How did British people talk in this period?

[EireEmerald]

What was the slang back then? Is it much different from today?

We all know how men talked during WW2

but how did people talk back then? were they just as promiscuous and horny as men are today? or more refined?

[Pikemen]

I actually read that the British Colonist talked the way the Americans did, and over time nothing really changed in the way the Americans spoke. That means that the British, during the early time of colonization of the Americas, must have talked more like the Americans today. That also means that the British are the ones with the weird accent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolo...glish_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...on_differences

Cheers,
Pikemen

[EireEmerald]

I actually read that the British Colonist talked the way the Americans did, and over time nothing really changed in the way the Americans spoke. That means that the British, during the early time of colonization of the Americas, must have talked more like the Americans today. That also means that the British are the ones with the weird accent

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonolo...glish_language

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America...on_differences

Cheers,
Pikemen

Thats really really weird.

[♔Lord Stason♔]

The american accent is much closer to the irish accent.

We have never spoke a similar accent to the americans of today.

The english language back then was terrible, in some parts of britian it was so diverse between parts of the country it was hard to communicating. It was because of the class of people, lower and higher the middle class really wasn't of any existance, Until late 18th century which brought us the language/accents of today.

However in some parts of britian the accents has been mildly kept for instance in yorkshire, cornwall, sheffield and some parts of london. Very vaiguely exists those 17th/18th century accents and old sayings.

[uanime5]

I actually read that the British Colonist talked the way the Americans did, and over time nothing really changed in the way the Americans spoke.

What!? The Americans used to be British Colonists so where did they get their new accent from? Native Americans?

[emperorpenguin]

What!? The Americans used to be British Colonists so where did they get their new accent from? Native Americans?

No he's saying that the American accent WAS the British accent but never changed, while somehow the British accent did.

It's a common misunderstanding born out of the nugget of truth that the Americans spelling and grammar has more in common with that of Elizabethan English than current British English does. Some people try to claim it covers accent.

[Maleficus]

I just wanna know why pirates are always from the west country

Sure, Plymouth and Bristol were two of the main harbours at the time, but the were plenty of others: Portsmouth, Greenwich, Great Yarmouth, etc. etc. etc.



Anyway... On the topic of accents, I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I'll go out on a limb and say British sccents in the 18th century were probably pretty similar to how they are now, but probably rather more pronounced as a result of communities being more isolated from one another.

That said, I suspect the scouse and 'Essex Chav' accents are a more recent invention.



Also, geordies will try to tell you that theirs is the truest form of English, but I for one will continue to dismiss their claims until such time as Geoffrey Chaucer rises from the dead, drinks a crate of Brown Ale, fails to eat a kebab properly and screams "Howay the lads!" while shirtless in a snowstorm.

[EireEmerald]

I just wanna know why pirates are always from the west country

Sure, Plymouth and Bristol were two of the main harbours at the time, but the were plenty of others: Portsmouth, Greenwich, Great Yarmouth, etc. etc. etc.



Anyway... On the topic of accents, I have no scientific evidence to back this up, but I'll go out on a limb and say British sccents in the 18th century were probably pretty similar to how they are now, but probably rather more pronounced as a result of communities being more isolated from one another.

That said, I suspect the scouse and 'Essex Chav' accents are a more recent invention.



Also, geordies will try to tell you that theirs is the truest form of English, but I for one will continue to dismiss their claims until such time as Geoffrey Chaucer rises from the dead, drinks a crate of Brown Ale, fails to eat a kebab properly and screams "Howay the lads!" while shirtless in a snowstorm.

I thought pirates always had strong irish, Yorkshire and Scottish accents.

[Blarni]

[QUOTE=Pikemen;6364385]I actually read that the British Colonist talked the way the Americans did, and over time nothing really changed in the way the Americans spoke. That means that the British, during the early time of colonization of the Americas, must have talked more like the Americans today. That also means that the British are the ones with the weird accent

What this theory apparently revolves around is that 16th/17th/18th century English tended to sound more like is now considered west country 'get orf moi land!' and lowland Scots talk.

Basically they apparently (and very generically) spoke with what is these days considered a more American/Irish rrrrrr sound. Supposedly the Irish accent has more to do with 17th century English pronunciation than the Gaelic language they were switching from. The English colonists to America brought that with them and it became a feature of their standard accent while most British regions shed it.

Despite immigration to America (and bear in mind that the colonial population was overwhelmingly of British extraction up to the civil war by which time defineable accents would have established themselves) it's not that surprising they kept this foundation phase dialect. This seems to be the norm in English-speaking colonies: both Australia and New Zealand received far greater non-British immigration in their formulative colonial years (Germans and Yugoslavs in both, and Scandinavians in NZ) than is commonly realized, but they left no discernable regional impact on what developed into surprisingly countrywide standardized accents.

