Accent evolution in English

Jordi   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 16:13 GMT
I've been seeing quite a few original 1940s pictures (or movies) both from Great Britain and the US. I have the feeling the accents have changed quite a bit. With British films it's definitely Grand Style Old RP (most of the time) but although I'm no great expert in American accents (I myself speak with a slightly modified Australian accent, which I learnt as a child) I have the feeling the American pictures don't sound exactly as present day American accents sound.
What is your feeling (regarding the accent, of course) when you hear a Standard American, which is now over 60 years old? Does it sound old fashioned? I'm speaking of "General American" voices. Have you got the feeling they have evolved a lot in the past 60 years?
Perhaps Brennus and other older Americans in ANTIMOON could give us more information on this subject.
andre in usa   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 16:19 GMT
I've seen this topic discussed before. I don't think American English was ever really spoken the way it is in old films, except by people who were trying to sound sophisticated. I believe it was an affect on the American accent at the time and common people did not speak like they do. In old movies they sounds almost English. The English accent in America has always been perceived as sounding upper-class, but that's because we mostly hear RP. So really, it was just an minor affect and is now out of style.
andre in usa   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 16:21 GMT
I mean think about, do your grandparents sound anything like the way they do in those old films (if you're American, that is)? No.
Jordi   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 16:27 GMT
In other languages I know really well (French, Catalan and Castilian Spanish) I have the feeling the accent hasn't changed much. They do sound old fahsioned but more due to style and choice of words.

Standard accents and intonation tends to remain quite stable through time although they will eventually change but at a much slower pace.

It would seem that American English (and even Standard RP) go further than the other languages unless, of course, the reason is they were putting on an accent that really wasn't theirs. That would make sense.
greg   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 16:42 GMT
Jordi : have you seen any movie starring Arletty ?

Do you remember : "Atmopshère ? Atmosphère ! Est-ce que j'ai une gueule d'atmosphère ?!"

I assure you Arletty's French isn't contemporary.
Barbara   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 22:45 GMT
I think that the leading men in those old Hollywood films still sound contemporary. Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Humphrey Bogart all sound very neutral General American to me. Of course, there were exceptions like John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart who had very distinctive voices that sound quite odd by today’s standards.

But the women were something else! Katherine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford, and the rest of their peers spoke in clipped, non-rhotic New England/Mid-Atlantic-style accents that they acquired in Hollywood finishing school. This accent makes them sound snobby, affected, and laughably old-fashioned by today’s standards. I don't think people in the real world actually spoke this way. They also laid the drama on pretty thick and were sometimes way over-the-top. These women are still fascinating to watch, but anyone speaking and acting that way in films today would be laughed out of the business. This trend ended around the mid to late 1960s when the more naturalistic approach to acting spear-headed by Brando, Clift, and Dean in the 1950s finally caught on.
Kirk   Tuesday, April 26, 2005, 23:02 GMT
Right...I don't think old movies are the best gauge of how accents were back then or how they've changed since then. andre in usa brings up a great point in mentioning that the people of our grandparents' generation don't sound like the old movies...at least mine don't. A better gauge of how American speech has changed may be found in older examples of informal speech, and technical phonetic transcriptions done on General American speech earlier in the century.
Jim   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 03:52 GMT
Well, I was about to write much the same thing as has already been written though I do have something esle to add: more of an hypothesis than a fact. Besides wanting to sound more "sophisticated" I wonder whether the recording technology of the time had anything to do with thing. Maybe this mid-Atlantic accent they cultivated was (or was perceived to be) clearer to understand in the age before hi-fi surround-sound.
Deborah   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 04:17 GMT
Not everyone learned their accents in Hollywood; a few came by theirs naturally, or at least in boarding school. I'm thinking of Katherine Hepburn and Bette Davis, both of whom attended East Coast boarding schools.

None of my grandparents (who were all born at the end of the 19th century) spoke with that accent. At least, none of the three I've met. I never met one grandmother, but my mother never mentioned her sounding affected. But then, my mother loves movies from her generation and doesn't think the way the actresses speak is affected. So maybe my grandmother did speak that way, since she was apparently a bit of a snob. I met her sister when I was very young, who I remember as sounding old-fashioned, though I can't recall why.

I have met a few people of my grandparents' generation who had something of a mid-Atlantic accent that didn't sound affected to me. But certainly many of the actresses in Hollywood did put it on, and did sound affected.
Brennus   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 06:25 GMT
Jordi,

Hi.

I don't know if I can really answer your question but let me try:

If movies, recordings and interviews with elderly people are any indication, it seems that the further back in time you go the more alike American and British English sound. A few years ago, I saw an interview with one of the survivors of the Titanic disaster (1912), a British woman who was just a 10 year old girl at the time. Yet, her accent sounded a little less like what we consider to be a British accent today and a tad bit closer to Canadian and American English.

Modern Standard American English, I'm told uses the Midwest accent spoken between Pittsburg and Chicago. Before World War II it used the r-less (non-rhotic) Northeastern accent. Franklin and Elanor Roosevelt are cited as examples of people who spoke with this accent ("We have nothing to fea-uh but fea-uh itself" i.e. fear ) as well as numerous Hollywood people at the time.

