Americans speak proper English, Brits don't

Bob   Wed May 31, 2006 10:06 pm GMT
I read somewhere that Americans speak English that is closer to the languauge of Shakespeare than the English themselves, is this true?

In England, the oldest accents are those possesed by farmers and those living in the rural areas. Who actually pronounce their words similar to Americans. They strongly pronounce the "R" at the end of words like "water, theatre/theater, centre/center" but also make the "t" sound softer, aswell as making the vowels louder.
Kirk   Wed May 31, 2006 10:56 pm GMT
You may want to check out this similar topic here:

http://antimoon.com/forum/t3031-0.htm

American English in general has remained phonologically conservative in many aspects (such as being rhotic, retaining the subjunctive in speech, or various other features of 16th-17th century British English now considered archaic there) but it would be a mistake to assume that American English has been fossilized and hasn't changed since the 1600s. The truth is that both American and British dialects of the 21st century are descended from common ancestor dialects and all of them have been changing in the past 400 years. Living languages are always changing.
Uriel   Thu Jun 01, 2006 9:52 am GMT
There is a (strange) tendency in some dialects to convert -er into -ar. Americans preserve some of those tendencies (varmint is just a variation of vermin) while Brits preserve others (clerk pronounced as clark -- hence the surname Clark).