Development of Accents Over History

[Bringer Of Storms]

I was having a debate with a friend over how an accent comes to be.

He argued that the language that a group of people would speak would shape their voices into what we would call an accent. That the reason we American's do not share our British founder's accents is largely due to all of the immigration to America, that after mixing every nationality in the world, you were left with what we know as a typical American accent.

While the idea of a multitude of accents mixing to create one sounded plausible, and the fact that a language would play a large role in the development of an accent sounded credible as well, I couldn't quite accept it.

I countered with the fact that the Irish, Scottish, and British all speak English, but they have differing accents. As far as I know, those three countries were not impacted by immigration as much as America, so I don't see that as an answer to the question. Then I went back to the topic of American accents. The Northern and Southern hemispheres of America have completely different accents. Within that even, different states sometimes have different accents. I live in Wisconsin, and whenever I travel to a state far from my own, people point out that I add an emphasis to my "O" sounds. Then you have some of your typical Boston accents and such. The list is far from short.

Now I understand the fact that you pick up the accent that you grow up around, but how did all of these accents originate? While the language and immigration theory seemed like the answer, how did all of these "mini" accents, so to say, pop up? What during the course of history shaped the way we speak?

[Darkhorse]

I remember reading a very long time ago something that said that Americans originally spoke with an accent similar to how British people spoke at the time, and once British influence shrunk the accents ceased to develop how British ones have and the American accents developed down a different path adding in the influences of immigration, [continued]simplified language, and the native population. How correct that is I don't know I'm afraid.

[Blarni]

It's also due to the fact that the British isles have a broad range of very distinctive accents, ranging from London to 'Scots-Irish'. In the Americas these mixed together to form the basis of the accent with of course regional variations. The same process occurred in Australia and New Zealand more recently. American is more heavy on the Rs than those two accents because that was generally characteristic of southern and especially western English and Ireland speech in the formulative time of the 1600s/early 1700s.

I know there a some non-British influences on regional American accents, but these seem pretty minimal, I imagine because the 13 colonies were overwhelming British in their population (Germans for example were only 2% of the population at the time of the revolution), at the formulative time of American dialects. Otherwise standard US english would be considerably more different to standard UK than it is (btw only thinking aloud here, can't back that up).

[Future Filmmaker]

The current prevailing theory is that the American accent is descended from a northwestern accent in Britain that is now extinct.

The classical, distinct souther accent - which has very many distinguishable variations from Texan, Cajun, Appalachian (which is almost unintelligible), Deep South, and the 'refined' upper-class southern accent of the Carolinas and Virginia (compare the way Robert Duvalle speaks to the way Powers Booth speaks - one from Virginia, one from Texas) seem to have something to do with the large population of Scots-Irish in the South.

[athanaric]

Geographical isolation and "natural" changes over generations are important. Also substrata and different foreign influences. In America, native toponyms (and other loanwords) come to mind, as well as some Spanish influence.

[jbersie]

The boston accent almost seems like it is moving towards its own dialect as when i travel the country people have trouble understanding half of the words i say

[Vítor Gaspar]

People live in communities. These communities may or not be that closed. There's never an absolute open community neither there is an absolute closed community.

The "mistakes" and "misspells" and "ways of saying" inside communities tend to be perpetuated by the next generations, which learned to speak with their elders, and so more isolated communities tend to develop more different accents.

Lisbon Portuguese is an accent on its own, yet it widely spoken throughout the country, being confused with the term "European Portuguese". That happens when a community is so strong that it sort of "overlaps" other communities. The strength of a community over others explains why not every town has a different accent. Sometimes a community will prevail over other and make it the "standard accent" everywhere in a limited area.

American English and American Portuguese (in Brazil and Uruguay) developed their own accents not only because they mixed in with immigrant languages but because their communities were very isolated from Europe. Therefore they developed on their own.

And that's how accents are born and developed.

The trend is that, with education and the development of a "mainstream" accent, accents tend to die, unless there are strong cultural factors behind it. When it comes to Portuguese, Lisbon Portuguese (in Portugal) is now heard from North to South, with the South being completely overrun. That is a huge contrast from what it was 50 years ago, where different regions had different accents, sometimes even different ways of writings things, border-line cases of dialects. The North, the Madeira and the Azores archipelagos are exceptions, their accents are still common (and really, really strong in Madeira and Azores, where they can even be considered dialects), and that has a cultural background.

In Brazil São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro accents prevails. Accents will never die there due to the size of the country, but eventually, with the standardisation of education and the growing influence of the media, most people will speak an hybrid of both. Or so is thought.

The same will happen in the US. Or already happened.

[Col. Tartleton]

I'd say Mr. Gibbs in Pirates of the Caribbean sounds basically like an early American accent. It had that kind of tone to it.

Each state basically has it's own accent as does each major city. I mean each of the New York City Burroughs is different as are the parts of Boston, and Boston is not a Mass accent. Me? No accent. I mean Mass technically, but nothing distinguishable besides my word choice like a fondness for using wicked instead of really. I say words the way they're meant sound and people just have to accept that. Although I like to mispronounce words like I say "Pro-nosis" instead of prognosis, but that's just because I'm conscious of the g being silent in gnosis and carrying it on for kicks.

And as mentioned earlier each state's "Southern" accent is different, and there's probably several per state.

Not to mention we've got all the ethnic accents.

Mass media has created interesting things. We're more likely to sound like the Nebraska-Iowa-Illinois news accent. But there's enough regional stuff on TV I suspect using Y'all and the like will become standard American even if the Southern accent isn't there. Although my personal theory is Texan is going to become more normal as Californian decline shifts American culture to Texas at which point you Brits will actually be correct in how you imagine us.

