English! Who talks funny?

[Fisherking]

Whilst (and writing that reminds me of her post here http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.bl...06/whilst.html) it is good to remember English shouldn't be used as a synonym for British, describing England as a small part of the UK is an exaggeration. Wikipedia gives 2006 population figures showing England as having 83.8% of the total UK population

Thank you Flavius Clemens for the links!

Sorry to trim your post a bit but I wanted to apologize if I offended anyone with the comment.

That was mostly directed to our Australian college.


It was meant Geographically and it seems to get smaller all the time. Wales doesn’t wish to be included and Cornwall seems to have its own separatist movement…

At any rate a Yorkshire man and a Devonshire man do speak the same language, but in much different ways…Deciding which of them is more English would insult one of both, wouldn’t you say?

The Scotts once claimed there version as Scottish and forbade the speaking of the Irish-Language (Gaelic) in public places.

[InsaneApache]

I may talk the same language as a Devonian but the dialect and accent (emphesis) is vastly different.

Si thi.

[Flavius Clemens]

The simple answer is of course I don't have an accent and I speak properly (or should that be 'talk proper' or 'prop'ly' or...)

Although mass media and mobility have evened out some differences it's still true that travelling 30 miles in Britain you can find yourself hearing a distinctly, if subtly, different accent.

And no offence taken FisherKing!

[InsaneApache]

Some dialect.

Weez gaffer? = Can you direct me to the propieter of this establishment.

Ah teld him bur he wooden listen = I informed him of the situation but he payed no heed.

Stop lairkin = Please stop the horseplay.

Yur mard and mitherin bugger = You need to toughen up a bit and stop complaining old chap.

Nowt but yitten and nesh = You fail to reach the high expectations expected of you and what's more you are behaving like a little girl.

I'll think of some more.

[Fisherking]

The linguists of today do believe they can deduce what English sounded like at different periods.

Without getting into all of the particulars of a complex subject they have deduced, baring regional variances that the language would have sounded, at least to my ear from the descriptions I have read, much like that portrayed in the Beverly Hillbillies. Words like join and poison would have sounded to us like jine and pison.

One of the descriptions I read, attributed to Robert Burchfield, also stated that George Washington would have sounded much like Lord North, but Lord North would have sounded much more American in his speech. North would have pronounced path and bath in the American way. He would have given necessary its full value. He would have given r’s their full value in words like cart and horse. And he would have used many words that later fell out of use in England but were preserved in the New World.

In early 1791, Dr. David Ramsay, one of the first American Historians, noted in his book The History of the American Revelation that Americans had a particular purity of speech, which he attributed to the fact that people from all over Britain were thrown together in America where they dropped the peculiarities of their several provincial idioms, retaining only what was fundamental and common to them all.

Odd words were what early America was noted for not odd ways of speaking the language. But then again some of those odd words were words simply gone old fashioned in England.

[Strike For The South]

Indiana. They speak on an even keel.

[AggonyDuck]

In early 1791, Dr. David Ramsay, one of the first American Historians, noted in his book The History of the American Revelation that Americans had a particular purity of speech, which he attributed to the fact that people from all over Britain were thrown together in America where they dropped the peculiarities of their several provincial idioms, retaining only what was fundamental and common to them all.

Odd words were what early America was noted for not odd ways of speaking the language. But then again some of those odd words were words simply gone old fashioned in England.

What Ramsay is describing is a rather common linguistic phenomenom called dialect levelling. When a group of people with different dialects settle in the same area, it is common that the dialects start converging towards a new standard. It's also what initially took place in America, but as the US continued growing in both size, population and minorities dialectal diversity increased as well.

As to the deduction of speech; yes you might be able to deduce pronunciation from written sources, but this still ignores the fact that English of the 17th and 18th century had considerable regional variation. That said I could accept the claim that the variety of English, that arose in the American colonies, could be relatively close to the speech of those Beverly Hillbillies. After all isolated areas, like some areas in the Appalachians, tend to experience considerably slower linguistic change than commercial, cultural and transportational centers.

[Fisherking]

What Ramsay is describing is a rather common linguistic phenomenom called dialect levelling. When a group of people with different dialects settle in the same area, it is common that the dialects start converging towards a new standard. It's also what initially took place in America, but as the US continued growing in both size, population and minorities dialectal diversity increased as well.

As to the deduction of speech; yes you might be able to deduce pronunciation from written sources, but this still ignores the fact that English of the 17th and 18th century had considerable regional variation. That said I could accept the claim that the variety of English, that arose in the American colonies, could be relatively close to the speech of those Beverly Hillbillies. After all isolated areas, like some areas in the Appalachians, tend to experience considerably slower linguistic change than commercial, cultural and transportational centers.

Every source I can find, not nearly or most but every, states that North American English retains the older forms of the language.

As you have stated, isolated groups tend to preserve their speech forms more than those in dynamic trade centers. Estuary English certainly fits that dynamic profile.

All of North America received less than 20,000 immigrants per year until the mid 1800s. They came from two places, England and Africa, likely the larger part from Africa. (African American is a non-retroflex speech)

Most North American speech is rhotic, as English was in most places in the 17th century. Rhoticity was further supported by Hiberno-English and Scottish English as well as the fact most regions of England at this time also had rhotic accents. In most varieties of North American English, the sound corresponding to the letter r is a retroflex [?] or alveolar approximant [?] rather than a trill or a tap.

