ... Whooow. ... I remember two policemen who controlled me once in the good old times, when I made a walking tour in the night. They asked me for an ID card and I said to them "Sorry. I forgot my ID card at home. What's the problem?" One policeman said to me: "No problem." and to his colleague he said: "He speaks the dialect of the people from K-town not far form the center direction east. I guess he lives in the P-street." ... And he was right.

You all sound the same

What sounds the same? ¿German?

 

[Moonglow]

I always wondered why we developed a distinct accent while England, S Africa, Austrailia all kept an English type accent

The have the same accent? ... Whooow. ... I remember two policemen who controlled me once in the good old times, when I made a walking tour in the night. They asked me for an ID card and I said to them "Sorry. I forgot my ID card at home. What's the problem?" One policeman said to me: "No problem." and to his colleague he said: "He speaks the dialect of the people from K-town not far form the center direction east. I guess he lives in the P-street." ... And he was right.

You all sound the same

So do the Hispanics...

 

[rightwinger]

Americans have a more understandable form of English than the Brits

 

[Picaro]

Many Southeastern US accents are closer to British English from the 16-1700s than British English is.

.

Indeed. Also Irish accents in parts of Appalachia still survive, and among such insular groups as Irish and English Travelers here. It's also interesting how easily British and Australian actors can do American accents so perfectly, which always fascinates me. I caught a Brit show on PBS not long ago and saw an actor that was a lead in an American sit com I watched occasionally a few years ago, playing a London police officer role in a British detective mystery series; I had no idea at all at the time he was a Brit.

there was also a small neighborhood in New Orleans where the 'natives' all had funky Brooklyn 'dese n dose' accents, though they had all been in NO as far as their family trees go back, another weird fact nobody could figure out why.

In any case, national TV has moderated accents all across the country now, and regionals are disappearing, sadly. I like accents, and never got the academic snobbery over getting rid of them.

 

[whitehall]

Up until around the mid 20th century isolated sections of the deep south were known to speak with a dialect similar to Elizabethan English and some areas still bear remnants of the old English in their speech patterns today. .

 

[Darkwind]

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.


Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?

Language evolves all the time. If you were to listen to spoken English from around 1000 B.C.E. you'd likely not be able to understand them.

Given that there are maybe a half-dozen accents in the USA, I don't really think that we can make any claim as to who diverged from whom.

 

[whitehall]

Mid 20th century New Yorkers with a good ear could tell the difference between Bronx, Manhattan and Brooklyn dialects.

 

[Unkotare]

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.


Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?

Laws against plagiarism haven't changed in a while. Quotation marks still work.

 

[Unkotare]

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.


Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?

Language evolves all the time. If you were to listen to spoken English from around 1000 B.C.E. you'd likely not be able to understand them.....

"Likely"? In 1000 BC there was no English, as you think of it.

 

[Unkotare]

Different accents developed for the same reason they always do: time, distance, and/or isolation. Maintain same for long enough and other things develop.

 

[Bob Blaylock]

Now let's figure out why in science fiction flicks, aliens think they're doing Shakespeare.

It's well known that Shakespeare was a Klingon, and that he wrote much of his work first in the Klingon language before he translated them to English.

 

[Mindful]

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.


Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?

Language evolves all the time. If you were to listen to spoken English from around 1000 B.C.E. you'd likely not be able to understand them.....

"Likely"? In 1000 BC there was no English, as you think of it.

Wonder what they did then.

Grunted and pointed. Like so many of our USMB members? (g)

 

[Mindful]

Straight out of Thomas Hardy.

 

[Frankeneinstein]

Now let's figure out why in science fiction flicks, aliens think they're doing Shakespeare.

 

[zaangalewa]

In 1776, whether you were declaring America independent from the crown or swearing your loyalty to King George III, your pronunciation would have been much the same. At that time, American and British accents hadn't yet diverged. What's surprising, though, is that Hollywood costume dramas get it all wrong: The Patriots and the Redcoats spoke with accents that were much closer to the contemporary American accent than to the Queen's English.

It is the standard British accent that has drastically changed in the past two centuries, while the typical American accent has changed only subtly.


Why Do Americans and Brits Have Different Accents?

Language evolves all the time. ...

Languages are not biological entities. Example: I do not need any mechanism of "evolution" to use the language "English". There's absolutely no need for me to use this language. And in the area of the USA the people lost competence in using foreign languages as well as the people there lost native languages. I guess the people in this area of the world are on the deepest level of the use of different foreign and native languages since Columbus had discovered India, which Martin Waldseemüller and his team started to call once "America".