My favorite accents are Kentucky and Nashville. Kentucky is so backwoods sounding it's glorious and Nashville on a girl is just the cutest thing you ever did hear.

[Keyser]

Accents are created by a variety of factors. Zé Do Pipo explained it well.

I will just add that, for romance languages, when people realised that they didn't spoke good latin anymore (the birth of "national" languages), it was entirely due to those factors. Isolated communities who added more and more local variation in prononciations and even vocabulary as time passed (and with also external forces, migrants population, words and accents coming from the languages spoken in the area before latin was used etc).
But those "romances" languages were in fact, rather than several separated languages like today, a sea of dialects who were close to their neighbours dialects and became more and more different with distances. People in the mediterranean coast of france spoke dialects between italian and spanish ones (mainly catalan), close of both (closer than italian from spanish and vice versa), yet different, the closer you got from spain, the closer it was to catalan and the closer to italy, the closer it got to italian ones. Same in direction of the north (were it got progressively closer to french northern dialects).
Those regional dialects and languages are the basis for modern regional accents.
However what changed everything in how romances languages evolved and were mutually understandable were political developments (With northern dialects getting the upper hand in France and the parisian one becoming the de facto official language, castillan in spain and in the XIXth century florentine influencing immensely modern italian).
Those dialects gaining the upper hand and becoming official language over regional dialects broke the continuity between regional dialects in the romance world.

As to the american/european exemple of Zé Do Pipo, canadian french and metropolitan french are interesting.
Because canada was populated by people from northern france but from various areas and because it was a colony managed by the king's administration, it seems that the accent of the colonists was evolved from the parisian accent of the time (wich was the accent of the administrators and powerfull people and was neutral to the people coming from other regions (western france)).
However after France lost Canada it evolved on its own isolated in an english speaking sea.
While in France, the parisian accent became standard french too, but it evolved quite differently (being influenced by the numerous migrants from everywhere in France who came to Paris to work).
The two accents are now as different as it can get in french (with even differents words) despite having the same linguistic "ADN". Often i can't understand immediately what people from Quebec are saying...

[Darkhorse]

I'd say Mr. Gibbs in Pirates of the Caribbean sounds basically like an early American accent. It had that kind of tone to it.

Interesting, normally the actor has a very neutral British accent, like Hugh Laurie!

[neoptolemos]

The two extremes of Greek language, both endangered though:
Griko sound like Italian to Greeks



And Romeika/Rumca the Pontian dialect in Turkey sounds like Turkish:

[Blarni]

The current prevailing theory is that the American accent is descended from a northwestern accent in Britain that is now extinct.

That's interesting - 'northwestern', as in Lancashire or Cumbria? Could you point me in the way of further info?

[Trax]

Shakespeare in its original English.



Moliere in its original French

[Dr. Croccer]

Old Dutch.



An interesting development:

Just as 'my' used to be pronounced 'mee', the Dutch 'ij' used to be pronounced as 'ie', so that 'mijn' is pronounced like 'mean'. It's a shift that happened in both the languages, during largely the same period.

[Copperknickers II]

I countered with the fact that the Irish, Scottish, and British all speak English, but they have differing accents.

Except that Scottish people are British.

The Northern and Southern hemispheres of America have completely different accents.

Well considering South America speaks Spanish and Portuguese, that is not surprising.

Now I understand the fact that you pick up the accent that you grow up around, but how did all of these accents originate? While the language and immigration theory seemed like the answer, how did all of these "mini" accents, so to say, pop up? What during the course of history shaped the way we speak?

Accents change all the time. There are many different influences, immigration is only one of them. Remember that Ireland's accent comes largely from the fact that Ireland was originally a Gaelic speaking country. Same with Scottish accents. But there have also been various sound shifts and other things such as geography: my village for example has a different accent to another village less than 10 miles away down the valley, because my village is closer to one city and the other is closer to another city, so we are influenced by people from our city which has considerably different demographics to the other.

[Hobbes.]

It would be interesting to learn about the loss of pitch in some accents and languages. I know that Norwegian has a pitch accent, yet there are areas where the characteristic is not encountered, same with the Japanese pitch accent. Greek used to have it as well, but it is nowhere to be found today.

Wow, I love that French video, I did not notice any nasals or gluttural Rs.

[Copperknickers II]

Shakespeare in its original English.



Moliere in its original French

Is it just me, or do those sound very similar to Jamaican and Spanish respectively?

[Trax]

Jamaican

It's not THAT bad

Spanish

IMHO still very much French just a lot less silent letters. By the way, in the end of the play they sing a little in Spanish too, not sure whether they tried to get some old accent right there too or not.

[Blarni]

Certainly the Moliere French clip reminds me of when in French film you get Italians or Spanish actors speaking French (or French actors doing their accents).

I'm not sure those Shakespearian actors are quite pulling it off - I've heard a couple of other 'contemporary London English' readings of Shakespeare that were a lot harsher - more like modern west country 'get orf my land!' stereotypes - with an almost kind of Swedish hint (a bit like Middle English). Of course the people of the time didn't leave voice recordings, so it can all only be informed speculation.

I've read that Irish pronunciation has more to do with 17th century English accents than simply a Gaelic underlay - though certainly Gaelic speakers still have softer accents.

[Invictus XII]

Moliere in its original French

That French is quite remarkable. I can hear the very last remaining Latin remnants in the tongue, the rolled r and the pronunciation of the now silent letters. Yet I hear words like 'votre' and 'tete' pronunciated as they are today, when I always assumed there would be the faintest remnant of "vostre" or "teste"