Many of the differences between American and Southern British are because of innovations in Southern British. The sound r was lost (except before vowels) somewhere just under 200 years ago in London. This change spread out and is now established all across England except the south-west and East Anglia, and is also true of the Southern Hemisphere countries colonized in the last 200 years. So American resembles Irish in being a rhotic accent (one having r everywhere) because they are both survivors of the original situation that 300 years ago prevailed everywhere in England.

Again, the American can't with the same vowel as can reflects the original English, and it's England that's innovated to the ah vowel. This can be approximately dated by noting that Australia etc also say kahnt; but similar changes in dance, plant happened in England after the settlement of Australia, where they have not been taken up: the can vowel in common between American and Australian dance is also what was said in London 200 years or so ago.

Considerable detail can be found in The Cambridge History of the English Language Volume 6: English in North America, a book I haven't seen, but there's a good thorough review of it at
http://cf.linguistlist.org/cfdocs/ne...cfm?SubID=4807

The same can be seen when you compare Brazil and Portugal…it was Portugal that changed.

[AggonyDuck]

It is quite impossible to compare which standard of pronunciation (General American or RP/Estuary English) is more similar to Early Modern English. This is due to two factors; firstly, we have no proper evidence of how words were pronounced in the 17th century, so we can only speculate and secondly, Early Modern English was atleast as linguistically varied as the English spoken around the world today.

The problem with the whole question is that there was no original Early Modern English standard, especially in speech, just as there is no real standard in speech these days. Even written standardisation started first with William Caxton's decision to print books in the Midlands variety of Early Modern English, thus making it the most influential variety of written English. If are dead-set on making your comparison, then comparison of written language is the only perfectly possible method due to the existence of source material and something of a standard from the 16th century onward.

[Juvenal]

I recall watching a TV documentary series on the subject of the diaspora of English dialects. It must have been a good 10-15 years ago, but it left a strong impression on me. I don't recall the name of the presenter (who was also the writer), but I think he was American or maybe Canadian.

The series began in a community of clam fishermen on the USA eastern seaboard. They spoke with an accent very close to the Cornish accent in England today - quite a shock to my pre-conceived notions about US accents garnered from the output from Hollywood.

I learned from the series that modern English accents are substantially derived from the timing and the nature of the people who made up the bulk of the original migrants from the British Isles.

When England first established its American colonies in what is now the South, the prevalent English dialect was close to the modern West Country. The familiar Southern drawl is a development of this, while the clam fishermen speak a less altered form.

The New England colonisation came to a large extent from people living in the East Midlands and East Anglia (religious non-conformists). Even today, this area has a very different accent to West Country, and the distinctive New England accent is a development of it.

The "Hill-Billy" accent was also examined, and this is closely related to the modern Ulster accent, thanks to the great numbers of "Scotch-Irish" who settled that region.

Moving on to the New Commonwealth, the Australian accent seems to stem from Irish and (Cockney) London roots (thanks to the great numbers of transportees). New Zealand and South African English also seem to be London-accent based, although from a later wave of immigration (South African being strongly influenced by the Dutch of the Voortrekkers).

Meanwhile English accents in Britain have changed, as described earlier, we seem to be emerging now from the strait-jacket of Received Pronunciation (BBC English), and there is a flowering of different dialects appearing on TV these days.

...The Scotts once claimed there version as Scottish and forbade the speaking of the Irish-Language (Gaelic) in public places.

The original language of the Scots was Gallic (a derivative of Gaelic, since the Scotti tribes originated in Ulster). But this was later supplanted by an English dialect called "Lowland Scots", which is what is mainly spoken today.

This change was due to the internal power-struggle between the Gallic Magnates and the Stewart dynasty in the 15/16th Century, nothing to do with the English.

[Fisherking]

The original language of the Scots was Gallic (a derivative of Gaelic, since the Scotti tribes originated in Ulster). But this was later supplanted by an English dialect called "Lowland Scots", which is what is mainly spoken today.

This change was due to the internal power-struggle between the Gallic Magnates and the Stewart dynasty in the 15/16th Century, nothing to do with the English.

Some of what I have read on the subject of the Scotts dialect place it far far back in time. The people of the Lowlands are not necessarily the Dál Riata of the Highlands. The are a mixture of the old Britton tribes and North Umbrians. It is at least as old as the rest of the English spoken and many of its oddities are due to its development in other ways and not to the Gaelic influences to the north. The farther back you go, the greater the differences.

It is true the Stuarts banned Gaelic and the TV program was presented by a Canadian, though the origin may have be American.

[lars573]

All I have to say on funny accents is this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3m-y-qAbpL0

[Fisherking]

A New Foundland dialect?

There are some strange elements in there!

[lars573]

That's about the thickest form of Newfoundlander you could possibly find. Canada like anyother country has regional accents. What most people would think of as Canadian accent. Is really Ontario.

[Don Esteban]

That's about the thickest form of Newfoundlander you could possibly find. Canada like anyother country has regional accents. What most people would think of as Canadian accent. Is really Ontario.

Maybe it's just my perception but it seems to have lots in common with some really strong Irish accents. I've certainly never met any Canadian who actually sounds like that :)

[Megas Methuselah]

That's about the thickest form of Newfoundlander you could possibly find. Canada like anyother country has regional accents. What most people would think of as Canadian accent. Is really Ontario.

Yeah. A lot of Native Americans I know who live on the reserves have some really great accents. Even those who don't live on the reserves have it. I suppose they vary from band (tribe) to band.

Speaking of which, there's still some elders in the northern parts of Saskatchewan who still speak Cree as their first and only language...