[Von Stein]

That also means that the British are the ones with the weird accent

Seems reasonable to me. I always prefered American slang over this nasally, weird Oxford English

[Ragerancher]

As Lord Stason said, many parts of the American language can also be found in Irish accents. An example is pronouncing oh as in dog as 'ah' or 'aw'.

[43rdFoot]

This is something that I've often wondered about. I've often heard that Old English sounded much more like a modern Scottish accent than a modern English accent, so I believe it probably sounded like an Anglicized Scottish.

[eliwoo]

When did the English start sounding like the English and not a French-German hybrid? Also, here in the states, it’s a point of national pride how we say “dawg”. Thug life!

[Didz]

I don't really see how we can be that specific about the British accent, even today the British accent varies enormously from region to region. To the point in fact, that we can hardly understand each other in some cases. So, unless one were to isolate a specific region and say how did the accent in this region vary it becomes impossible to comment.

Also, as the British language has never been regulated, it is constantly evolving with words changing in meaning, sound and spelling over time. Not to mention the constant introduction and redundancy of slang-words. I mean the English dictionary has to be re-ssued every year to keep up, so comparing it to American or whatever is completely pointless. The main reason Britain is currentl absoring so many Americanism's is simply because of the constant exposure our young people have to the American media.

Having said that there are a number of interesting language effects I've noticed over the years, such as the fact, that when I was in a guild containing a large number of Danish members I could often understand what they were saying to each other even though I don't speak Danish.

If you actually read the history of english, it is constantly evolving, so how an englishman spake in 1776, would be different to how he spoke in 1815, and also be different depend on whether he was a geordie, scouse, cockney, or whatever. The vast majority of settlers in America came from East Anglia and so the initial seed of American English would have been rural county english, though as soon as it landed it would have begun to go its own way in terms of new words and influences, not least from native american. Whilst the language of the community left behind would have continued to evolve in other directions. Language was also both class, trade and social group specific with many variations and affectations that labelled and classified the speaker. As indeed is still the case today, my children for instance can idenfy the social group of another teenager merely by listening to the words they use and the way they are pronounced.

Ironically, there was an attempt in the 18th Century to introduce some regulation into the English language, similar to that employed by the French to regulate their's, but it failed miserably despite the publication of various works such as John Walkers 'Critical Pronouncing Dictionary of the English Language' and almost a decade later George Bernard Shaw was moved to complain that 'The English have no respect for their language and will not teach their children to speak it. They canont spell it because they have nothing to spell it with but an old foriegn alphabet of which only the consonants - and not all of them - have any great speech value. Consquently, no man can teach himself what it should sound like from reading it; and it is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.'

Personally, I'm glad they failed, as I think the very 'chaos' of English is its greatest strength.

These video's cover the subject pretty throughly.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b3AA...599697&index=2
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=221rO...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kaRSd...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSqpk...eature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_SyY...eature=related

[emperorpenguin]

I actually read that the British Colonist talked the way the Americans did, and over time nothing really changed in the way the Americans spoke. Cheers,
Pikemen

I have heard this argument before and it makes absolutely no, zero, nil, zilch, bugger all sense.

You honestly believe that a vast land such as the USA which attracted huge numbers of immigrants from many different nations, bringing their own languages, vocabularies and accents, and mixed them all together over two hundred years did not result in ANY change of accent!?

However a comparatively racially homogenous and much less immigrant-rich nation such as Britain had such a huge change of accent?

Nonsense.

The vast majority of settlers in America came from East Anglia

East Anglia and Yorkshire were the two largest contributors I recall.

[Didz]

I have heard this argument before and it makes absolutely no, zero, nil, zilch, bugger all sense.

I agree, even assuming of course that American accents haven't changed over the last 300 years or so.

[Dileos]

When did the English start sounding like the English and not a French-German hybrid? Also, here in the states, it’s a point of national pride how we say “dawg”. Thug life!

Normal people don't say "dawg" or "thug life".

And I wouldn't consider that a point of national pride.

[Astaroth]

Moved to the Historical Research Center.

[AndariusHaliusScipio]

I always thought of the American accent as a mix of British and Native American ("Indian"). When I hear the "stereotypical" Native American accent speaking English in dramatic portrayals, it always sounds like it has a very sharp pronounciation in certain words that I can never place in any other people's language aside from "Generic American".

But then, I can barely tell the difference between Scottish and Irish accents unless they're screaming.

[Didz]

There is certainly a clear difference between the american and the British accent today, and you can spot an american in a british pub from halfway across the room as soon as they open their mouths. More interestingly there is also a distinct difference between the Canadian and American accents which is easily distinquished in the UK.