Recently, I heard a 1957 interview on television with John Salling (1846? -1959) of southwestern Virginia. He is allegedly the last Confederate veteran of the American Civil War (1861-65). Some people claim he was really born in 1858 which would make him a non-veteran and a fraud if this is true. Nevertheless, when John Salling spoke, it still sounded much like the accent that you hear in the American South today. So in this region of the U.S. there has been little change since, at least, the early nineteenth century. Like the r-less Northeastern accent, the Southern accent is considered closer to British English than General American English based on the speech of the Midwest. General American is spoken in a region which received heavy immigration, especially Irish, German, Polish, Italian and Scandanavian. This is perhaps part of the reason why it is less British-sounding.

--- Take Care,

Brennus
Brennus   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 06:42 GMT
Eleanor Roosevelt = pronounced both ro-zuh-velt and roo-zuh-velt.
Etienne MacDonald-Ross   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 08:11 GMT
Deborah, I'd be interested on your comments regarding an opinion I've formed (largely from television and films) about what seems to have been an enormous increase in AmE rhoticism over the last fifty years.

My recollection was that AmE was only slightly rhotic when I was watching American TV and films as a kid in the 50s and 60s; recently I watched some old TV programmes on cable, deliberately to test my theory.

On several Jackie Gleason Shows from about 1952, I detected virtually no rhoticism, including a complete absence of it from all male characters, and just the slightest hint from the female ones. Ten or twelve years later, the male characters on The Fugitive spoke with only slight rhoticism.

Were Jackie Gleason and Co deliberately eliminating any rhotic tendencies (remembering the era and that the programme was unlikely to be seen outside NA as TV was rare elsewhere), and were David Janssen et al trying similarly to remove theirs, or did their speech reflect that of the average American at the time?
Jordi   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 08:16 GMT
That is really interesting and I would like to thank you all. Do posters now in their 50s observe important phonetic changes in the younger generation in their own city and region? Are there important city/country differences in the region you live?

I agree with Brennus in that accent traditionally changes quite slowly, it often takes centuries if there is little "external" disturbance. It is hardly surprising that the early 19th century accent of the American south sounded quite the same as the actual one. I have read elsewhere that the Australian accent (the first fleet arrived at Sydney Harbour in 1788) was already quite well established in 1840, 50 years aftwerwards and that it already sounded "Australian". This is why NZ English sounds so close to Australian English (many of the first arrivals in 1840 were "new" Australians with added "new" Brits.).

That is as far as dialectal or popular accents go (unless there is a major input of "foreign" speakers who "change" the accent quickly in a generation or two; that has happened in parts of the US, also in parts of suburban Sydney since the 1970s (Western Suburbs or "wog" accent) and even in my native Catalan where the influence of Castilian has heavily affected the city of Valencia but not most of the region, which still has a distinct Catalan sounding accent. It's all a matter of a "critical" mass.

Another influence, which interests me a lot, is the adoption of "class" accents. That has certainly been the case in the UK for many (not all speak RP but there are lots and lots of "modified RP" speakers, an accent which is often acquired as one gets older and upwardly mobile, reason why a younger crowd such as the one in ANTIMOON might change its accent in the next 10 to 15 years). Don't howl at me now, call me back then! ;-)

It would seem that has also affected the more egalitarian USA, but more so in the past than right. Do you feel Standard American is a "class" accent and are other "popular" accents disappearing because of SA. It doesn't happen in one day, I know, but have you got the feeling young Americans from all over the USA sound more and more the same?
JJM   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 08:22 GMT
Jim:

"Besides wanting to sound more 'sophisticated' I wonder whether the recording technology of the time had anything to do with thing."

Jim has hid the nail on the head. The "dated" accents we hear in old movies were the result of:

1. Enunciation training designed to make the most of relatively poor quality sound technology. Nothing seems much more corny or tinny than the contrived accent of male commentators in British newsreels from those days; but the was to enunciate every word distinctly and be clearly understood across the "Empire" in a standard RP accent.

2. Actors were also used to the demands of the stage - not our modern stage - but a stage where microphone support was either limited or non-existent. This tended to make them "project their voices."

3. And naturally, there was a certain "sophisticated" American accent that appealed to audiences of the time. You'll note very often that to emphasize low character, "bad guys" often spoke with cod Bowery Boys accents while more roué cads were depicted with a slightly oily, upper class accent.

4. Finally, add to this the simple fact that people just spoke differently back then, using words and expressions that are now outdated ("Say - what's the big idea?").
Jordi   Wednesday, April 27, 2005, 08:43 GMT
Greg
Arletty spoke pure Parigot, the Parisian French version of old style capital city cockney, which can still be heard in parts of Paris in a slightly evolved version (phonetics, of course.) Jean Gabin had the same heavy Parisian accent Arletty had, remember?

Nothing to do with the "français châtier" of Louis Jouvet, her co-star and the one heard in the Comédie Française and the upper classes.

"Atmosfaèr, Atmosfaèr "in Hôtel du Nord. Louis Jouvet, the co-star of course, also says atmosphère in a totally different way.